Image from HVargas (Creative Commons License)
Managers seem to be more reluctant to make of use tools even before the current economic crisis emerged. According to the most recent survey of Bain & Company none out of 25 tools which are relevant to senior management, topical, and measurable showed an increased usage pattern in 2008. The interesting fact, though, is that this obvious result is not even reflected in the survey report.
“Knowledge Management” still belongs to the management tools with a high satisfaction rate. However, the latest reference mentioned dates back to 2006. Five tools have been added in 2008:
Decision Rights Tools
Downsizing
Online Communities
Price Optimization Models
Voice of the Customer Innovation

Fredmund Malik promotes and applies the method Syntegration, which hearkens back to Stafford Beer. As far as I understand (I haven’t yet participated in a Syntegration workshop) the advantage of such a workshop is that it allows a group of people to discuss important topics very effectively, with the aim of finding a decision and coming to a consensus.
The course of actions is as follows:

• The participants are persons who are strongly involved in and affected by the solution of the key problem.
• The key problem is partitioned into topics within half a day. These topics are then discussed in teams.
• Five people review one topic over one hour. The topics are addressed in parallel or consecutively.
• Every topic is treated in three cycles (as-is state, target state, measures).
• Every participant takes on either the role of team member, slasher or observator when discussing a topic.
• The method makes great demands on the facilitators (six facilitators are necessary to deal with twelve topics, for six topics about four facilitators are required).
• A syntegration workshop costs between 30-60,0000 Euros.

Field reports about syntegration are rare (see blog of the Computerwoche magazine). The magazine Computerwoche has promoted the application of the syntegration method, with articles referring to Syntegration workshops used to help develop the IT strategy of the City of Zurich (Switzerland), as well as the business strategy of a medium-sized IT-company, and the strategy for the Swiss Pro-Football Team. Computerwoche also offers a description of the Syntegration method (all articles are in German).