This was the headline on an email
that I got from Geoff Staines last week.
Geoff works for Vuibert, the publisher of our French translation of Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total
Nonsense (And the French translation of The
No Asshole Rule too, Objectif
Zéro-sale-con). He wrote Jeff Pfeffer and me last week to report that “Faits
et Foutaises dans le management” had won an award last week in Paris called
called “Prix du livre Ressources Humaines.” Apparently, this is an award for
the best business book published in France during the past year.
Geoff (who is British, but has lived in France for many years) wrote:
“This is the eighth year the
prize has been awarded; the three sponsors are the HR Chair of "Sciences
Po", France's prestigious political science school, Le Monde, the national daily newspaper of reference, and a feisty
headhunter called Syntec. The jury of twelve good men and women was made up of
HR Directors from the private and public sector, professors from Sciences Po,
and journalists from the Le Monde
business and economics section. Sixty titles were originally selected and
whittled down to three finalists. Main criteria were originality and relevance
of the subject-matter, research-based propositions, quality of writing and
pedagogy, and applicability.
About three hundred people attended the ceremony in Le Monde's offices.The jury loved the breath of coverage of your
book, the fact-based examples and what they called your unassuming,
non-dogmatic style, and chose it as a fine instance of university-based writing
for the general reader. The president of the jury read out a couple of juicy
bits, and all the copies that were discreetly on sale afterwards went quite
fast. Champagne flowed, as it always does at the drop of a hat, the munchies
were so good people stayed late, and there was a very good overall atmosphere.
I have been doing these things for yonks, and this event stood out.”
I love his description –
especially that word “yonks.”
Jeff Pfeffer and I are delighted with the news and even more delighted that the
notion of evidence-based management continues to spread and have impact. If you are interested in learning more about
evidence-based management, Jeff Pfeffer and I maintain a website, www.evidence-basedmanagement.com.
And we thank the panel of judges, Le Monde and Syntec for the award. We are
honored and would like to thank everyone at Vuibert for their good work.
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