RESOURCES
CAREERS
Choosing Management
Tools that Work
Employees who use them should help select them
B Y JEAN KUMAGAI
Senior Associate Editor
A
s students of popular culture
well know, something “Dil-
bertian” is both utterly ab-
surd and utterly true. Among
the foibles chronicled in
Scott Adams’ comic strip are the latest
hare-brained edicts handed down from
the corner office.
In the real world, too, management
tools and philosophies tend to follow fads.
Reengineering and total quality manage-
ment were all the rage 10 years ago. More
recently it’s the defect-elimination strat-
egy known as Six Sigma and the process
management approach called Stage Gate.
As product cycle times shrink and com-
petition heats up, management tools have
proliferated wildly, and senior managers
are inundated with offers of books, sem-
inars, and articles hyping the rewards of
this or that method or technique.
Figuring out which to use can be a
manager’s biggest challenge. Even the
term “management tool” is open to
interpretation. According to Boston-
based management consulting firm
Bain & Co., it runs the gamut from sim-
ple planning software, to complex orga-
nizational designs, to philosophical the-
• August 2001
ories of business development.
To aid in more rational decision-mak-
ing about tools, Bain director Darrell
Rigby annually surveys hundreds of cor-
IEEE SPECTRUM
porate executives to find out what tools
they use and with what results.
Given the recent economic downturn,
this year’s survey found the lowest satis-
faction with “new economy” tactics like
60 corporate venturing (the practice of cre-
ating investment arms for funding new
businesses and technologies) and mar-
ket disruption analysis (a way of detecting
new trends that may upset market
dynamics). In contrast, “the tried-and-
true tools, like strategic plan, bench-
marking, and mission statements, are as
popular and effective as ever,” Rigby said.
As in past years, survey respondents
overwhelmingly agreed that most man-
agement tools promise more than they
deliver. Some of that disappointment
stems from the tools’ misapplication, said
Rigby. “Tools are not intrinsically good or
bad, they’re just intended for specific pur-
poses. Hammers are good for hitting
nails but bad for trimming hedges.”
Managers may also fail to custom-
ize the tool to their needs, said Hans
Thamhain, a management professor at
Bentley College, in Waltham, Mass. (and
the 2000 recipient of the IEEE Engi-
neering Management Society’s Engi-
neering Manager of the Year Award). A
longtime consultant to the pharmaceuti-
cal and computer industries, he has
observed that “few tools are plug and play.
But companies aren’t always willing to
pay the full price of inte-
grating the tool into the
enterprise.”
Involve the employee
That means, in particu-
lar, considering how a
tool will affect employ-
ees. For example, much
of the dissatisfaction with
customer relationship
management, said Rigby,
occurred in companies
that spent tens of mil-
lions on new technology without asking
employees what they would find most
helpful. “It’s not just a matter of pushing
the tool from the top, it’s getting the
entire organization to adapt it and make
it work in their environment,” he said.
Garrison Greenwood, a computer en-
gineering professor at Portland State Uni-
versity, in Oregon, agreed. Before mov-
ing from industry to academia seven years
ago, he decided to sum up how he and his
nonmanagement co-workers viewed the
state of engineering management. At the
1994 IEEE International Engineering
Management Conference, he recounted
the Dilbertian events at one department
PHOTO: FPG INTERNATIONAL; COLLAGE: ARMAND VENEZIANO
he worked in. Without being consulted,
project engineers were issued software
and instructed to begin generating
assorted charts, project schedules, and
task assignments.
The unhappy result was that the engi-
neers wound up spending much of the
workweek updating their charts and
schedules rather than directing the activ-
ities of their staff, said Greenwood. He
still hears from industry engineers who
encounter the same goings-on where they
work. “The terminology may be different
now, but the situation still exists.”
Expect a hard adjustment
Despite the difficulties associated with
using tools, 7 out of 10 of those Bain sur-
veyed believed they should stay on the
cutting edge of tools. But avoid the fleet-
ing fad, Rigby cautioned. “By whipsawing
from one management fad to another,
managers cause more damage to an
organization than they imagine,” he said.
