Jeffrey Pfeffer and Bob Sutton’s New Book: Hard Facts

Jeffrey Pfeffer and Bob Sutton, authors of the book “The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action” (which I thought was a great book) has just released his new book “Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management“. The book has received a lot of attention from respected sources on the web. I first heard about the book, from a podcast by Dr. Moria Gunn, who interviewed the book’s authors on IT Conversations. Then Tom Peters interviewed the authors and published the interview on his website. Business Week also reviewed the book in their article “Forget Going With Your Gut” stating that:

The book is a rarity on the crowded management shelf. Unlike many such volumes, it offers no quick-fix, hype-heavy solutions from self-anointed gurus. At a time when intuition is on the ascent, thanks in part to Malcolm Gladwell and his best-selling Blink, Hard Facts is a useful reminder that the gut is often trumped by the facts. The book’s deconstruction of some of the most widely applied management truisms and fads is thought-provoking but will leave some managers, especially those in metrics-driven cultures, unsatisfied.

The Stanford Graduate School of Business, has a video interview with the authors and can be viewed here. In addition, Bob Sutton has released a manifesto on ChangeThis, titled “Management Advice: Which 90% is Crap?” with some guidelines for identifying misguided management advice, his guidelines are:

• Treat old ideas as if they are old ideas
• Be suspicious of breakthrough ideas and studies
• What are the incentives for the people who are selling you the idea?
• Are they telling you that “all the best companies” or “most of the fortune 500” do it?
• Does it seem to obvious

The book seems to be something every leader and manager should have on their “to read” list, it’s definitely on mine.

Technorati Tags: Book, Leadership, Management, Tom Peters, Podcast

Related posts:

1. Support for Evidence-Based Management…
2. Book Review: The Leader’s Voice
3. Bob Sutton on leadership vs management
4. Free Book Summaries from WikiSummaries
5. How to Read and Digest a Book!

Tagged as: Book Reviews