Harvey Schachter named his top ten business books for 2006 yesterday on globeandmail.com. Top of the list is Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management
Schacter says,
"Separating one from the other is the essence of managerial success, and often quite difficult. We live in a fast-paced world of anecdote and supposition, in which managers are expected to follow their intuition, make quick decisions, and move on."
"But what if we're reacting to dangerous half-truths and total nonsense, rather than hard facts?"
"The issue is profound, and of particular concern to those who turn to management books for inspiration, since when an idea is turned into book form it acquires an apparent substance that may mask its shaky foundations. For those reasons -- and because it's an excellent, thoughtful, and informative book -- I'm picking Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense (Harvard Business School Press) by Stanford University professors Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton as the best business book of the year (or, more accurately, in line with their quest for precision, the best of the more than 100 business books I managed to read this year)."
For more on the book, see:
- My two-part summary of the book, on July 26 (covering guidelines for judging business ideas) and July 28 (covering how to create and sustain an evidence-based approach in your business).
