Stop Spending, Start Managing: Strategies to Transform Wasteful Habits

Stop Wasting Precious Time and Money

You 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 problems
The Winner’s Trap: investing additional resources into failing projects
The Agreement Trap: avoiding conflict to feel like a team player
The Communication Trap: communicating too frequently over too many channels
The Macromanagement Trap: assuming your employees don’t need your direction

Menon 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.

Tanya Menon is an associate professor at Fisher College of Business, Ohio State University. She is also an associate editor at Management Science, and her research considers how people in organizations collaborate.

Leigh Thompson is the J. Jay Gerber Distinguished Professor of Dispute Resolution & Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Thompson has authored several books, including Creative Conspiracy and The Truth About Negotiations.