A Posted Comment in Reply to/on Bob Sutton from: Good to Great: More Evidence That “Most Claims of Magic are Testimony to Hubris”

There’s a misbegotten conceptual blunder in all this. We think we can reduce the complexity of business acumen and leadership to something that is actually at a much deeper level of both personal and organizational understanding. It’s not that we shouldn’t try to articulate how to improve, but to confuse that with a promise, particularly a scientifically verifiable promise, is simply naive. This is not, to my mind, terribly different than the employee, not doing his/her job, who complains: “just tell me what to do!” And if you can’t tell me, then you are a hoax. So we do the best we can to offer the expertise, and voila, we are found out. We took the bait of hubris.

We skimmed over the section that said there are no absolute answers. We skimmed over the section that said we don’t know. The answer to this MAYBE is a community. One where we talk about the real stuff that’s going on in our firms and in ourselves. Seems like, from time to time, that might create a breakthrough.

Posted by: Dan | January 15, 2009 at 06:31 PM

 
 

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Excerpt(s) from Bob Sutton’s: Good to Great: More Evidence That “Most Claims of Magic are Testimony to Hubris”

the key lessons from this book, and so many others, are:

1. As March implies, there
are no magical leadership or organizational practices that will quickly propel your organization to the top of the heap.  Even the greatest organizations struggle
to stay at the top and are led by fallible people
who make many mistakes.

2. There is no such thing as a single breakthrough study. The best and most valid conclusions and advice are based on a series of studies that have survived the brutal peer review process and that result in a consistent set of findings. In this regard, an interesting contrast is Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick, which is based the weight of the evidence from hundreds of rigorous studies (instead of one that could not survive the peer review process unless the claims were toned way down and the hundreds of past studies that were consistent — and clashed with it — were at least mentioned).  I especially point to Made to Stick, and I would add Influence, because they are so well-written that they show you can combine good scholarship with a great read. 

3. My main objection, in the end, isn’t to the research Collins did — the stories are interesting and I believe that nearly all of the practices that he suggests would make a manager more effective — indeed many if not most are bolstered by more rigorous studies (albeit, even as his research now implies, as signs of competence or even ordinary greatness). My objection is — to use Jim March’s words — the hubris and ignorance about the claims about the rigor of the research and the originality of the ideas.  There are lots of management books, or parts of management books, that are incredibly useful and inspiring, but don’t claim to draw on research.  Orbiting the Giant Hairball is a great example.  Another is Tom Kelley’s masterpiece Art of Innovation. The difference is that these great books don’t make excessive claims – Hairball draws on the author’s personal story and Tom Kelley draws mostly on what he and his colleagues have done at IDEO.

 
 

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