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The Halo Effect: ...and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers (精装)
by Phil Rosenzweig
| Category:
Business thinking, Management, Leadership |
| Market price: ¥ 278.00
MSL price:
¥ 258.00
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MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
This serious book will change the way many people think about the pursuit of managerial excellence and, indirectly, about the criteria they use for managing (and coincidentally) investing. |
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AllReviews |
1 Total 1 pages 10 items |
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Fooled by Randomness, USA
<2007-11-05 00:00>
I was taken by this book. It destroys myths concerning the attribution of success in the management literature using potent empirical arguments. It should stand as one of the most important management books of all time, and an antidote to those bestselling books by gurus presenting false patter and naive arguments. |
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John R. Kimberly, Henry Bower Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies, The Wharton School, USA
<2007-11-05 00:00>
In The Halo Effect, Phil Rosenzweig has done us all a great service by speaking the unspeakable. His iconoclastic analysis is a very welcome antidote to the kind of superficial, formulaic, and dumbed-down matter that seems to be the current stock in trade of many popular business books. It's the right book at the right time.
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John Kay, Financial Times columnist and author of Everlasting Light Bulbs, UK
<2007-11-05 00:00>
Rosenzweig doesn't only poke fun at the mass of bad writing and bad science in the management world. He explains why it is so bad - and how you can learn from it, despite the efforts of the authors. |
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Publishers Weekly (MSL quote), USA
<2007-11-05 00:00>
This tart takedown of fashionable management theories is a refreshing antidote to the glut of simplistic books about achieving high performance. Rosenzweig, a veteran business manager turned professor, argues that most popular business ideas are no more than soothing platitudes that promise easy success to harried managers. Consultants, journalists and other pundits tap scientifically suspect methods to produce what he calls "business delusions": deeply flawed and widely held assumptions tainted by the "halo effect," or the need to attribute sweeping positive qualities to any company that has achieved success. Following these delusions might provide managers with a comforting story that helps them frame their actions, but it also leads them to gross simplification and to ignore the constant demands of changing technologies, markets, customers and situations. Mega-selling books like Good to Great, Rosenzweig argues, are nothing more than comforting, highbrow business fables. Unfortunately, Rosenzweig hedges his own principles for success so much that managers will find little practical use for them. His argument about the complexity of sustained achievement, and his observation that success comes down to "shrewd strategy, superb execution and good luck," may end up limiting the market for this smart and spicy critique. |
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Craig L. Howe (MSL quote), USA
<2007-11-05 00:00>
This is a rare business and management book. But a warning is in order. It is not intended for those seeking the "secret to success" or the formula to "dominate the market."
Phil Rosenzweig, a professor at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland and strategy consultant, argues that much of business thinking is dominated by nine delusions:
1. The Halo Effect - many performance drivers are simply attributions based on prior performance.
2. The Delusion of Correlation and Causality - Two things may be correlated but we may not know which is the base cause.
3. The Delusion of Single Explanations - Many explanations are highly correlated; the effect of each one is usually less than suggested.
4. The Delusion of Connecting the Winning Dots - It is difficult to isolate the reasons for success. There is no way of comparing them with less successful companies.
5. The Delusion of Rigorous Research - If the data are not good, it does not matter how sophisticated the research methods appear to be.
6. The Delusion of Lasting Success - Almost all high-performing companies regress over time.
7. The Delusion of Absolute Performance - Company performance is relative, not absolute.
8. The Delusion of the Wrong End of the Stick - Highly-focused companies are often successful; yet highly-focused companies are not all successful.
9. The Delusion of Organizational Physics - Despite our quest for certainty and order, company performance does not obey the laws of nature and science.
In his final two chapters, Rosenzweig suggests ways for managers to replace delusions with a more discerning way to understand company performance.
