I’ve been fretting about this lately, and ranting at Jeff Pfeffer and an anonymous business reporter about it. My question is whether there is a trade-off between producing writings and advice that managers will BUY versus what they need. Sometimes, it seems as if managers– to reverse the old Rolling Stones line — get the advice they want but not the advice they need (at least if they care about building more profitable and humane organizations).
To argue with myself, I can point to the way that the market seems to respond to my little set of four management books. I can argue that as much as I love The No Asshole Rule, and believe that it has valuable – and evidence-based – content, that this book is much easier to create excitement about than the more serious and exacting work I’ve done, like Hard Facts — and that is not a good thing. I could take the argument further, and claim that there is so much crap out there partly because the market for business knowledge — the customers and the sellers — routinely rejects serious, deep, and important stuff. And the anonymous reporter from the famous business magazine did resonate to this sentiment, commenting on the how stories such as the "management secrets of Martha Stewart" seem to get snapped-up. The One Minute Manager, Who Moved the Cheese, and the like fit this story, and — and although part of me protests and part of me wishes it to be so — perhaps the The No Asshole Rule will join this list of "light" best-sellers.
On the other hand, a case can be made that the market actually does respond well to rigor when it is packaged in a readable and convincing package. Malcolm Gladwell is one of the champions here as is Steve Levitt with Freakonomics. And Dan Gilbert’s intriguing Stumbling on Happiness is doing well (although he doesn’t actually give much advice, but the book is fascinating) . So the argument seems to be that if you write a book that is both based on serious ideas and evidence and is accessible, it will be snapped-up — or at least have the potential. And I could argue that I am trying to do that in The No Asshole Rule, perhaps despite that rowdy title.
I still am not sure where I stand on this, although at the moment, my view is that, as authors, we have several key responsibilities when we write for managerial audiences, no matter how popular or unpopular our books might be (and that is impossible to predict that in advance anyway). First, to write stuff that is based on sound logic and evidence. Second, to come clean when we base our advice on biased opinions, purely personal experiences, case studies, or deeply held beliefs. Third, I believe we should give readers enough information about the limitations of our work so they can understand the drawbacks before they take actions that affect people and profits.
I am starting to believe that this means that they very worst books are those that claim to be based on rigorous evidence, but that don’t come clean about their limitations. This is why I have such a negative reaction to The War for Talent, as I wrote in earlier post, and why — although it is more forthcoming about the drawbacks — Good to Great bothers me because there are many limitations that ought to be acknowledged but are not. For example the sample is very tiny (e.g.,firms with Level 5 leaders that weren’t great companies weren’t sampled — perhaps there were thousands and it is something that only rarely helps a tiny percentage of the time as it was seen in 11 out of 1400 or so cases), the evidence about the difference between good and great companies is heavily retrospective, and Collins mentions almost no prior research other than his earlier book Built to Last, even though there are literally hundreds – I suspect thousands – of articles published in peer reviewed journals that are more rigorous than either book and that have direct implications for his advice. I still love reading Good to Great, and it is written beautifully and much of the advice is supported by other research. But I do wish that the book had come more clean about its limits. I believe it would have been just as big a hit, and a better model for future management books.
Unlike many of my posts, this one raises more questions than it answers. I love things that are true and honest, and meet the highest standards of rigor. I also love writing and talking about things that people get excited about and want to use. There are times when I feel like I’ve done both, but I confess that there are also times when I am so tempted by the sizzle that I forget about the substance.
I am not sure if this is true dilemma or just a challenge that a skilled business writer or consultant can overcome with the right training and experience. I’d appreciate your thoughts.