Tried and Attested: Rob Briner on Evidence-Based Management

Professor and Organizational Psychologist Rob Briner from the University of London (Pictured to the left) has a great interview in People Management  this month called "Tried and Attested."   He is an articulate and compelling guy; take this quote:

"Management fads are attractive, as they promise to deliver a lot and do it fast. The alternative approach of a careful, sober, systematic consideration of the problem, potential solutions and the evidence can seem, in contrast, both boring and too slow. From the snake-oil salesman or quack to sub-prime loans and fad diets, we show a strong preference for the quick fix. On the other hand, if it seems too good to be true, then it probably is. Empowerment, TQM, excellence, downsizing, emotional intelligence, business process re-engineering and, my current personal favourite, talent management, are just some of the fads that have been rapidly adopted and, as many observers have argued, probably done more harm than good. Fads and fashions are also confusing to managers because they offer completely contradictory advice."

He is singing my tune. I believe strongly in creativity and experimenting with new ideas, but I get very skeptical when someone claims that some new idea – or even an old one – will solve all your organization’s problems. And I am especially skeptical of breakthrough ideas.  One of the most interesting parts of writing Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense with Jeff Pfeffer (which took about five years) was our long and unsuccessful search for breakthrough management ideas.  The best summary of why people claim to have breakthrough business ideas probably came from Stanford Professor Emeritus James March (probably the most prestigious living organizational theorist). When I wrote him and asked if he could think of any breakthrough management ideas, he wrote back that “most claims of originality are testimony to ignorance and most claims of magic are testimony to hubris.”

Indeed, it is interesting that one management book after another seems claims to have a breakthrough idea, while one Nobel Prize winner after another (we read a lot of their acceptance speeches when working on the book) is careful to show that his or her ideas are simply a careful extension of prior work completed by others.

The comment from March (plus my unfortunate experience in academia and business where mediocre scholars and business gurus are constantly claiming that they deserve credit for ideas that have been around for decades) led me to propose Sutton’s Law: “If you think that you have a new idea, you are wrong. Someone probably already had it. This idea isn’t original either; I stole it from someone else.”

P.S. We've got more of Rob's work posted at www.evidence-basedmanagement.com, including a quiz to  help determine "how evidence-based are you?"

Comments

[ShaunKieran]

Just to be a bit of a contrarian, I’m currently feeling in a benign mood toward the hundreds of supposedly innovative management ideas. (That may not be true tomorrow.)

I suspect the more extravagant claims are made by the publishers, not the authors. Most reasonably intelligent people know the books aren’t really saying anything new, but they’re looking for stimulation, validation, some sort of paradigm shift - above all, some energy for moving forward.

It seems to be common that if you manage to find a good focus for yourself – from reading a book, or going to a training – it amps up your efforts, and might even be contagious. For awhile. Then, of course, it’s back to the relentless human condition – the humans “out there,” and most obviously, oneself.

[Jan]

Sometimes I think of Management as navigating a sailboat. Metaphors are always tricky, as they can lead your thinking in the wrong direction, but this is how I think. You want to sail from A to B, and there are any number of ways you can do this. You assess the situation, in this case the weather, the boat and the crew, and make an overall decision. We can go for the open sea, which means high speed and rough sea, or we can go closer to the shore, which is safer but with lower speed. Going too close to the shore can be dangerous too, as you can run aground. Your past experience will tell you what to do, and what your capabilities are. These strategic decisions will determine the outcome in large, although many more things can go wrong during the journey.