This book carries no promises of success. Rosenzweig guarantees no successful results. He believes, and I agree, that a clear-eyed, critical and thoughtful approach to management is better than the causal tripe that dominates today's business bookshelves. |
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Siriam (MSL quote), USA
<2007-11-05 00:00>
Do not worry about what the Nine Delusions are that the author uses to develop his thesis - they largely overlap and interlock and as you read the book will be seen as a powerful continuum. Why you should read this book is because bottom dollar like me you will have read one of the prior highly successful tomes that is one of the key targets for his thesis.
Whether it is "In search of excellence", "Built to Last" or "Good to great", by the end of this book you will I reckon have a more questioning attitude to such works (if not 100% cycnical) because this book challenges many preconceptions and makes you think and look afresh at how one will ever achieve success in business management.
The theme is not just "cutting tall poppies" down to size, but more basically that nothing is as simple or easy as many have claimed in writing such books. His chapter on why "strategy" and "execution" are actually so hard to do well, is alone worth the price of the book for me.
The core argument of the "delusions" being based on too much retropsective story telling is bought full circle by the three examples at the end of companies and business leaders who have in the authors opinion sought to face reality and do not underestimate the uncertainty that faces everyone.
A highly recommended book since it makes its points thoroughly and cogently and as such comes over as thoughtful and provoking of fresh views - as such it is a welcome change from too many of the best selling tirade type books that have come to represent both business but also political and history bestsellers recently. Definitely a book that is long overdue and one hopes will be successful plus lead to more realism in such future writing. |
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Stever Robbins (MSL quote), USA
<2007-11-05 00:00>
"The Halo Effect" may be the last business book you read. Not because it has answers, but because it shows you the answers just aren't there. For you who want Truth about business, this book's for you. If, on the other hand, you find comfort in a good fairy-tale, whose magical "Drink Me" formula takes your business to the Wonderland of business success, you'll find no Magic Mushrooms here.
If you've read many business best-sellers, you may have noticed they all sound the same. And jeez, are they trite. Focus. Treat people well. Be flexible, yet focused. Blah, blah blah. Nice generalities, slightly too vague to mean anything, yet specific enough to sound meaningful. And why are they all the same? Thank The Halo Effect that gives the book its title. The Halo Effect observes that when you ask people about a successful company (or successful leaders) after the success is known, they always give the same explanation: we had great culture, teamwork, focus, flexibility, and people. Thus, after-the-fact interviews are useless in understanding what really makes a business successful, since you can predict in advance what people will say. And they aren't saying it because it's true, they're saying it because of The Halo Effect.
The Halo Effect is the first of the "Business Delusions that Deceive Managers." Actually, the delusions chronicled deceive business _researchers_. Rosensweig travels from In Search of Excellence through Good to Great, mercilessly showing how each book's research is faulty. Very faulty. The books produce $60,000 speaking fees for the authors, but their business advice is dicey at best.
Some Delusions can be fixed by careful researchers. The Halo Effect vanishes when researchers look only at measurable data, rather than subjective reports. Or consider The Delusion of Connecting the Winning Dots. Any study of the excellent must contrast against the not-excellent to get good results. Imagine surveying 50 Billionaires who all say, "I ate cereal for breakfast growing up." Unless we find that non-Billionaires didn't eat cereal for breakfast, we can't say that eating cereal leads to wealth. Many business best-sellers only study the winning companies (indeed, the losers aren't around to study). But a study like Good to Great conquers this Delusion by contrasting successes with non-successes.
Sadly, other Delusions can't be fixed. The Delusion of Absolute Performance says that businesses operate in industries with competition that's changing all the time. There's no universal set of rules that work, because competitors change what they do, and in the new landscape, old habits may no longer lead to success. Even a perfect study design can't know the future of competition, and can't guarantee that results will work in the future.(*)
The Halo Effect and the Delusions took up almost the whole book. In the last two chapters, the author offers some glimmers of hope. While there are no simplistic Five Steps, Rosenzweig says careful attention to strategic decision making and excellent execution can lead to success. Learning to evaluate probabilities, think in terms of strategic choices, and execute superbly can help businesses do well at any given moment.
