I don’t want to pick a fight with Steven Covey, Peter Drucker or Jim Collins, but I do wonder why corporations are addicted to management fads or packaged paradigms that promise to move their companies from good to great.

Supposedly our country has some of the best business minds in the world working day to day within their respective companies on business best practices. If so, why are their companies buying so many off the shelf recipes for success?

It’s not that the great management fads haven’t been productive. From Management by Objectives to Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, JIT and Total Quality Management, all of the popular paradigms are useful. Each can provide ways of working with and through issues that improve productivity and quality but none is a panacea or formula that will make any company shine.

What executives may be overlooking is that all of these fads are really examples of marketing phenomena in which intelligent authors have captured the essence of what good managers do everyday and they’ve packaged them up for distribution and general consumption by departments, like the “TQM” departments, that have often adopted their brand names.

Strong executives have always managed their businesses to specific objectives and goals. Really good managers have always pursued lean operations and they were doing so long before “Lean Manufacturing” became a popular consulting product. I would hope that our country’s executive corps has always worked toward incremental and continuing improvements in their product quality and utility, which is basically the heart of “Six Sigma.”

So, what’s new or impressive about each new management paradigm? Not much, really, other than the fact that those who would sell them as manna from heaven have been successful in convincing corporate leaders that good things come in well recognized and popular packages.

My concern is that each one of these may be a substitute for the incisive management thinking that leads to the development of high quality solutions custom designed for their best applications. It’s not enough that we pursue the employment of highly skilled and competent thinkers and problem solvers. We need to displace or supplement their work with something popular. That makes management initiatives similar in some ways to fashion trends. We like to buy brand names even if there are higher quality off-brand labels available. We somehow come to trust others, those who coin a phrase and publish new paradigms, more than we trust our own intelligence and critical thinking skills.

Perhaps we’ve become addicted to easy solutions. Navigating the fundamentals of a business model can be an arduous responsibility. But then, isn’t that why we claim that we are deserving of our substantial compensation? Aren’t we paid to be thinkers, planners and inventors rather than shoppers in the management aisles of paradigm consultants?

Tom Aranow has over 30 years of executive management and entrepreneurial experience. A former CEO himself, Aranow now consults for CEOs and other C-level executives and boards of directors in a variety of industries facing high-level challenges and issues. He regularly provides operational insight, incisive analysis, market analysis and strategic business solutions to resolve complex issues and strengthen bottom lines. Clients include Fortune 500 corporations, medium size businesses, closely held companies and not-for-profit organizations.

He now consults with CEOs and other executives as a Senior Advisor with Grafton-based Harrington Daniels Advisors, LLC. He may be reached at Tom@hdadvisors.com.

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