Wonderful, But Ignored Tools

We had an interesting discussion last evening in a course I'm currently teaching, Health Care Financial Accounting HCS/405, about the volume of wonderful business tools that have been developed at US universities and corporations, written up in prominent and prestigious academic journals and books... and then promptly ignored by practicing managers in the US.

Creating great new ideas and tools is a wonderful thing to be sure... but ignoring and forgetting what we already know and have developed is certainly not!

In our quest for academic credentials, it seems to be an acceptable practice for students to read about a useful concept, perhaps in a textbook, but have little idea about how to utilize and actually implement the idea in actual practice in the workplace.

I have been collecting wonderful, but little used business ideas for decades. Along the way, I have developed a long list of favorites.

Heading the list is a book I picked up at a bookstore in the late '80s called "Techniques of Structured Problem Solving - Second Edition" by Arthur B. VanGundy, Jr.

This book is a goldmine of tools and techniques for problem-solving. It contains 105 battle tested problem-solving techniques - 35 more than appeared in the First Edition.

Perhaps I have been hanging around with the wrong crowd, or reading the wrong materials, but I have never heard of this book, or its author, being mentioned by any practicing manager... or listed in any business reference.

Which is a shame...

What's the point of identifying 105 techniques to resolve your most perplexing problems, if no one takes the time to read... or discuss... the book?

Why bother to invent even more new tools and techniques, if we don't make good use of the ones we already have?

OK, so now it's your turn... what tool or concept would YOU like to nominate as the most wonderful, but largely ignored business tool?