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| Much Ado About Nothing |
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Download This Article as a PDF Click Here  Business fads fail for many reasons, and each failure contains a lesson companies can apply for their own success. Corporate buzz is the sound of the hot air that fills the halls and offices of many companies when fads are adopted with great enthusiasm for a brief period of time, only to fade away and be replaced by the next craze to fill the vacuum. The operative word is brief. Businesses are constantly bombarded with passing trends, usually based on the publication of a guru's latest theory, despite the fact that the guru may be an academician with little or no practical business experience. Let's face it: As well intentioned as the authors of many of these fads may be, quick fixes don't work in any sphere, especially not in business. If companies derive benefits from such passing fancies, it is often due less to the new theory itself than to the enthusiasm generated by the promise of a new path. But unless someone invests the time and effort necessary to carry through for the long-term, the benefits are only temporary.  Sound Principles, Common Sense Fads fail for multitude of reasons, and each failure contains a lesson companies can apply for their long-term success. Consider these examples: Change for the sake of change– Jack Welch writes in Winning: "Attach every change initiative to a clear purpose or goal. Change for change's sake is stupid and enervating." In other words, it's a recipe for disaster to adopt a new practice simply because it is new and sounds promising, without addressing a particular issue in the company. In the worst case, a new path is attempted out of desperation, when leadership has already tried everything else and failed. The way to transform a company is to encourage creativity and innovation at all levels. Focus on results, not the change process. Create buy-in at all levels by ensuring the flow of information from leadership to all employees and stakeholders. If only management knows about a new road taken, employees cannot travel it. Communicate the leader's message throughout the organization, not just to executives and management Include employees of all ranks as part of the process, and make sure they believe their ideas count. These actions garner respect and avoid the resentment change for the sake of change may create. Finally, hold people accountable, whether leaders, management or employees. Don't look for a quick fix, and plan for the long term. A genuine, but misplaced desire to innovate– New initiatives fail to deliver when innovation focuses on management processes, rather than on services and products for a changing market. Customers – not authors and gurus – are the best business advisers a company can have. Begin with comprehensive market research, talk to customers, truly listen and then develop strategies to provide what they need and want. If growth is what it takes, it can happen through innovative products, acquisition, merger or just changing the way the company communicates with customers The Hollywood game– Sometimes, a fad is taken up by a leader to bolster the ego or to appear cutting-edge. This is caused by a "Go-Hollywood" virus, complete with buzzwords, special effects, superstars and other glitz. The make-believe world of Hollywood simply has no place in business. Although a new theory or trend can be beneficial in waking up a sleeping company, long-term success only comes from a solid foundation and sound principles of leadership, management and marketing. Don't discard older processes, such as the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis, just because they have been around for a long time. Do the homework, and don't forget to apply good, old-fashioned common sense. Buy a widget– Sometimes a fad amounts to the purchase of a new software program, such as CRM, rather than taking the time to create value by implementing a better strategy for customer relationship management. Rather than relying on new software that promises to make or save money with little effort, build better relationships, one customer at a time. Managing customers should be about providing innovative products and excellent service, not software. Because most purchase decisions are based on emotions, not analysis, develop marketing communications that create an emotional bond with the company's products or services. Focus on retaining customers; it's less expensive than attracting new ones. Forecast and keep adapting to new trends in the marketplace; let these drive operations, not a new theory of management. Quickie training-A course or seminar cannot produce an overnight change in attitude. There is no doubt, for example, that emotional intelligence (introduced in 1995 with Daniel Goleman's book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ) is required in business, but a leader or manager cannot become emotionally intelligent in a matter of hours or days by attending training. The same is true for learning to make sound snap judgments or becoming better at delegating. Training programs are a good investment only when they are based on a genuine need to improve employee performance in a specific area, and when the company's expectations concerning outcomes are realistic. Fitting the business to the fad– Most often, new ways fail because leaders approach them backwards. They read a new bestseller or attend a seminar, and then ask: How can we apply this new theory to the business? The correct way to approach it is to ask first: What areas of the business are in need of improvement? What problems do we have? Only then, ask the question: Which new theory or breakthrough might help us accomplish these goals? This is the right time to research the latest trends in search of one that addresses the specific areas in need of help. Begin not with the fad, but by looking deeply into the organization to find what ails it. Listen to employees and customers. Then, when a problem is identified, look around for a breakthrough that might be applied to solve the problem. Don't go overboard and try to apply it to the whole company. Measure the outcome of the new approach. If the results are unsatisfactory, don't just move on to another fad. Ask:
