Pick mine, pick theirs, but pick a tool and stick with it!
Rita McGrath | Thought Sparks
Introduction
The utilization of management tools, ideas and frameworks has a strange cyclicality to it.
The boss reads another book and suddenly we’re all required to calculate Net Promoter Scores! It’s worth taking a critical eye to the tools that we use to increase performance.
The development of new management practices
My former advisor, Ned Bowman, often said that theories move through four stages. The first is the description – when something is very new (hello, ChatGPT), the best we can do is try to describe it. That’s why so many genuinely new ideas are articulated in the form of narratives and stories –we don’t have hard data about new and emergent things.
Academia versus practice – something of a chasm
Academics tend to focus on description and explanation. We are rewarded for building on existing theories and developing new ones. That means that solutions to thorny problems are often created, but not disseminated beyond the walls of academia, as academics are not necessarily rewarded by anyone using the ideas they create.
What makes a given tool a good one?
Given that so many tools point to basically the same result, perhaps it would be useful to talk about how to tell a solid one from those that aren’t.
The first thing I look for is whether a tool, concept or framework acknowledges the boundary conditions within which it operates and as importantly in which it doesn’t.
A second thing that I look for is that a tool, framework, or theory clearly spells out the dependent and independent variables it claims to operate on. In other words, what is the presumed causality we are thinking works?
For a tool to be effective, it needs to be put into use
We know that many tools get at the same fundamental human social processes. What makes the difference is that they are used consistently. I often therefore say to my clients, “pick my tool, pick their tool, but pick one and stick with it!”
Speaking of tools…
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