Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense

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Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense is subtitled “Profiting from evidence-based management”, and the book is focussed on providing as many examples and case studies in this area as it can—all aimed to convince you that you should manage your business by the actual information you have to hand and not from what looks to be working at your competitors or other companies.

Authors Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton write in the preface that this form of management has already taken hold in medicine: the concept that “solid research” should be behind the decisions made by physicians. So why isn’t the basis for decision making in business? A key factor is due to the fact that the whole organisation must be committed to data to drive decisions and completely changing a corporate culture can be difficult. This is particularly true when conventional wisdom and “this is what worked in the past” thinking generally permeates business.

For example, why not just copy what your competitors are doing work? The answer given by Pfeffer and Sutton is that there is one aspect of a company that is impossible to duplicate: its employees. The example given is in the airline industry, where many companies have attempted to emulate Southwest’s tactics but have been singularly unable to emulate Southwest’s success.

The last chapter in the book provides nine tips on how best to integrate this management style in your company, encouraging you to take the time to reflect on your industry and business. Of course, one of the pre-requisites for being able to run your company on data is the ability to actually collect data about your business. Given the number of companies that rely on computers now, however, there should be plenty of opportunity to generate appropriate information for a majority of businesses. This book is an excellent introduction to the science of business, and I recommend it to you if you’re interested in moving one step ahead of your competitors.