Bain & Company Report on "management approaches and techniques"

Bain & Company has been tracking customers for 12 years to identify
the enduring management approaches, and the results are very surprising.

Top are not the Six Sigmas, LEAN and Total Quality Management approaches
that seem to have been with us forever.

Top since 1996 has been Strategic Management - whatever that means. There is still the perennial problem over converting the strategy intoreality at the working level.

Increasingly all the approaches require Information Technology to implement them. But interestingly Supply Chain projects were considered onlyjust behind Strategic Planning, and way ahead of CRM and ERP.

But a huge shift is that now the business are taking responsibility for implementation rather than the IT department. Not that the business is losing faith with IT - 90% said that they think IT can create significant competitive advantages.

However, the message for CIO's is that they should stop talking techno-babble and playing with new technology, but should start actinglike business leaders - of CIO will stand for "Career Is Over".