As a book, the Halo Effect was less than perfect. The pacing was off. It spent way too much time on the stories and the Delusions. By page 120, I felt like I'd gotten the point. The Halo Effect is Bad, and pervasive in research. As the book started delving into the other Delusions, they seemed almost an afterthought (and many weren't even given as much as their own chapter). A better devision would give each Delusion equal treatment, and spend much more time delving into Rosenzweig's keys to greater success: strategic decision-making and execution. In many ways, the book read more as a warning to future business researchers than a useful book for managers.
That said, it was a good read. And despairingly, the Delusions are real enough that you remember. Even when you want to suspend disbelief and revel in a Cinderella story of Fairy Godperson CEOs, it's hard. I attended a book launch reception the night I finished The Halo Effect. Instead of Oohing and Aahing, I munched hors d'oeuvres and tallied fallacies in the book's assumptions and methodology. As everyone else lined up for the author's autograph, I donned my jacket and vanished into the night, feeling like I'd just witnessed the birth of another useless fad.
When it comes to running a business, it pays to be fact-based. This book will help you separate the fact from fiction. But if you want Cinderella stories of Fair Godperson CEOs and the Magical Five Steps, books with large type about Moving Cheese are the way to go.
(*) Halfway through the book I invented my own unfixable delusion: the Delusion of Ethical Business. If UnethicalCo is winning in the marketplace by publishing fraudulent advertisement and engaging in restraint of trade, will its employees report that to researchers? Hardly! They'll say, "our visionary CEO leads us to success." Yet in her book Value Shift, Lynn Payne cites surveys where 1 in 3 people say their company engages in unethical or illegal business practice. |
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David Blacklock (MSL quote), USA
<2007-11-05 00:00>
Corporation "X" did exceptionally well for several years, leading its sector. Journalists praised the no-nonsense CEO of "X" as focused and inspired - the corporate culture was coherent - their strategy was brilliant. Two losing years later, the same magazines slammed that CEO as being over-controlling and without focus; the complacent employee culture was fractured; "X" had totally bungled its strategy for success. Yet these were the same people and nothing had really changed except the financial bottom line.
This example is my composite of several case histories that Rosenzweig offers about high profile companies you would recognize. Just as the direction of the stock market predicts analysts' market predictions (rather than the other way around), business journalists' analyses follow outcomes - their retrospectoscopes working like well-oiled machines. With a collection of superlative clichés and simplistic phrases, they reward a company's success by placing descriptive halos over every aspect of its operations - the "halo effect." Highly subjective data-gathering is presented for proof, virtually always consisting of praise from other journalists and surveys and interviews from that company's managers - hardly scientific. Reliably, the company is punished when it drifts south. "The CEO MUST have lost focus! Look at that bottom line!"
Rosenzweig reviews several important, well-known books about corporate expertise that provide recipes for success. They all recommend close to the same six or eight management concepts that, indeed, ARE important, but are hardly guarantees of success in today's complex business environment. All the books are filled with anecdotes, with "feel-good" and "moral to the story" endings, and rely on subjective data masquerading as science. Rosenzweig dismantles them all. Unfortunately for the "quick-fix" crowd (all of us are susceptible), there is not a formula that will consistently work. This is not physics. The nature of the business world is too complex and always changing.
Although a scientific approach is more difficult in business economics than in physics, it can be done, and our author provides several examples. He finally outlines a plan stressing strategy and execution but it is hardly formulaic nor is there any hint that it is foolproof. The business environment is too fickle, the competition unpredictable, and it is difficult (if not impossible) to stay on top very long. Only 74 stocks from the 1957 S&P500 were still even listed in 1997. Of those 74, only 12 outperformed the S&P500 that year.
