Two recent things have prompted some reflection. For one, the LDA had another workshop with Emma Weber, in this case on transfer of learning. At the same time, Dave Snowden, on LinkedIn, was pointing to a post suggesting being wary of the latest management infatuation. How are they related? Well, to me it’s about fads and foundations.
So Emma’s workshop was about how to use coaching to facilitate post-event transfer. Her approach had a domain-independent coaching model. In it, the coaching is applied for roughly 30 minutes over a period of time, with at least a week between. She was looking to drill into what people wanted to accomplish and keep them on track. Also, doing so without being expert in the area of endeavor. In fact, to the contrary. Which I laud, with a caveat. As I’ve opined before, I think that we need domain-specific feedback until learners have a level of capability. They have to be able to know what they don’t know and acquire it. They also need to critique their own performance. (She believes that the course should get people to that level; I’m a bit more cautious. Should.)
Now, what the post suggested was that the big consulting companies had a pattern of boosting the latest management approach. They then indicate expertise, and get businesses to follow them. The consultants then move on, without checking to see whether the fad has led to any improvement. (A small plug here for using your friendly neighborhood consultant for a reality check before embarking on heavy investment.) This reminds me of Alex Edman’s book May Contain Lies where he demonstrated how many management books took a biased data set and used that to make sweeping generalizations that weren’t justified. Nor checked for continuing success.
The link is that too often, folks will bring in a new executive, even CEO, who isn’t in their business but has had success elsewhere. A reliable situation is that they will have learned some MBA-spiel, like cost-cutting, and successfully applied it in a particular instance. (The ones who aren’t successful we don’t hear about.) Then, their approach doesn’t work in the new situation. Because it’s a new situation! They don’t have the foundational knowledge. Another recent item I saw said how a business had failed with a new CEO, and had to then hire another who knew the business to set it right. (If only I could remember where!)
The underlying message is that the world is contextual (see Brian Klaas’ Fluke). Without the knowledge of how the world works here, we’re liable to apply too-general approaches that aren’t matched to the current situation. When we acquire the contextual knowledge, we can then self-help. Yet, we do better when we know the situation. We need informed analysis and aligned interventions! This is something we can, and should, do.
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