Constant Flux Change and innovation are the touchstones of entrepreneurial enterprises, while fads are primarily practiced in large corporations. Smaller companies tend to take a more realistic, hands-on approach to creating market share. Their leaders believe in the "cause" as defined by the company's products or services and incite others to assimilate the vision and establish long-term, organizationally directed goals. Management stresses a positive, challenging, yet supportive work environment that fosters healthy cooperation rather than destructive competition. To survive in a world of constant flux, organizations need a structure that incorporates and accepts change as its basic premise – change not in the form of ever-passing fads, but long-term transformation for continued growth, expansion into new domestic or international markets and adaptation to new market realities. This type of true transformation requires total commitment, and often, drastic surgery. The pain it may cause cannot be relieved with the band-aid of a fad. As Scott Adams says in The Dilbert Principle: A Cubicle's-Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads & Other Workplace Afflictions: "Re-engineering a company is a bit like performing an appendectomy on yourself. It hurts quite a bit, you might not know exactly how to do it, and there's a good chance you won't survive it. But if it does work, you'll gain enough confidence to go after some of the more vital organs, such as that big red pumping thing." Complete Transformation A case study demonstrates the application of a new business model – not in the manner of a passing fad, but to achieve a complete transformation of the company. DSC Logistics, Des Plaines, Ill., was founded in the 1960s by Jim McIlrath under the name Dry Storage Corp. When his daughter Ann Drake, became the company's CEO in the early 1990s, she proceeded to transform the company from a 1960s warehousing business to a 21st-century logistics enterprise, based on the "sense-and-respond" business model formulated by Stephan H. Haeckel, director of strategic studies at IBM's Advanced Business Institute. In his book, Adaptive Enterprise: Creating and Leading Senseand- Respond Organizations, Haeckel argues that in today's marketplace, businesses can't expect to thrive just by making products and selling them. Rather, companies must adapt to customers, even before they themselves know what they want. Haeckel's book lays out a sense-and-respond strategy to allow companies to move quickly and change. "Our business model is dramatically different from the times in which Dry Storage Corp. was started," Drake says. "Rather than fighting change,we embrace it with sense-and-respond. We face change as a thinking, learning organization, ready to redesign, rearrange and redistribute our resources to help our customers take best advantage of the current environment." Under Drake's leadership, the company's transformation included the following changes:
Drake is a passionate change-agent who likes to inspire. She wants to see her people embrace change and translate it into what it means to them, so they can focus their strengths and better assist customers. She believes in a "thinking and learning" organization and practices an open management style that keeps adapting to the changing environment. Drake's employees enjoy working at DSC because their views count; they know that leadership cares about the company and about them. Having a stake in the company, they deploy resources quickly to make things happen. "Logistics is one of the fastest-moving, fastest-changing industries in America today," Drake explains. "In a world of continual change, our sense-and-respond business model equips us to track or anticipate even subtle changes in customers' business environments. “And then, it puts priority on responding instantly, fluidly and accurately to those needs." To Innovate Or Not? Other countries don't practice the latest American theories. Japan and  China, for instance, are progressive while doing business in the old-fashioned way, without buzzwords and fads. Shouldn't these other countries then be far ahead of the United States because they don't waste their time on fads? Yet, the U.S. economy is the most successful in the world. Does it not follow, then, that American companies are doing the right thing, including fads?In reality, what makes the U.S. economy so strong are innovation and action; not ever-changing management theories, but rather, the new products and services that take the world by storm. Customers don't care about the theories buzzing in the boardroom or the seminars leaders have taken. They only care about products and services that improve their quality of life. Success in the marketplace is not about new theories, but about differentiating the company through innovative and creative offerings. When it comes to leadership and management, stick to common sense and sound principles and strategies, no matter how old they may be.  To Download This Article as a PDF Click Here |