I was re-reading Guy Kawasaki's Reality Check, and came on a quote that — for me — perfectly summarizes the need for evidence-based management (and the mindset that can make it so hard to implement):

One of the main enemies of truth — and the main causes of persistent but false myths — is what psychologists call confirmation bias — we tend to seek out, believe, and remember facts that support or beliefs, and avoid, disregard, and forget facts that clash with our myths.  The upshot is that we travel through life seeing persistent support for the myths we cling to, despite the evidence.  Simon and Garfunkel summarized this well when they said (I think I remember this accurately):  "A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest." This applies to women to, of course.  

One of the best defenses against "the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought" is to have strong opinions, weakly held.

P.S. John, thanks for the information and correction, the Simon and Garfunkel song is from The Boxer, and is ""Still, a man hears what he wants to hear;
And disregards the rest."

Like everyone else, I am just tickled by the astounding story about US Airways Flight 1549 and the heroics of Captain Chesley Sullenberger.  Clearly, the guy deserves to be a national hero and he is the model for the pilot that we all want on our flight.  But I noticed something interesting in an AP story today, "The flight was supposed to have been the last leg of a four-trip day.
The crew had begun the day in Pittsburgh, flown to Charlotte, N.C.,
then to LaGuardia, and were to head back to Charlotte in the afternoon."

Immediately, I thought of the research on airplane cockpit crew dynamics and effectiveness done by Harvard's Richard Hackman and others.  Richard is the world's expert on group effectiveness and I am lucky to count him as one of my mentors, as I worked on a group dynamics project that he led when I was in graduate school. I have also seen him now and then over the years.  Some people in the groups area are more well-known in business circles, but Richard is the best, especially if you care about evidence rather than faith-based practices.

One of Richard's biggest research projects was on the dynamics of airline cockpit crews, and he devoted many days — for over a year of his life — sitting in the jump seat of the cockpit and observing and coding the dynamics if the dyad or triad. One of the main lessons that came from this –and related — research is that the less time that a crew has been together, the more group dynamics problems they have and the more mistakes they make.  In his book, Leading Teams (see pages 54 through 59), Richard cites research based on National Transportation Safety Board data indicating that 44% of the errors (called "incidents")that pilots make are on their first flight together and 73% happen on their first day together (although the incident on Flight 1549 happened their first day together, it was their fourth flight). Richard also cites an especially interesting study done at NASA Ames Research Center in flight simulators.  It compared the performance of two different kinds of crews that were put through some very challenging problems — bad weather, closed airports, mechanical problems and so on. These were pairs of pilots, just like Flight 1549.  One kind of crew was fresh, and as often happens on commercial flights, they had never worked together. The other crews had just come off several days on duty, but had flown together during that period –so they had established their group dynamics.  The tired crews made far fewer errors than the fresh crews — because they he had worked out their roles and routines. As Hackman writes, he sometimes has the impulse, when boarding a commercial flight, to stick his head in the cockpit, and ask the crew if it is there first flight together — the odds against an incident are very low even on first flights, but Hackman points out that your risk as a passenger would be far lower if you avoided first flights together. 

To return to the Miracle of the Hudson, besides fitting Hackman's research in general, the AP story provides hints of good group dynamics. Fir example, good groups instantly divide up tasks so the best people are in the best positions. Note that the role switch and quick division of labor reported by AP:

In the cockpit, Sullenberger took over flying from Skiles, who had handled the takeoff, but had less experience in the Airbus.

"Your aircraft," the co-pilot said.

While the pilot quickly leveled the plane off to keep it from stalling
and thought about where to land, Skiles kept trying to restart the
engines. He also began working through a three-page list of procedures
for an emergency landing. Normally, those procedures begin at 35,000 feet. This time, he started at 3,000.

Indeed, to take this a step further, an astounding book by Scott Snook (who was one of Hackman's students) called Friendly Fire
examines why U.S. Black Hawk Helicopters were accidentally shot down over
Northern Iraq in 1994, and one of the contributing factors he
identifies as a cause of this problem was that the crew of the plane
that had made the decision to shoot down the Blackhawks has only two
prior flights together, despite Air Force policy (based partly on
Hackman's research) that, whenever possible, "hard crews," those who
had flown together many times before, had developed themselves into a
team, and were "tight cohesive and stable" should be used whenever
possible, and especially during combat missions.

To go beyond the cockpit, as Hackman's suggests, and I discussed here, there is also evidence from product development teams, top management teams, and surgical teams that being together awhile — or having worked together on teams in the past — is linked to greater performance.  The research on product development teams suggests that they do eventually go stale, but that takes several years — at which time, some "musical chairs,"  rotating people among different teams, may help refresh the teams.  The implication is that familiarity seems to breed performance, not contempt or laziness.  And if you are designing teams, err on the side of assembling them with people who have worked together before and on the side of keeping them together longer.

Of course, there are many many angles on the Miracle on the Hudson, but this one caught my eye because Hackman and Scott Snook make such a big deal out of it.  And it has implications for so many other settings.

I wrote a rave review for my friend and colleague Huggy Rao's book Market Rebels: How Activists Make Or Break Radical Innovations a couple months ago. His book is now for sale on Amazon and everywhere else. 

As I said then:

'The book is full of useful ideas, but perhaps the central one is that,
if you want to mobilize networks of people and markets to embrace and
spread an idea, you need the one-two punch of a "Hot Cause" and "Cool
Solutions."  A hot cause like deaths from tobacco or medical errors can
be used as springboards to raise awareness, spark motivation, and
ignite red-hot outrage.  And naming these as enemies is an important
step in mobilizing a network or market. But creating the heat isn't
enough; the next step needs to be cool solutions.   This doesn't just
mean identifying technically feasible solutions, it also means finding
ways to bind people together, to empower them to take steps that help
solve the problem, and to create enduring commitment to implementing
solutions.'

Market Rebels is a remarkably useful and evidence-based book, it isn't light and fluffy, as it is an academic book. But it is well-written and chock-full with great stories. If you want to learn how a small group of people can have a big impact on networks and markets, this is the book for you.  It is especially relevant entrepreneurs, people in sales and marketing, and social activists — but anyone who wants to spread a message and change behavior on a large scale will find it extremely helpful