The three habits ... of highly irritating management gurus | Hacker News Reader

The three habits ... of highly irritating management gurus

economist.com

61 pointsyangyang14 comments

The first and third habits are subjectively irritating. The middle habit, that of using organizations as examples of success without any attempt to perform even a cursory study to back up the conjecture, is demonstrably harmful and objectively wrong.

There's a huge problem with survivor's bias in business analysis. We tend to try to look at all the successful companies and figure out what they all do the same so we can all do it. Rarely does one look at the many more failed companies and look at what they did that the successful companies did not, so that it can be avoided.

A big part of that may be that it's much easier to pick a few successful companies to compare than to find a good sample of the many many more failed or mediocre businesses. Oh, and big names sell better.

Excellently written article. A shorter version of it would be: "the plural of anecdote is not data", or "advice = limited experience + over-generalisation". Applies to Stephen Covey as much as to any blog post.

The second irritating habit is that of naming model firms: while I agree with the author that the firms may not be successful because of the supposed habit, there is one good writing reason why you should use such an approach.

Because leading with an example is more powerful than a vague statement. The average reader will understand better a story like "John at Ford faced the challenge of flat tires and did ..." than some abstract problem description.

It can also backfire on you. The much-hyped "Good to Great" names several model firms as great that are now bankrupt. Would you buy that book now? I certainly won't.

Sure. As long as you understand that the example was one data point in time. I think of it as: "in 1983, John had problem X and found creative solution Y, which worked". It doesn't mean that John's company will be immune forever of business failures. I just try to learn from people's creative ways to approach problems and find smart solutions.

It helps that the same happened in my previous startup. When we were very small, I think we did a couple of great things. Some of those could be used in a business book as examples a smart company.

But a few years later, and 5X more employees, we were quite messed up. Whatever wisdom we had as a small team didn't carry over to the larger organization (I guess you could use this example in reverse in another business book :-)

The core issue at hand is that the authors don't have any real insight into these companies. The article addresses this issue - the authors are taking successful companies and overgeneralizing the specifics to fit the theme of their book.

Not true. While they may be broad, the authors still found common traits of the most historically successful companies. Collins wrote the follow-up "How the Mighty Fall" to then explain why/how they were unable to remain "Built to Last".

The failure of companies mentioned in Good to Great does not necessarily mean Good to Great was wrong; it's possible those companies were no longer following what made them great in the past.

The 'common traits' tend to be awfully vague, and have little predictive value. This is what's important: anyone can write a book in hindsight and extol the virtues of the latest fads, but if they were able to take their traits and make predictions based on them, that would be a little bit more serious than writing another 'management guru' book after the firms have failed.

The point of Built to Last is to be predictive.

I.E. If you follow this formula, along with some luck, you will succeed.

Firms listed in the books that have failed could be countered with the argument that they stopped following the formula for success.

Of course, at the end of one of the books Collins' notes that there are likely to be other predictors of sustainable success they did not recognize.

The thing about lists of habits is that they supply their willing victims with a prima fascia choice: Do as the others do and abandon integrity or ignore me (or us) and stick to what your whole life up to this point has tought you. How does it differ from "monkey see monkey do"?

Dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=903001

I really liked it, in any case. Part of what "Squeezed Books" aims to squeeze is all the bloat from some of the books those guys churn out.

Best single sentence in the article (referring to management gurus rules/habits): "But most of these rules are nothing more than wet fingers in the wind."

Wow, the economist link just gave me a 503 error with a 'Guru Meditation' message. Not something I would have expected from that site. It actually made me chuckle.

Error 503 Service Unavailable

Service Unavailable Guru Meditation:

XID: 1498369715

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