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By Richard Puyt, on August 26th, 2010
 The book Fooled by Randomness is not new. But, since Denise and I discussed randomness, I thought it would be nice to give a quick recap of the book, in order to the discussion up to speed. The key message in the book comes down to this. ‘Randomness plays a bigger part in our lives then we would like to acknowledge‘. If you read the book you’ll often smile (or not…, if your on the receiving end of his fury). Taleb constantly pounds on self deceit, half truths, sloppy reasoning, prejudice and limited knowledge on the part of humans. What often looks like skill is often plain old luck.
Continue reading Fooled by Randomness
By Denise Rousseau, on August 25th, 2010
 In this blog, I going to be writing about the process of getting ready to teach two courses in different parts of my university, each course entitled “Evidence-Based Management.” One course is in Carnegie Mellon’s business school (Tepper) and the other in our public policy, management, and information college (Heinz).
I’ve piloted course materials at Tepper twice before. Now I want to revamp the Tepper b-school class based on what I have learned. And, I want to create a comparable but not identical course targeted to the Heinz public policy students who have more social science preparation than the typical business student.
Continue reading Getting Ready to Teach an Ebmgt Class
By Richard Puyt, on August 25th, 2010
 The recent post by Tracy Allison Altman showed that the title of a book is often misleading. She showed that the word ‘evidence-based’ becomes meaningless if three books with this term in the title deal with totally different subjects. It appears that the ‘evidence-based approach’ starts to become the flavor of the month. Just yesterday I discovered a book called Management: an evidence-based approach. But how can you tell what it really is about? Especially if these books are quite expensive. Well, if you an editor you can order a copy for appraisal from the publisher, but that is not enough for the rest of us. What are actually some agreed upon metrics?
Continue reading Appraising ‘evidence-based’ books?
By Anthony Kovner, on August 17th, 2010
 Should Sally slowly build her case for evidence-based management or does she need to take a more aggressive approach?
This is a cross post from an earlier contribution to the Harvard Business Review blog in March 2010, in anticipation of a fictional case study on evidence-based management in health care, with expert commentaries.
Sally Randolph rose from her swivel chair and walked over to the Norman Rockwell print hanging on her wall. A remnant from the days when she and Mark Wiley worked together as resident physicians, it showed a concerned young girl holding up her doll to a white-haired doctor, who was kindly “listening” to its heart. She loved this image and what it stood for: medicine focused on people. Mark had caught a glimpse of the print in her locker, and back then he had liked it. She wondered what he’d think of it now. They both still worked at American Medical Center, a $2 billion institution with one thousand beds and a $2 billion budget, but Mark was now CEO and Sally chief medical officer. The image of the e-mail he’d just sent— marked urgent with a red exclamation point and the subject line “Evidence-Based-Management Seminar Canceled” — blurred her vision. Apparently the focus for Mark had shifted to profits.
Continue reading What more evidence do you need?
By Richard Puyt, on August 13th, 2010
 We now have course material from the post graduate course on evidence-based management available for you to use in your own classrooms or at work. The course has been designed by Eric Barends from the Vrije Universiteit van Amsterdam. To download the course material, please click here.
By Richard Puyt, on August 11th, 2010
 For all practitioners who can’t wait to read the new handbook on Evidence-based Management, there is good news. The draft chapters (which are currently available), can be downloaded for review on this site. We welcome suggestions and comments, which you can leave in the mail form at the bottom of the page. The draft versions of the chapters are periodically updated and new additions will be posted as soon as they become available.
By Richard Puyt, on August 7th, 2010
 Yesterday the first PDW (Professional Development Workshop) on Evidence-Based Management as a new way to teaching the practice of management was held at the annual Academy of Management. Judging from the amount of people who showed up (almost 50) and the novelty of the topic, we think it was a huge success. In the audience we found many teachers, researchers and even a few managers. A lot of participants showed interest in the syllabus on teaching evidence-based management, so we’ll put it up on the website for you to download and use in your classes. We made some video’s which will be put up later on the website. If you click on the AoM button of the site, you can find the presentations.
By Tracy Allison Altman, on July 20th, 2010
 [This is a cross-post from Evidence Soup (not all graphics are included here).] Today we’re looking at three books on “evidence-based ____” , each concerning management in the public or private sector. Together, they demonstrate the wide range of possibilities for evidence-based action. But they also illustrate why it’s difficult for people to point to something and say “Now I see what this EB stuff is all about!”
Continue reading Is “evidence-based” meaningless? Three books illustrate the dilemma of using this terminology.
By Denise Rousseau, on June 14th, 2010
 Six steps are the basic building blocks in becoming an evidence-based manager. These steps are basic elements in our Evidence-based management courses. Evidence-based management is a decision-making process. Its decisions follow a well-established process and integrate the best available information from science, your organization and its stakeholders, and your expertise. It means actively managing your professional decisions and on-going attention to the information you use to make them.
Continue reading Six Steps To Becoming An Evidence-based Manager
By Richard Puyt, on June 6th, 2010
 Last week most of the authors from the upcoming Handbook of Evidence-Based Management: Companies, Classrooms and Research gathered at Carnegie Mellon University. The handbook will be published by Oxford University Press next year. Most of the authors already knew each other and some new people joined in as well. It was a very intense meeting presided by our host and chief editor, professor Denise Rousseau. Everybody was asked to give a summary of another author’s draft article and help to facilitate the feedback for improvements. This blog was also introduced at the meeting and as of today we have 20 new authors. In the course of this week, a few new additions will be made to the site. We trust the authors will start writing posts to engage us in the development of the evidence-based management practice. The goal of this blog is to engage managers and consultants in the application of evidence-based management in everyday life. Ideas, suggestions or comments are welcome. Registration is free.
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The book Fooled by Randomness is not new. But, since Denise and I discussed randomness, I thought it would be nice to give a quick recap of the book, in order to the discussion up to speed. The key message in the book comes down to this. ‘Randomness plays a bigger part in our lives then we would like to acknowledge‘. If you read the book you’ll often smile (or not…, if your on the receiving end of his fury). Taleb constantly pounds on self deceit, half truths, sloppy reasoning, prejudice and limited knowledge on the part of humans. What often looks like skill is often plain old luck.
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