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<\/p>\nI’ve been ploughing through a small hill of books recently, and its time to start posting the reviews. Unfortunately the quality ranges from not-so-great to absolutely horrible. This is unfortunate because i hate wasting my time, and because all of these authors have written other books I’ve found to be extremely good. <\/p>\n
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Hard Facts, Dangerous half-truths and total nonsense<\/strong> Ironically this book far too frequently trades in exactly the kinds of half-truths and nonsense it rails against. Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an example:<\/p>\n We spent a lot of time trying to figure out why IDEO is so creative (p 85).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Rhetorically this is very clever. It makes the claim about IDEO being creative in the subordinate clause. This technique assumes the truth of its claim, and hopes to sneak it in under the radar, by subordinating it, so that readers are less likely to question its veracity. Is IDEO so creative? Well, I know they are extremely good at self-promotion. But are they really so creative? I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seen any evidence. And for a book about evidence-based action, its ironic that the authors provide us absolutely no evidence beyond the rhetoric. In other words, its probably total nonsense. Thanks guys.<\/p>\n Later they claim that you shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t worry too much about hiring good people, in part, because you really can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell the good from the bad anyway. As evidence, they offer up 3 quarter-backs whose careers started slow and improved. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a nice anecdote for football fans, but isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t evidence of anything. They then go on to then say that studies have shown (beware, such phrases as “studies have shown”; they are the Welcome to Las Vegas neon-signs heralding total nonsense) that people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s performance varies day to day. This may or may not be true (they only provide scattered references to these studies), but again so what? So people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s performance varies? How does is this evidence that you needn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t worry about hiring good people? <\/p>\n Similarly Sutton and Pfeiffer warn us not to waste our time looking for natural talent, because natural talent doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter. Evidence: Tiger Woods practices relentlessly and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s at the top of his game. No doubt his relentless practicing has helped put him on top. However, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m willing to bet, if he stopped playing for a year, and I practiced every waking hour, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d still be a way better golf player then I. He practices not to be in the top 10% or even top1% or even the top 10 pro golfer. He practices to be the #1 best golfer in the world. <\/p>\n What Sutton and Pfeiffer fail to admit is that looking for talented people, people who with work well in your culture and with your people, is not the same as trying to find the Tiger Woods of accounting. Not only is their evidence entirely anecdotal, but their whole argument about hiring good people is based on a series of subtle strawmen. <\/p>\n I stopped read by page 122; the book\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s refreshing early chapter contrarianisms quickly became mired in half-truths and total nonsense and stayed there. So I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll end with another example of IDEO and the tricky subordinate clause:<\/p>\n One of the main reason\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that IDEO\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s system works so well is the attitude its people have toward knowledge (p 103).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Rhetorical trickery and an outright contradiction of earlier claims to boot! Either finding good people matters or it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t guys\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhich way is it going to be? Unless of course people are blank slates to be written upon by the corporate culture that pays thier wages. <\/p>\n Well, I never lasted long enough to find out. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been ploughing through a small hill of books recently, and its time to start posting the reviews. Unfortunately the quality ranges from not-so-great to absolutely horrible. This is unfortunate because i hate wasting my time, and because all of these authors have written other books I’ve found to be extremely good. Hard Facts, Dangerous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":23,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ParCYG-1G","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/104\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nby Robert Sutton and Jeffrey Pfeffer<\/p>\n