Three Star Leadership

If you want to improve your business results, buy and read this book and then apply what you've learned.

I was excited when I saw Bob Sutton and Jeff Pfeffer's Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense on the bookstore shelf. I knew about the authors' work and I thought: "This could be a great book!" I was right.

This is one of the best books I've read about what really works in business. It's also an excellent book about how to figure out what really works.

The opening section is called "Setting the Stage." Unless you're really curious about the movement called "Evidence-Based Management," I suggest saving this for later and start reading in the situation-specific chapters of the book.

You'll find tons and tons of meat in the central six chapters of this book. The chapter titles pretty much tell the tale.

• Is work fundamentally different from the rest of life and should it be?
• Do the best organizations have the best people?
• Do financial incentives drive company performance?
• Strategy is destiny?
• Change or die?
• Are great leaders in control of their companies?

The authors call these "dangerous half-truths" and they mean it. Each statement has some truth and some not-so-truth about it. Pfeffer and Sutton lay out the evidence for both.

These chapters will be especially helpful if you are dealing with a business issue that falls into one of the areas. For example, if you or your school district is considering incentive pay or pay-for-performance, you'll profit from learning just when and how such systems work. If you're thinking about driving major change in your organization, it will help you to know when and how to bring it about.

I suggest reading the six issue-specific chapters first because I think that the chapters about Evidence-Based Management and how you can apply the principles will make more sense after you've immersed yourself in some concrete examples.

So, go in this order. Read Chapter 1: Why every company needs Evidence-Based Management. Then read the six issue-specific chapters. Then go back and read chapters 2 and 9 which offer advice on how to apply Evidence-Based Management in your company.

The bottom line is that this book is worth buying for any or all of three reasons.

It's worth buying for putting a lot of solid management guidance, in well-written form, between two covers.

It's worth buying for the introduction to the principles and practices of evidence-based management.

And, it's worth buying for the specific analysis of six key issues.

If you're in business, you should buy, read, and apply what you learn from this book.

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