

The three habits ... of highly irritating management gurus  - yangyang
http://www.economist.com/node/14698784

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raganwald
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.

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Periodic
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.

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swombat
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.

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chris100
_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.

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teej
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.

~~~
chris100
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 :-)

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teej
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.

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loganfrederick
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.

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davidw
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.

~~~
loganfrederick
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.

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cunard-n
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"?

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davidw
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.

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bigwill
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."

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nvn1
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

