Fad surfing not only prevents managers from focusing on the issues at hand, but it indicates that managers are attempting to avoid responsibility for those problems by pinning their hopes for solutions to them on each fad that appears over the horizon. Indeed, anyone who adopts – lock, stock, and barrel – a management system or technique promoted by an author or consultant is clearly failing to take any more responsibility for the purported solution than for the problems it is expected to address.
Unfortunately, it is all too common, whether in a small business or the largest firms in the world, for managers to become overwhelmed by ineffective or insufficient assessment of the challenges facing their firms, or through a fundamental lack of maturity or self-confidence (that’s right – this occurs in every size firm everywhere in the world, and is actually more likely at higher levels of management) to become swept up in the hype surrounding a fad and to be, basically, intimidated by consultants into allowing them to implement the latest one. Experience is no guide, unfortunately, in this issue, as the reappearing merger mania indicates, despite the dismal record of the last wave and the lack of evidence that this one will turn out any different.
How do you avoid being whipsawed by these fads, and how do you assess their value – or the extent or lack of it – to your firm? First, take control of your business. You are the manager, and you know – or have available to you the resources for knowing – your business and industry better than some mass-marketing author or consultancy. You can make no decision about any issue related to the operation of your firm – including, as is often perfectly justifiable, delegation of bits of it – without being personally comfortable that you understand the basic SWOT environment and the fundamental keys for success. On the basis of such an understanding, you have the framework for generating proposals for action as well as assessing any presented to you, including the next fad that comes down the highway.
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