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 Progress by the current school of thought of evidence based/informed decision making is slow, but steady. That’s the good news. One thing I’ve learned so far, is that evidence does not speak for itself. Contrary to evidence based medicine, random control tests (the golden standard in research) in management situations are difficult if not impossible. Achieving the highest level of evidence in general has to be ruled out. Evidence has to be appraised, which makes it subjective. It is all about the context, interpretation and the quality of the data. Bob Sutton was also musing on this in his posting on intuition vs. data driven decision making: some rough ideas. Our brains are primed on previous experiences. (That’s why we don’t need all the syllables in a sentence before we interpret what is being conveyed). We humans are pattern seeking animals. This has all kinds of evolutionary benefits (hence intuition, gut feeling, etc.), but also some major drawbacks. To put it mildly, we suck at judging facts. That’s the bad news. Continue reading Context is everything
Last year, I had pleasant email exchanges with Dennis Tourish (University of Kent) and Mark Learmonth (University of Nottingham). Dennis will join in the EBM debate later and Mark still defends his arguments against the emerging evidence based management movement. He also sent me a few articles. Since he published his short paper in ORGANIZATION, he [...]
 Last summer I saw by chance a presentation by dr. Michael Shermer on TED.com (Technology, Entertainment, Design). Shermer presents himself a the founder of the Skeptic society and editor-in-chief of Skeptic Magazine. The Skeptic Society is a non-profit organisation, consisting of academics, scientists, historians, magicians and volunteers who are interested in reseaching and investigating controversial ideas, extraordinary claims, revolutionary ideas and the advancement of science. The mission of the Skeptic Society is to investigate controversial ideas and to reveal pseudo science. Everybody is invited to contribute. As Shermer says in his speech: We are the debunk squad of pseudo, voodoo, junk and bad science.
Continue reading The debunk squad of voodoo science
 In my exploratory search for the state of the art of the evidence based management movement, I stumbled on this short paper by dr. Mark Learmonth, Associate Professor in Organization Theory at the University of Nottingham. This is a must read for all the evidence based management enthusiasts. Maybe not always what you want to hear or read, but definitely food for thought on the freedom of conducting research and the politics which are involved in securing research grants and the pursuit of a academic career. Although, criticizing the EBM proponents by challenging their intellectual credibility does not make his case stronger.
Continue reading Food for thought: Mark Learmonth’s view on evidence-based management
 In an earlier post I pointed out that the science (or art) of management is still in the middle ages, where the alchemists still tell us they can change lead into gold. The underlying problem is that management is (not yet) perceived as a profession. But what is the definition of a profession? This morning I was searching for papers on this subject and found an interesting publication dealing with the same question (Khurana, Nohria, and Penrice; 2005). In order to establish if management is a profession and compare it to professions like law and medicine, these authors choose four criteria.
- a common body of knowledge resting on a well-developed, widely accepted theoretical base;
- a system for certifying that individuals possess such knowledge before being licensed or otherwise allowed to practice;
- a commitment to use specialized knowledge for the public good, and a renunciation of the goal of profit maximization, in return for professional autonomy and monopoly power;
- a code of ethics, with provisions for monitoring individual compliance with the code and a system of sanctions for enforcing it.
Continue reading Is business management a profession?
 In October 2009, I got in touch with Denise Rousseau, professor of Organizational Behaviour the Carnegie Mellon University and one of the figureheads of the emerging ‘Evidence Based Management’ school of thought. She was visiting colleagues in Ireland, but took the time to answer a few of my questions. Jeffrey Pfeffer also replied, but was swamped in his work and preparing to leave the country for an extensive trip abroad. He’ll probably give his point of view later. Bob Sutton hasn’t been in touch yet. Recently I got in touch with another leading thinker in this field. His name is Rob Briner, professor of Organizational Psychology from Birkbeck College, University of London, who already collaborates with Denise on the Evidence Based Management Collaborative. But, back to Denise.
Continue reading Denise Rousseau’s take on evidence-based management
 The Canadian professor Henry Mintzberg has recently published a new book. Not surprisingly, it is called Managing. Since his first publications on his research, he noted that there is virtually nothing written about the daily work and life of managers. There is however, an abundance of literature on what managers are supposed to do. When he wrote Managers, not MBA’s, there was a sigh of relieve by managers around the globe. Finally, recognition! From what I hear, he is a little controversial in the USA, but I don’t know this for sure. Maybe his original (and skeptical) way of thinking doesn’t sit well with everyone. He is however, very popular in Europe. On YouTube I found this interesting clip, where he shares his views on management and how we think we make decisions in our lives. A must see clip!
Continue reading How did you choose your mate?
 The discussing about evidence based management is very much alive today. In the Dutch management journal M&O magazine, three scholars take things one step further. They wonder in their article if evidence based consultancy is within the realm of possibilities. They describe evidence based consultancy as a service innovation in consultancy, where interventions are supported by scientific evidence and/or repeatedly proven positive practices. They are aware of the huge gap between theory and practice. In their article they refer to the evidence based medicine practice as a way of working in the medical profession and see potential for evidence based consultancy.
Continue reading Evidence-based consultancy, the next step?
 Change management is very much alive today! Despite the lack of success and reports about high percentages of failure (the infamous 70%), popularity is on the rise. This is the opening statement from the article “Op weg naar evidence based change management” by Eric Barends and Steven ten Have which was published in the Holland Management Review. These Dutch researchers disagree with the reported percentages of failure and have refuted this in another article. They are however optimistic about systematic research (in the spirit of Peter Drucker) in order to establish What, Why and How something works and what doesn’t regarding change management. Their article provides an overview of the developments in change management and investigates the practical barriers for evidence based change management. They make an analogy with psychology, where there was consensus amongst clinical psychologist that ‘debriefing’ after shocking events prevents psycho trauma. This ‘cultural belief’ was shattered, when it was recently discovered that ‘debriefings’ enhances the chance of a psycho trauma. Without any doubt there are similar misperceptions in change management and we should work extra hard to reach the next level toward evidence based change management and root these misperceptions out.
Continue reading Toward evidence based change management
 This is a classic on the internet, but still worth paying attention to. Malcolm Gladwell, the best selling author of the tipping point, Blink! and Outliers was invited to give a TED talk in 2004. He started out by saying he thought of talking about his latest book, but instead choose to talk about his personal hero. An that is dr. Howard Moskowitz. Moskowitz claim to fame came when he reinvented spaghetti sauce. …Actually, he discovered a major flaw in thinking about product development and the first product in which he successfully fixed the flaw was spaghetti sauce. What happened? In the late 70’s Pepsi came to his office asking him to determine the sweetspot ( the right amount of aspartame, an artificial sweetener) for their new product Pepsi Cola.
Continue reading What can we learn from spaghetti sauce?
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Progress by the current school of thought of evidence based/informed decision making is slow, but steady. That’s the good news. One thing I’ve learned so far, is that evidence does not speak for itself. Contrary to evidence based medicine, random control tests (the golden standard in research) in management situations are difficult if not impossible. Achieving the highest level of evidence in general has to be ruled out. Evidence has to be appraised, which makes it subjective. It is all about the context, interpretation and the quality of the data. Bob Sutton was also musing on this in his posting on intuition vs. data driven decision making: some rough ideas. Our brains are primed on previous experiences. (That’s why we don’t need all the syllables in a sentence before we interpret what is being conveyed). We humans are pattern seeking animals. This has all kinds of evolutionary benefits (hence intuition, gut feeling, etc.), but also some major drawbacks. To put it mildly, we suck at judging facts. That’s the bad news. Continue reading Context is everything
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