Since this book concentrates on delusions, I'd like to add a favorite quote from Robert Wright, changed and adapted by me to fit this discussion: Humans are magnificent in their array of analytical equipment, tragic in their tendency to misuse it, and pathetic in their non-recognition of that misuse. Along these lines, I think humanity evolved to have good basic seat-of-the-pants, ball park decision-making skills...that is, for a hunter-gatherer. Nowadays the scientific method is available. It would be foolish to leave that out of the decision-making equation.
"The Halo Effect" may not be as uplifting to read as the feel-good books and will probably not be a best-seller, but nobody can accuse humanity of preferring reality to a good story. A healthy shot of this book will immunize you against the halo effect. It should be highlighted and reread frequently until your anti-delusion titers begin to maintain effective levels. I highly recommend this very important book - I think you will remember it. |
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-11-05 00:00>
The Halo Effect basically takes about a dozen methodological flaws that plague research and researcher conclusions in general and applies them to management and research in the field of business. A halo effect is when a person makes a specific evaluation based on a general impression; or, more specifically, when the characteristics of one attribute inappropriately bleed over onto our evaluation of other attributes. Anecdotal evidence is never scientific evidence, which means that testimonials as well as your own personal experiences don't always count as evidence. The main reason why anecdotal evidence is typically not evidence at all is that statistically, basing a decision on an anecdote or testimonial is tantamount to basing a generalization off of a sample size of one. With such a small sample size there is absolutely no reason to assume it's in any way representative. It could be entirely atypical. If a man smokes three packs of cigarettes a day and lives to be 101 and even then only dies because he's hit by a car while crossing a street that does not mean that smoking cigarettes isn't bad for you. The halo effect is yet another reason why anecdotes and testimonials don't cut it as evidence: namely, people often base their anecdotal evaluations of things on inappropriate comparisons. As Rosenzweig says, when a company is doing well people are apt to say that its employees are motivated, that its CEO is on top of his game and that the company has a brilliant strategy. When the SAME company has a bad year, even though it has the same strategy, the same CEO and even though the employees are no less motivated, the same people are apt to say that the employees have become complacent, that the CEO became arrogant and stopped performing, etc. This is why press accounts and manager interviews are likely flawed sources of information, often confusing mere descriptions of high company performers with having identified the factors that drive the company itself. Of the errors Rosenzweig discusses, my personal favorites involve his discussion of independent variables. If your independent variable is not actually independent of what you are trying to explain you are going to arrive at a spurious conclusion. Further, if you run into the problem of correlated independent variables you are also going to run into trouble. For example, assume one study finds that variable A accounts for 30% of a company's performance and that variable B accounts for 15%. Does this mean that variables A and B together account for 45% of the company's performance? Not if they're correlated it doesn't. What if variables A and B are actually measuring the same thing? |
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Ted Dunning (MSL quote), USA
<2007-11-05 00:00>
Pretty much the obvious blatant truth to which nobody wants to face up. There are no easy answers to great success in business. It is hardly an exact science like physics or chemistry... it is not a science at all. If it were, there would be observable and testable hypotheses, and accurate formulae for success would have been worked out long ago.
Essentially, luck is a huge factor and cargo-cult mentality is the underlying theme of most failed "best practices" business philosophies. Some of the worst ideas come from emulating trivial behaviors of successful companies. Ergo, the proliferation of failed Silicon Valley dotcoms in the late 1990s, who put too much money into pinball machines and pool tables in the employee rec rooms, because Apple had pinball machine and pool tables, and Apple was a successfull Silicon Valley company, so one must relate to the other. A gross oversimplification, but coming from someone who worked in a number of Silicon Valley internet late-1990s start ups, its frighteningly true.
The point of this book is best summed up in a classic episode of the Simpsons, in which Homer decides he wants to be a famous inventor, so he reads a biography of Thomas Edison and takes up his habits. When Bart finds him relaxing with a cigar and asks what he's doing, Homer replies "Thomas Edison smoked cigars."
To which Bart responds, "Yeah, and he invented lots of stuff, ,too." |
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1 Total 1 pages 10 items |
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