Sutton Robert I. - Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense · Profiting from Evidence-based Management

Our last book, The Knowing-Doing Gap , struck a chord with lots of people. In many companies there were experienced, intelligent, motivated people who, both individually and collectively, knew what to do but couldnt or wouldnt act on that knowledge. We identified the main causes of knowing-doing gaps and how organizations could avoid or reverse such impediments to action. We also found that the problem was not confined to for-profit companies. We heard story after story from people in educational research and school administration about how decades of research on teaching and learning was neglected in the practices actually enacted in schools. As we write this preface in the fall of 2005, we see the problem playing out once again. The terrible devastation and human suffering caused by hurricane Katrina, which nearly obliterated New Orleans and much of the nearby Gulf Coast, and the halting, disorganized initial rescue efforts reflect the failure to implement what was known and even planned for months and years ago both to mitigate the effects of the storm and to speed up recovery efforts. There is no question that the knowing-doing gap persists as a big problem in the private and public sector.

After writing The Knowing-Doing Gap we soon encountered a different and somewhat unexpected management problem. People kept telling us about the wonderful things they were doing to implement knowledgebut those things often clashed with, and at times were the opposite of, what we knew about organizations and people. Upon probing, we soon discovered that many managers had been prompted by a seminar, book, or consultants to do things that were at odds with the best evidence about what works. We began to call this the doing-knowing problemdoing without knowing, or at least knowing enough.

We became fascinated with why this problem existed, and what might be done about it. We also became fascinated with certain half-truths that we kept hearing again and again, ideas and principles that are partly right at times, but are flawed and misleading often enough to get organizations into serious trouble. Beliefs like the best organizations have the best people, strategy is destiny, and great leaders are in control and ought to be have an element of truth, but when treated as the whole truth and applied to every decision and design of every program and practice, they cause severe damage to companies; management careers; and employee loyalty, effort, and mental health. Meanwhile, we witnessed attempts to introduce evidence-based practice into education, efforts thatdespite the best intentionswere often met with resistance that undermined learning and wasted billions of dollars. We also followed the rise in evidence-based medicine because a number of our former students are physicians with a heavy research emphasis in their practice and work. We began to wonder if there were principles that might apply across domains and make decisions and actions wiser. In fact, in the National Institute of Healths publication Keeping Patients Safe , there is a chapter entitled Evidence-Based Management.

So off we went, to study organizations, read, think, and to the surprise of no one who knows us, to argue and debate about the best logic, evidence, and management practices. The result is this book. It is a call for evidence-based management, a case for its potential impact, and a guide on how to use it. Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense identifies some of the barriers to implementing evidence-based management and presents steps that leaders can take to overcome those barriers, with an emphasis on how to manage in light of the most dangerous half-truths that bedevil organizations.

We emerged from this exercise with a renewed appreciation for how difficult it is to manage and lead an organization, and how much time and effort managers must devote to learning their craft. We also gained a stronger appreciation for how evidence-based management can help managers and leaders do a better job of learning and practicing their profession, and make these difficult jobs a bit less taxing and more successful. There are no simple, easy answers, but there are answers: better ways of thinking about business knowledge and more fact-based ways of understanding management practices. This book shares our insights and the results of our research, thought, reading, and yes, argument and debate, with you.