“People get so fatigued and so cynical that
even when an effective tool is introduced,
they may reject it. Management has to be
very selective about what they endorse.”
Indeed, Thamhain pointed out, man-
agers should bear in mind that any prod-
uct development effort will disrupt the
organization, as people strive toward a
common end. “You need conflict reso-
lution mechanisms, like open door poli-
cies, task groups, meetings,” he said.
Ignoring the warning signs of con-
flict may lead to exactly the opposite of
the intended outcome—higher costs,
more mistakes, longer time to market,
added Thamhain. Likewise, employee
reactions can range from simple foot-
dragging to all-out sabotage. But even
when every effort to prepare employees
and select the proper tool has been
made, he warned, “there’s no guarantee
that something will work.”
Learn from the engineer
Portland State’s Greenwood suggested
that managers do what design engineers
do when, say, selecting a piece of test
equipment. “Before you commit to a par-
ticular tool, you need to get the people
who will use it involved, identify the prob-
lem, and identify the features of the tool
you want,” he said. “Then you go out and
find the tool that matches your need.”
Allotting the tool a trial period is also
important. “Come back, say, six months
later and see if it does what you wanted,”
he said. “If not, get rid of it!”
Indeed, managers could learn a lot
from engineering methods, argued David
J. Wells, an industrial engineering pro-
fessor at the University of Houston in
Texas and editor of the IEEE Engineering
Management Review. Several factors drive
strategic management in industry, said
Wells. “It’s becoming increasingly com-
plex; the use of technology means deci-
sions need to be made more quickly; and
because of competition, companies need
to be more reliable, more predictable, and
more efficient at every stage of the oper-
ation. Those three things—complexity,
speed, and a low margin of error—are
really the definition of an engineering
environment.” There’s a ripe opportunity
for engineers to reformulate their tools
for a broader setting, Wells argued.
Rigby added that because of the
intensely competitive environment in
which engineers often operate, “they do
gain more experience in a shorter period
of time than people in other functions or
companies. That kind of learning should
be shared.” •
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• August 2001
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 RESOURCESCAREERS

On Vacation Around the World

I
n much of the industrialized world, the proliferation of cell phones, pagers, an extra 4 to 10 weeks of paid leave after,
August augurs vacation. But, as the and laptops has bred “the expectation that say, 5 to 10 years on the job. Also becom-
table shows, workers in Europe en- you’re always going to be in touch.” ing popular are vacation bonuses, which
joy two to three times as many days On the other hand, 1 in 20 U.S. com- add a few weeks off on top of regular
off as do U.S. workers.
According to Hewitt Associates LLC, a
panies now offers sabbaticals, typically vacation. —J.K. •
management consulting firm in Lin- Mandated Time-off After One Year on the Job
colnshire, Ill., that’s because U.S. law does
Country Vacation days Country Vacation days
not mandate vacation time, and at most
Denmark a 31 Belgium
companies, years of service are the deter-
Austria a Ireland
mining factor. Put another way, to match 30
Finland The Netherlands 20
her Danish counterpart, a U.S. engineer
will need to stay on the job for 15 years. Norway a 27 Switzerland
Hewitt consultant Jon Van Cleve notes France a UK
25
that U.S. workers are more keenly aware Sweden Colombia
15
of such time-off rules because they are Germany 24 New Zealand
changing jobs more often, which means Brazil b Canada
accruing vacation time from scratch. 22
Spain b Japan 10
What’s more, many workers don’t or Australia 20 United Statesc
can’t take all the days off due them. “Peo- Mexico 6
ple may be afraid that if they’re gone too aBased on a six-day work week. b Thirty total calendar days.cNo statutory minimum—96 percent of
employers offer at least 10 working days off (2000 data). Source: Hewitt Associates LLC (2001 data)
long, it’ll look bad,” said Van Cleve. And
• August 2001
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