Hard Facts

"Pfeffer and Sutton, both professors at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, call time on amateurism and guesswork in this punchy book. They urge leaders to base their decisions on facts – ‘evidence-based management’ – and not hunches. A particular target are ‘half-truths’, which the authors describe as ‘ideas and principles that are partly right at times, but are flawed and misleading often enough to get organisations into serious trouble.'" Management Today

"The authors are fairly scathing about the presumptive and prescriptive state of much management theory. They almost take glee in picking apart what they see as key management myths; that the ‘best organisations have the best people’, that work must be ‘fundamentally different’ to the rest of life, that business survival depends on the credo of ‘change or die’. They see evidence-based management as ‘facing the hard facts’ about what works and what doesn’t, understanding the half-truths that pass for ’conventional management wisdom’ and rejecting the total nonsense that ‘too often passes for sound advice.'" Trainingzone.com

"Great pearls of business wisdom? Absolutely not, state Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton. They say too much common management “wisdom” isn’t wise at all, but instead is based on flawed knowledge of best practices that are poor, incomplete, or outright wrong — not to mention hazardous to an organization’s health. InHard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management, Pfeffer and Sutton show how companies can bolster performance and trump the competition through evidence-based management, an approach to decision making and action that is driven by hard facts rather than half-truths or hype." Stanford Business

"Merging the thinking of consultants and professors on dealing with decisions of unknown scope and using uncertain data is a task few bring about. I believe that Pfeffer and Sutton succeed, and this book can provide a firm foundation for decision-making in new products management. I subscribe to their rejection of the concept that only quantitative data are acceptable for evidence-based management." Pdma.org

“Of course 90% of everything is crap. That goes for academic research too. ButHard Factshelps you decide who to believe. Are they claiming that the same old ideas are brand new? Are they claiming to be lone geniuses? Do they claim to have breakthrough ideas? All of us – I plead guilty too — are full of it at times.” Bob Sutton“Of course 90% of everything is crap. That goes for academic research too. ButHard Factshelps you decide who to believe. Are they claiming that the same old ideas are brand new? Are they claiming to be lone geniuses? Do they claim to have breakthrough ideas? All of us – I plead guilty too — are full of it at times.” Bob Sutton