The old wisdom behind management trends

Every few months, a new management concept arrives. It’s a long list: agile, design thinking, disruptive innovation, customer centricity, ecosystems, stakeholder capitalism, lean management, platform strategy, transformational leadership, ESG and now all things artificial intelligence (AI). Like a clip on TikTok, each new idea is catchy, almost too seductive.

But the inconvenient question is: How much of business thinking is genuinely new? Is much of modern management really old wine in new bottles?

Strategy is not a plan

A plan is not a strategy. Today, most managers confuse [relatively easy] planning with creating [a usually tricky] strategy. Not realising that planning and strategy, though usually lumped together are two different things. Strangely, ancient practitioners of strategy intuitively knew they were not the same.

Lawrence Freedman’s classic tome, Strategy – A History covers the practice of strategy almost from the beginning of time, up to our high tech age. Lesson learned is that the idea of the master strategist is a bit of a myth, as is having a decisive victory that lasts. At best, history shows strategy gives one a temporary advantage.

In 331 BC, a 21-year old Alexander the Great with a force of 50,000 did not defeat Darius with an army of one million with just a plan. Alexander had a distinctive insight that others missed, and carried out his strategy in a unique way.

Sun Tzu, more than 2,000 years ago writing in The Art of War understood something that many managers still struggle with. You do not have to beat your competitor at everything. You just have to find the conditions under which you can win.

Agile is ancient

Current wisdom is that the world is too uncertain for detailed long-term plans. Instead, organisations should experiment, learn quickly, respond to feedback and adapt. Silicon Valley made this fashionable, but uncertainty did not begin with the internet.

Military commanders have always known that carefully prepared plans can collapse when reality intervenes.

“Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the mouth,” advised Mike Tyson. Entrepreneurs, farmers and parents all know it.

Agile idea is brutally simple: act – observe – learn – adapt. This is our default programming survival mechanism. What is different today is that digital tech allows organisations to perform this cycle extraordinarily quickly.

Toyota didn't invent frugality

Frugality is one of the three characteristics of good management, according to The Economist. Frugality does not mean being cheap and stingy in an Oliver Twist, Dickensian like way. It means being economical with resources. Lavish spending on shinny corporate bling is a flashing red light warning signal.

Practicing lean management, Toyota became famous for eliminating waste, improving processes and focusing resources on activities that create value.

But the underlying idea is hardly new. Every successful farmer who avoided wasting seed, every craftsman who avoided wasting materials and every merchant who protected scarce capital was practicing an older form of lean management. Toyota did not invent the idea of avoiding waste, it just turned it into a disciplined organisational system.

Retailer Walmart, with $680 billion in revenues and five percent growth in 2025 is famous for following founder Sam Walton’s frugal philosophy. Managers are expected to treat every corporate or store dollar as sacred, finding ways to reduce waste and optimise margins.

With a lean 5-tier management structure -- from the CEO to shop assistant who joined yesterday -- senior executives fly economy and take out their own trash.

Platform thinking

Goodbye linear ‘bricks and mortar’ business models. Platforms are the favoured operating model for seven of the world's 12 largest corporations, according McKinsey.

The use of hubs in design in the flow of information, goods and services has been in existence since Roman times, more than 2,000 years ago. Like hubs, platforms have been in existence for millennia. For example, a local village market, is a ‘platform’ bringing together buyers and sellers.

In 2026, a majority of the most valuable global enterprises rely on digital communities, networks, and marketplaces rather than traditional linear pipelines. In just over the last 15 plus years, the idea of a platform has changed radically. Thanks to ICT increases in processing and storage capacity, platforms are a disruptive innovation game changer that has transformed companies and industry sectors.

An example of this disruptive innovation in Kenya would be M-Pesa and globally, the introduction of platforms like, for instance, Amazon, Google, Uber, Facebook, Airbnb that have changed the face of how we do business forever.

For instance, Airbnb that just started in mid 2008 sold more rooms last year than Hilton that has been in business for 100 years. [Yet, it does not own any properties.] Platforms represent a radical shift in business models, simply bringing together buyers and sellers.

What is actually wrong here?

What is the root cause problem? - may be the most important question a manager can ask. If the underlying problem is poor management, no amount of agile methodology will fix it.

Without a competitive advantage, another strategic planning retreat will not manufacture one. Chasing these ideas may define your career.

David J. Abbott is a director at aCatalyst Consulting. [email protected]