Light bulb moment for neglected ‘idea practitioners’ – Companies need to support them to be successful

After 20 years as a management consultant (McKinsey, Accenture) and business school professor (University of Texas, Babson), Thomas Davenport recognizes the type: the manager who adopts new business ideas and tries to launch them inside his or her company.

By D.C. Denison, Globe Staff

”I realized that it was always the same people who were advancing new business approaches at the companies,” Davenport said last week over lunch. ”It didn’t matter whether the idea was `reengineering’ or `knowledge management,’ they were constantly pushing new approaches within their firms.”

”Ideas practitioners” was the name Davenport and fellow consultant/academic Laurence Prusak coined to describe this group, and their new book, ”What’s the Big Idea?” written with H. James Wilson and published by Harvard Business School Press, is the first attempt to describe the workings of this overlooked subculture.

”It’s a whole class of people who have never been discussed,” Davenport said.

One reason for the neglect: high-profile business gurus — like Michael Porter, Tom Peters, Peter Drucker, and Michael Hammer — get all the attention.

Yet Davenport contends that the big ideas promulgated by these gurus wouldn’t go far without the advocacy of the idea practitioners who attempt to make these ambitious concepts real.

Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, is the modern image of the idea practitioner. During his tenure at the top of GE he aggressively pushed new approaches like ”boundarylessness,” Six Sigma, and ”digitization.” Welch also built GE’s management training center in Crotonville, N.Y., into an ”idea central.”

Yet, surprisingly, Davenport said that Welch is almost an exception to the rule. Most idea practitioners are not on a fast track to the corner office.

”In fact we interviewed several idea practitioners who told us, `I would have probably done better within the company if I had abandoned these ideas and focused on power and responsibility.’ ” Davenport said. ”But many of these people can’t help themselves. They tend to gravitate to the jobs that have more intellectual content.”

This doesn’t mean that these practitioners are naive enthusiasts.

”You have to be pretty nimble to know which ideas are on their way up and which are heading down,” Davenport said. ”Also it’s important to be able to modify and adapt these new ideas so that they work in the company.”

Idea practitioners must also counter the very real suspicion that new management ideas are simply shallow fads, or self-serving hot air from ambitious gurus.

”New management ideas are almost always variations on three classic themes: efficiency, effectiveness, and innovation,” Davenport said. ”In most cases there’s really nothing faddish about them. It’s the way that organizations use them that can be faddish. . . . Idea practitioners have to be able to execute the ideas effectively, and they need to have the credibility to make things happen.”

Idea practitioners are also good for companies, even if some of the concepts flop. Davenport says he can often tell which firms have resident idea practitioners and which don’t.

”When the top people at companies, and the middle managers, don’t read anything and there aren’t ideas around, there’s no vitality, no excitement,” he said. ”Every company needs a steady influx of new ideas to remain competitive.”

Of course it’s often difficult to measure the benefits of new management ideas, to separate bad ideas from good ideas executed badly. But Davenport said a number of studies have shown that companies that encourage new management concepts benefit from better perceived business performance, which results in higher stock prices, more interest from investors, and improved morale.

Davenport compared the current perception of McDonald’s and Burger King to the way that more forward-looking companies like Panera Bread and Krispy Kreme are regarded. He also cited failing Kmart versus surging Wal-Mart, ”effectively dead” Westinghouse versus sprawling General Electric.

Even the cement industry yields some relevant examples, Davenport said. Two companies, Cemex in Mexico and Holcim in Switzerland, have pulled away from the rest of the industry by virtue of their dynamic idea-driven corporate culture.

You don’t even have to be a true believer in the power of management ideas to appreciate their value, Davenport said, because we are now living amid an explosion of management ideas, spurred by the economic boom of the late 1990s.

”You can either handle them passively and badly, or you can learn the skills of figuring out which one of these work best in your organization: which ones you should support and which ones you should take a pass on,” he said.

So even those who are inclined to be cynical about the parade of management concepts should now pay attention to the ideas and the idea practitioners.

”Dealing with the steady influx of new ideas, one way or the other, is now an integral part of business life,” Davenport said.

D.C. Denison can be reached at [email protected].

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

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