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2008-05-25 BACK
From the Manager's Bookshelf
From the Manager's Bookshelf This article originally appeared in the Texarkana Gazette on May 25, 2008 By Jim Harbin, Ph.D., Professor of Management, Texas A&M-Texarkana College of Business One has only to walk through the aisles of business books on display at the local book store to be aware of the numerous offerings on the how-to of management or leadership. Although there has been an appetite for such books for decades (in the 1950's, Peter Drucker's The Practice of Management sold two and one-half million copies in Japan alone) the explosion really had it's roots in the early 1980's. Kenneth Blanchard's The One Minute Manager (1982) sold over seven million in seventeen languages. This was followed with the publication in 1983 of another business blockbuster In Search of Excellence: Lessons from American's Best-Run Companies by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman. Several years ago, this book had sold five million+ copies in fifteen languages. This commercial thirst for answers continues today with more offerings from Blanchard (usually with someone else), and books like Good To Great, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and a host of others. There are at least 30,000 business books in print with approximately 3,500 new ones published each year. It seems that everybody who is anybody has a book extolling the virtues of their leadership secrets. Many of these offerings are simple pandering to business leaders' desire for a quick fix. One professor has called this the "era of management by best seller ". It's amazing that what is being sold today as cutting edge was being advocated many years before. One of the latest motivational gurus, James Arthur Ray is selling his positive psychology Harmonic Wealth (for which $60,000 a year gets members VIP access to all things Ray). The power of positive thinking was pitched by Norman Vincent Peale in his 1952 book. Chester Barnard's The Functions of the Executive (1938) promoted what some consider today to be innovative (the development and training of employees is a paramount responsibility of management; pay-for-performance schemes can be dangerous to the health of a company; and management's authority rests in its ability to persuade, rather than to command). Granted, there are more worthy business books than one can read in a lifetime, but there is a lot of management "lite " or "fluff " out there too. Some of these are fun, some are interesting, and some are innocent, but few add value to one's business acumen. Some may even be dangerous. Do you really want to apply leadership techniques gained from Geronimo (The Leadership Teachings of Geronimo) or Tony Soprano (Tony Soprano on Management: Leadership Lessons Inspired by America's Favorite Mobster)? There is also an overabundance of atheoretical, no research back-up, popular literature such as Steven Covey's Seven Habits or Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson. Dr. Peter Drucker even dismissed In Search of Excellence as “a book for juveniles”. I have to admit though that I used a lot of the great stories in that book for my management lectures. Just because someone said it, or it appears in print does not make it the gospel. Just because one person was successful doing it their way, doesn't mean you can duplicate that success in a different situation. One even has to look past the packaging of the current crop of business books. It seems that the business book industry has just learned what the romance novels always knew – covers sell. Bright red (Good To Great), dark black (Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls), and mellow yellow book covers (Happier) generate more sales. Let me share with you a recent management book I found to be both interesting and informative. It didn't make the top ten best-sellers list for business but it should have. In fact, it should be required reading for all business professionals. The book is Hard Facts: Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management (2006). It was written by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton, professors at Stanford University. Dr. Pfeffer is considered to be the leading professor of organizational behavior. The book challenges leaders to commit to evidence-based management as a way of organizational life. The book makes the case that what drives manager's actions are often largely intuitive hunches, management clichés, popular axioms, common sense, passed-on proverbs, or best sellers. All of these should be revisited with a dose of healthy skepticism. Are these things backed up with evidence or supported by the research? The authors interject what research and experience has to say about some common management maxims (myths). Some examples from the book include the idea that financial incentives drive good performance. Too many managers overlook the fact that incentives can inspire bad behavior as well as good, and end up hurting performance more than they help. There is a great story in the book about Hewlett-Packard's failed pay for performance effort. A second maxim/myth from the book is that layoffs are a good way to cut costs. There are few studies, if any, demonstrating that layoffs have a positive effect on company performance. In fact, one noteworthy recent study found that companies that manage to avoid layoffs even in tough financial straits end up better off financially in the long run. One last maxim/myth from the book: that life and work should be kept separate. There is plenty of evidence that companies willing to gray the line between work, family, and play aren't suffering as a result. Take Google for example, selected two years running by Fortune as the number one best company to work for. Southwest Airlines also come to mind. This is a business book that is easy to read, filled with great stories, and contains numerous invaluable lessons to be learned. Two other books that I have found of late to be worthy of consideration would be The 33 Strategies of War (great stories of both personal and organizational strategies using political, military and business examples) and Lee Iacocca's Where Have All the Leaders Gone (one of his thoughts doesn't it strike you as a bit strange that we don't demand that a presidential candidate introduce his/her team before we vote?)
