Evidence-Based Management

 

Take the book Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense for a spin if you get the chance.  The authors debunk a half-dozen established business "half-truths" that are often taken as absolute truths and applied in an absolute & blind fashion, often resulting in organizational damage rather than in increased performance.  They debunk these half-truths with evidence and use them as examples as to how organizational leaders and consultants might do a better job of sorting through concepts to find those that will work best for their organizations and for which there is a sound basis of information.  The authors suggest that there aren't any easy answers, in general we want to hear goods news rather than bad and that fixing things is hard work (which echoes my general experience) but they also provide insight into human and organizational cognition.  This insight is high leverage information as understanding the cognitive process, and the natural biases it brings, is part and parcel of making beter decisions.