Many of them work well for awhile, he says, but eventually the euphoria gives way to reality. Now it's Total Quality Management, continuous improvement. Thirty years ago it was management by objectives. In the '70s it was job enrichment, participatory management. They keep coming around promising to solve all your problems.
Dysfunctions are perennial, and the tendency for organizations to screw up is perennial.
Thus the need for troubleshooting. Though it focuses on the negative, it can do as much good for your company as all your efforts toward optimization, Nelson believes. The book, which includes companion software, amounts to a diagnostic tool kit. It gathers together techniques for analyzing how businesses work and pinpointing where problems are occurring, or where they're likely to crop up. Case studies illustrate the material.