QUOTATION 84

EILEEN C. SHAPIRO ON THE NEED TO AVOID MANAGEMENT FADS

Use this to remind you that ready-made solutions to your problems seldom work.

Eileen C. Shapiro is an American business consultant and author of Fad Surfing in the Boardroom. Shapiro is concerned with the growing trend in business to look outside the organisation for ready-made answers to its problems, as she has said:

Thinking must be the hardest job in the World. What people want to do is outsource it to a mantra or methodology like re-engineering.

Eileen C. Shapiro

In the 1980s, management became sexy as managers looked around for instant answers to age-old problems. The result has been a growing trend for managers to look outside their organisations for answers to their problems.

WHAT TO DO

  • Thinking is hard, but you and your staff have the answers to the problems you face. You may need a facilitator to draw them out, but you are more than capable of designing a made-to-measure solution for resolving your problems.
  • Off-the-peg solutions seldom deliver the results hoped for. However, if you or your organisation decide to go down that route, you need to do two things:
    • precisely identify the problem/s you are attempting to resolve; and
    • instead of swallowing the entire solution on offer, take only those elements that you require to solve your problem/s and that will work in your organisation’s culture.
  • Don’t assume that you can implement any package without significant amendment. The package must be altered to meet your unique requirements.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

  • Am I or is my organisation a slave to management fads?
  • How much time do I spend just thinking through problems as opposed to dealing with them?
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