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 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
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 [...]
Check out the six basic steps to practicing EBMgt. [...]
 The never ending debate on “real science” and “pseudo science”. In this short clip, Richard Feynman points out the ‘fallacies’ of social science research. From the point of view of the “exact” sciences like chemistry, physics or mathematics, the reasoning looks sound. However, from a science philosophy point of view, one could argue that even the great Richard Feynman is comparing apples and oranges. Social science and exact science have different merits. The nature of science is that it works of the principle of falsifiability (a term posed by Karl Popper). And in social sciences, there are no real ‘laws’ which can compare to exact sciences. However, and interesting clip to watch, since this topic seems to recure. Continue reading Richard Feynman’s skeptical view on social science
 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 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
 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?
 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?
 The abilities that mattered most in the 20th century workforce were left brain hemisphere activities. For instance logical reasoning, linear programming and other rule based skills like accounting abilities, computer programming, etc. However, these skills are still very important and necessary today, but not sufficient. If you want to survive in the 21th century business environment, you’ll need skills which are hard to outsource. Like artistry, creativity, empathy, big picture thinking, inventiveness,etc. Typical right brain hemisphere activities.
A way to test this is the so-called Duncker candle problem. Subjects are posed with three objects, sitting on a table next to a cardboard wall: A candle, a box of matches, and a box of tacks. From those, they had to make a candle holder that wouldn’t drip wax. Most people fumble with the tacks and the candle, but the correct solution is to empty the box of tacks, attach it on the wall, and make an ad-hoc sconce. The problem has been considered a classic test of creativity because it requires seeing objects as being useful in ways never intended. Tests which the regular Discovery channel viewers will recognise from Ray Mears and Bear Grills. Older viewers may remember the infamous MacGyver…
Continue reading What managers can learn from social science
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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).
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