STRATEGY 2 Mission and Vision Statements (70%) Customer Relationship Management (48%) 3 Benchmarking (69%) Benchmarking (46%) 4 Outsourcing (63%) Supply Chain Management (40%) 5 Customer Satisfaction (60%) Advanced Analytics (42%) 6 Growth Strategies (55%) Customer Satisfaction (38%) 7 Strategic Alliances (53%) Change Management Programs (34%) 8 Pay-for-Performance (52%) Total Quality Management (34%) 9 Customer Segmentation (51%) Digital Transformation (32%) 10 Core Competencies (48%) Mission and Vision Statements (32%) I magine medicine without experimentation, or pharmacology without clinical trials. It seems impossible in today’s world. Yet, for most of history, we have relied almost entirely upon unproven, ‘quack’ remedies for the treatment of illness and disease. The story of medicine is the story, in part, of fake cures in which the unwell were persuaded to place their faith. We had bloodletting, leaches, snake oil, lobotomies and much more. For centuries we trusted in physicians, faith healers, shamans, medicine men and other authority figures to decide what was in the best interest of our health. It’s only within the past century or so that we have created a disciplined, experimental approach to answer the fundamental questions posed by any new treatment, drug, or therapy: Will it work? Is it safe? These were the questions that dominated concerns around the Covid-19 vaccines. The answers were provided through imagination, exploration and by impartial, controlled experiments with rigorous analysis of the results. By contrast, management prefers to rely on market signals to judge its performance and on ‘best practice’ to shape its approach. Imagine the answers to the questions above if medicine had Comparison of Bain Management Trends Survey 2000 v 2017 2000 2017 1 Strategic Planning (76%) Strategic Planning (48%)
Modern medicine sets a higher hurdle for its ideas to jump than business does
been dependent upon ‘best practice’ to develop its response to the pandemic. Modern medicine sets a higher hurdle for its ideas to jump than business does. How confident are we that management practices would survive the clinical testing that drugs must pass to be made lawfully available? Is the faith we place in such practices any more rational than that once placed in bloodletting? In 2017, Bain & Company’s Management Tools and Trends Survey found the 10 practices in the table to the right to be most relevant. But 17 years earlier, the rank order was rather different. While digital transformation and economic cycles have influenced such comparisons, for many techniques, there seems to be no reason why their popularity has waxed and waned. Management practice seems to be a product more of fashion and contagion than of evidence and research. By contrast, the knowledge and action that informs medicine or engineering develops gradually, systematically, and cumulatively. With management theory, there does not seem to be the same path of progress and the result is a workplace often ruled as much by tradition as by science. Some business practices will turn out to be effective and valuable, but many will be shown to be overblown, injurious, or mistaken. They are the 21st-century equivalent of ‘quack’ remedies. So, what can business education learn from the evolution of medicine? How can a scientific approach to problem-solving and strategic planning help to navigate the complexities of today’s business world?
Experimentation forces us to make our reasoning explicit
In a typical business plan, how much attention is paid to stating the make-or-break assumptions in a testable format? Is it just a set of numerical targets? In each case, we are relying on rather different success factors, with business regarded as either a test of perspiration and perseverance or one of inspiration and insight. The experimental frame of mind says: ‘Stop asking “what results do we want to achieve?” and “what
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