A columnist in The Harvard Business Review magazine is suggesting the latest and greatest ideas in management (project and otherwise) might need some seasoning before they should be widely adapted as standard business operating procedure.
Julian Birkinshaw, a professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at the London Business School, writes, “Any radical management innovation is quick to attract the attention of journalists, academics, and consultants. You’re not trying to ride the next wave; you’re looking for the perfect wave. Popular opinion has less pertinence for you than an idea’s underlying concepts; indeed, it’s worth bearing in mind that foundational ideas often live on even after the practices associated with them have fallen from favor.”
Birkinshaw cites as an example Zappos, “the online retailer, which is replacing its traditional hierarchy with a self-organizing ‘operating system” known as holacracy.'” Fastcompany.com praises Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos for adopting the practice, calling him “an avant-garde business person, unafraid to take risks and try new things. And if he and his 1,499 Zappos partners (organized into 400 circles) pull off this holacratic experiment, next on your reading list just may be the Holacracy Constitution.”
That same enthusiasm is not shared by Birkinshaw in his article. “Even the most obviously useful theory or practice can go wrong if a company is unprepared to act on the insights it offers. And the value of most management ideas—and where they might take you—is far from obvious.
“Is holacracy about empowering creativity or about tearing down authority? Can you envision “everyone” in your firm becoming a leader? Could your culture and organizational structure withstand such a dramatic change? The potential rewards of experimental concepts may be great for certain firms under certain circumstances, but for others, implementing them can be profoundly difficult or even destructive,” he opined.
“Observe and apply” is going to be your best approach to new management techniques, according to Birkinshaw. “It can and does work well, but only under limited sets of circumstances. One is when the observed practice easily stands alone or involves just a small constellation of supporting behaviors,” he said.
He mentioned “GE’s well-regarded succession-planning process is a good example—think of the smooth CEO transition from Jack Welch to Jeffrey Immelt in 2000. The process is supported by just a few specific actions, including creating transparency around the candidates and planning for the likely departures of those who don’t get the job.”
As a refresher, the GE transition, was called a “leadership lesson” by the Los Angeles Times. It said, “… for many of the nation’s movers and shakers, the anointment of inside front-runner Jeffrey R. Immelt as heir to Jack Welch’s corporate legacy catapulted their own succession planning to the fore.
But in his article, Birkinshaw also criticizes the once-popular GE philosophy of “ranking all employees within a given unit, rewarding and promoting the high performers, and firing (or providing remedial training for) the bottom 10%. The ‘rank and yank’ system was emulated widely—but it often failed, particularly in organizations that hadn’t developed cultures of productive internal competition.”
His approach to new ideas? “Extract the central idea,” he advises. “The hazards of importing a management innovation can be greatly minimized by extracting only the essential principles of a practice. Whatever differences may exist between the new organizational context and the original become less important, and fewer adjustments are required for the principles to take root.”
Internal realization of a company will also help immensely. “Regardless of the method you choose, corporate self-awareness is a powerful advantage. Not only can it help companies adopt the right innovations, but it can improve the planning and implementation of any major initiative,” he says.
Finally, companies also need to “deconstruct the management model,” he says, adding. “Once you’ve decided to go ahead, you need to start by asking pointed questions to uncover the essence of the idea. During this stage, it’s often useful to bring in outsiders who can offer a fresh perspective.”
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