TOP
From the Manager's Bookshelf
From the Manager's Bookshelf This article originally appeared in the Texarkana Gazette on May 25, 2008 By Jim Harbin, Ph.D., Professor of Management, Texas A&M-Texarkana College of Business One has only to walk through the aisles of business books on display at the local book store to be aware of the numerous offerings on the how-to of management or leadership. Although there has been an appetite for such books for decades (in the 1950's, Peter Drucker's The Practice of Management sold two and one-half million copies in Japan alone) the explosion really had it's roots in the early 1980's. Kenneth Blanchard's The One Minute Manager (1982) sold over seven million in seventeen languages. This was followed with the publication in 1983 of another business blockbuster In Search of Excellence: Lessons from American's Best-Run Companies by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman. Several years ago, this book had sold five million+ copies in fifteen languages. This commercial thirst for answers continues today with more offerings from Blanchard (usually with someone else), and books like Good To Great, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and a host of others. There are at least 30,000 business books in print with approximately 3,500 new ones published each year. It seems that everybody who is anybody has a book extolling the virtues of their leadership secrets. Many of these offerings are simple pandering to business leaders' desire for a quick fix. One professor has called this the "era of management by best seller ". It's amazing that what is being sold today as cutting edge was being advocated many years before. One of the latest motivational gurus, James Arthur Ray is selling his positive psychology Harmonic Wealth (for which $60,000 a year gets members VIP access to all things Ray). The power of positive thinking was pitched by Norman Vincent Peale in his 1952 book. Chester Barnard's The Functions of the Executive (1938) promoted what some consider today to be innovative (the development and training of employees is a paramount responsibility of management; pay-for-performance schemes can be dangerous to the health of a company; and management's authority rests in its ability to persuade, rather than to command). Granted, there are more worthy business books than one can read in a lifetime, but there is a lot of management "lite " or "fluff " out there too. Some of these are fun, some are interesting, and some are innocent, but few add value to one's business acumen. Some may even be dangerous. Do you really want to apply leadership techniques gained from Geronimo (The Leadership Teachings of Geronimo) or Tony Soprano (Tony Soprano on Management: Leadership Lessons Inspired by America's Favorite Mobster)? There is also an overabundance of atheoretical, no research back-up, popular literature such as Steven Covey's Seven Habits or Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson. Dr. Peter Drucker even dismissed In Search of Excellence as “a book for juveniles”. I have to admit though that I used a lot of the great stories in that book for my management lectures. Just because someone said it, or it appears in print does not make it the gospel. Just because one person was successful doing it their way, doesn't mean you can duplicate that success in a different situation. One even has to look past the packaging of the current crop of business books. It seems that the business book industry has just learned what the romance novels always knew – covers sell. Bright red (Good To Great), dark black (Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls), and mellow yellow book covers (Happier) generate more sales. Let me share with you a recent management book I found to be both interesting and informative. It didn't make the top ten best-sellers list for business but it should have. In fact, it should be required reading for all business professionals. The book is Hard Facts: Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management (2006). It was written by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton, professors at Stanford University. Dr. Pfeffer is considered to be the leading professor of organizational behavior. The book challenges leaders to commit to evidence-based management as a way of organizational life. The book makes the case that what drives manager's actions are often largely intuitive hunches, management clichés, popular axioms, common sense, passed-on proverbs, or best sellers. All of these should be revisited with a dose of healthy skepticism. Are these things backed up with evidence or supported by the research? The authors interject what research and experience has to say about some common management maxims (myths). Some examples from the book include the idea that financial incentives drive good performance. Too many managers overlook the fact that incentives can inspire bad behavior as well as good, and end up hurting performance more than they help. There is a great story in the book about Hewlett-Packard's failed pay for performance effort. A second maxim/myth from the book is that layoffs are a good way to cut costs. There are few studies, if any, demonstrating that layoffs have a positive effect on company performance. In fact, one noteworthy recent study found that companies that manage to avoid layoffs even in tough financial straits end up better off financially in the long run. One last maxim/myth from the book: that life and work should be kept separate. There is plenty of evidence that companies willing to gray the line between work, family, and play aren't suffering as a result. Take Google for example, selected two years running by Fortune as the number one best company to work for. Southwest Airlines also come to mind. This is a business book that is easy to read, filled with great stories, and contains numerous invaluable lessons to be learned. Two other books that I have found of late to be worthy of consideration would be The 33 Strategies of War (great stories of both personal and organizational strategies using political, military and business examples) and Lee Iacocca's Where Have All the Leaders Gone (one of his thoughts doesn't it strike you as a bit strange that we don't demand that a presidential candidate introduce his/her team before we vote?)
TOP