Evidence-based Management Links
We'll update our list of interesting Evidence-based Management-related information that we've been reading reasonably regularly. Please feel free to connect with us to suggest additions.
The Center for Evidence-based Management
The Tragedy of Well Intentioned Organizational Overload
Bob Sutton weighs in with another gem; ‘skilled leaders wield their power to eliminate needless friction and complexity — not to burden employees with “rules, tools, and fools” that make it tougher to do their jobs and that waste money and talent.’
Emotional Intelligence is Overrated
In Joseph and Newman’s comprehensive analysis, cognitive ability accounted for more than 14% of job performance. Emotional intelligence accounted for less than 1%.
Why Some Teams Are Smarter Than Others
Psychologists have known for a century that individuals vary in their cognitive ability. But are some groups, like some people, reliably smarter than others?
What Managers Really Need from Academics
In this sense, Bob Sutton and Jeff Pfeffer's idea of evidence-based management is a useful reality check for managers and academics alike.
Get More Done by Working Fewer Hours
Jeff Sutherland in an excerpt from Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time cites an often used study of the Israeli judiciary.
Decluttering the Company: Economist
Schumpeter relaying and commenting on good BCG and Bain research.
Another gem from our friend Bob Sutton on his blog, referencing the incredible work of Roy Baumeister and colleagues.
From the Archives, 1955: Parkinson's Law: The Economist
Politicians and taxpayers have assumed (with occasional phases of doubt) that a rising total in the number of civil servants must reflect a growing volume of work to be done. Cynics, in questioning this belief, have imagined that the multiplication of officials must have left some of them idle or all of them able to work for shorter hours. But this is a matter in which faith and doubt seem equally misplaced. The fact is that the number of the officials and the quantity of the work to be done are not related to each other at all. The rise in the total of those employed is governed by Parkinson's Law, and would be much the same whether the volume of the work were to increase, diminish or even disappear...more
Why Big Teams Suck: Seven (+/- 2) Is The Magic Number: Bob Sutton
In 1957, British naval historian and management satirist Northcote Parkinson painted a cynical picture of a typical committee: It starts with four or five members, quickly grows to nine or ten, and, once it balloons to 20 and beyond, meetings become an utter waste of time – and all the important work is done before and after meetings by four or five most influential members...more
Big Organizations with Start-Up Speed: Think with Google
Big business is traditionally slow business. Start-ups are small enough to allow nimble changes, but what happens when your business becomes too large to move quickly? Kristen Gil, VP of Business Operations at Google, explains some of the changes we instituted to help us operate at small business speed, even as we grew...more
Evidence-based Decision Making at Cisco: CMS Wire
“If you aren't using evidence to make decisions, then decisions are subjective (rather than objective) and imposed by fiat. The evidence-based approach promises to be more scientific and therefore predictable and reliable.”
Who's Responsible for Employee Engagement?: Bain & Co.
"Encouraging frequent supervisor-team dialogues may sound obvious, yet in reality, it's all too rare. Most senior executive teams preach a gospel of engagement, but they abdicate responsibility to corporate staff, often HR. That delegation is misplaced, as HR is not in a position to take or direct the actions required to affect attitudes at the employee or team level."
Cultivating a Focused Workplace: Daniel Goleman interviewing Teresa Amabile
"To help a person or team stay focused on coming up with the best possible solution, people have to be protected from other agendas. They have to be protected from the necessity to fight fires in the day-by-day crises that come up in other arenas of work. They have to feel that they're on a mission in order to be creative - that's absolutely crucial."
A Bright Spot in the Dark Side of Technology: Vala Afshar
"Businesses will have to adopt a different set of practices and rethink at the most basic level the institutions they have built to figure out how to not only survive, but thrive, in a world where exponential technology will continue to drive uncertainty, rapid change and instability."
Measuring Management: Economist
Taking the Mystery out of Scaling a Company: Ben Horowitz
Why Leadership Development Programs Fail: McKinsey & Co.
Why Your Employees Should Sign Their Work: Jeffrey Pfeffer
Are You Your Employees' Worst Enemy?: Strategy + Business
Night Work Throws Body "Into Chaos": BBC