Stop Spending, Start Managing

Stop Wasting Precious Time and MoneyYou have a complex problem at work, and you know the standard solutions: hire a consultant, enlist a superstar employee, have more meetings about it. In short, spend money and hours to dig your way out. But you’ve been down this road before—the so-called solution consumes your time, dollars, and resources, and yet the problem still reappears.There is a way out of this cycle. Organizational researchers Tanya Menon and Leigh Thompson, experts in collaboration and creativity, identify five spending traps that lead to this wasteful “action without traction”:The Expertise Trap: recycling old solutions on current problemsThe Winner’s Trap: investing additional resources into failing projectsThe Agreement Trap: avoiding conflict to feel like a team playerThe Communication Trap: communicating too frequently over too many channelsThe Macromanagement Trap: assuming your employees don’t need your directionMenon and Thompson combine their own research with other findings in psychology to provide strategies to break these unproductive habits and refine your skills as a manager. From shaping problems in new ways and learning from failure through experimentation, to stimulating productive conflict and structuring coordinated conversations, you can escape these traps and discover the value hidden in your organization—without spending a dime.