pambo's Full Review: Philip M. Rosenzweig - The Halo Effect: ...and the...
Nearly put off by the jacket blurb ("One of the most important management books of all time"), and fed up to the gills with so many other dopey, truly awful business advice books encountered daily, I almost didn't read "The Halo Effect...and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers."
Luckily, I plunged in anyway, thinking it would be fun to mock it. What a shock. Author Phil Rosenzweig has produced a sharp and critical assessment of the bad thinking, and, by extension, bad coverage of, today's business management. Politicians and business leaders, not to mention unions, business journalists, stockholders and consumers, ought to read this stinging critique.
What Rosenzweig has done is take apart those quick-hit, simplistic "solutions" proffered by managers, business gurus, consultants or executives looking for fame, money and applause where none is due.
Here are some of the points this professor makes while demolishing delusions that rely on form over substance:
The Delusion of Absolute Performance: Company performance is relative to competition, not absolute, which is why following a formula can never guarantee results.
The Delusion of Rigorous Research: Many bestselling authors praise themselves for the vast amount of data they have gathered but forget that if the data aren't valid, it doesn't matter how much was gathered or how.
The Delusion of Single Explanations: Many studies show that a particular factor, such as corporate culture or social responsibility or customer focus, leads to improved performance. But since many of these factors are highly correlated, the effect of each one is usually less than suggested.
This says it all: Unfortunately for (Microsoft CEO Steve) Ballmer and every other manager, there is no magic formula, no way to crack the code, no genie in the bottle holding the secrets of success. The answer to the question, what really works?, is simple: nothing really works, at least not all the time. That's not the nature of the business world.
Any one of the 10 well-written chapters could be a book in itself, but chapter 4, Halos All Around Us, is probably the strongest and could be applied to other parts of our lives. In it, the author finds judgments clouded by "The Halo Effect," which means that many of the things we think lead to company performance, such as corporate culture, corporate leadership, are often really attributions based on company performance. In other words, hindsight. And confusion about cause and effect.
I wanted to shout out loud when I read this book, and, if the state of corporate America interests you, you will too.
Controversial and iconoclastic, a veteran corporate manager and business school professor exposes the dangerous myths, fantasies, and delusions that p...More at Buy.com
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