Evidence-based management entails the use of scientific facts, experiments, or research works that are relevant and current in the decision making process. It has been used in the medical fields to come up with remedies for various chronic illnesses, but unfortunately very few percentages of doctors and physicians utilize this in their decision-making process which encourages intensive scientific research and innovations.
This behavior is also exemplified by many business personnels and managers in their business fields. They tend to cling onto their normal routine, tradition and old practices instead of venturing more in innovation and incorporating new insights and technology from other sectors that will boost the company’s productivity.
Importing of new ideas also requires thorough analysis and professionalism as it may backfire if not properly implemented and managed.
The implementation and actualization of the evidence-based management in an organization always proves to be a tall order because first, there is too much information from publications, newspapers and internet about business management and other related issues that may end up confusing the managers all the more, the information provided mostly contain a lot of theories with very little vital business concepts being addressed.
Some provide vague information which does not apply in the ideal business situation, the person offering the data may also be an unqualified business adviser or consultant who is out to make money hence misleading the managers.
Both physicians and business personnel tend to follow trends in the market and try to emulate or copy business strategies of the leading firms in the market. They use them as their benchmark and try to align their businesses to the top performers in the market.
This limits their growth and innovation potential as they are entirely relying on other companies’ creations and innovations, another concern is that the business strategy used by one company may not have the same impact on another because of difference in organizational structures and general management system.
In the course of imitating the big firms, they will also be moving on with other innovations and technological changes hence they will never catch up with them.
In the process of implementing good decision making, some managers opted to use forced ranking of their employees as a way of encouraging them to increase their performance at work.
They grouped them into top, middle and low performers with top performers being rewarded awesomely while low performers encouraged to work harder or discontinued from work. This system did not produce the expected results hence evidence-based management remained to be the most reliable approach.
In my opinion, a leader in an organization ought to be very proactive and act as the driving force towards the implementation of evidence-based management approach. It takes commitment and hard work to change the tradition and the standard working approach in an organization.
One will have to motivate his or her employees and instill in them the new cultural norm of using facts from literature and other relevant sources to carry out new research works and experiments. Employees need to be creative and curious to discover new business models that will enable the company to thrive and be ahead of the pack.
For all business managers who wish to impact on their company’s productivity ought to be ready to step out of the normal company tradition and venture more into the unexploited fields to come up with better ways of solving problems in the firm and be established in the market and these are some of the lessons that future managers must learn and implement to realize more returns and high productivity.