Recite my tendencies to try out the latest tools and techniques in the management book-of-the-month.
Some of the tools are useful, but there is more to be said for simplicity and enduring principles and values.
Perhaps this book is my attempt to get at the stories and themes that have endured for me.
I remember reading an article (or book!) that mentioned employees dreading their manager returning from the latest management seminar, all charged up and ready to apply the latest panacea. A bit of "here we go again." Of course, the flip side is that resistance to try anything new, dismissing it out-of-hand.
Cite a story from Eileen Shapiro's Fad Surfing in the Board Room to illustrate the risks of creating the strategy du jour.
Fad surfing: "The practice of riding the crest of the latest management panacea and then paddling out again just in time to ride the next one; always absorbing for managers and lucrative for consultants; frequently disastrous for organizations." Shapiro, p. xiii, p. 216 |