- ISBN13: 9780743291255
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Much of our business thinking is shaped by delusions — errors of logic and flawed judgments that distort our understanding of the real reasons for a company’s performance. In a brilliant and unconventional book, Phil Rosenzweig unmasks the delusions that are commonly found in the corporate world. These delusions affect the business press and academic research, as well as many bestselling books that promise to reveal the secrets of success or the path to greatness. … More >>
The Halo Effect: … and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers
I labored over several attempts at a review here, but at the end of the day, I just didn’t like this book. There is realism (like Ian Ayres in Super Crunchers) and then there is useless fingerpointing. This book came across to me as griping. Unfortunately, it griped without a tangible solution after the read.
But, hey, I’m an entrepreneur and I am used to deluding myself. Even worse, I’m a constant optimist. I understand Rosenzweig’s concepts that no success lasts forever and that halos are bad – real bad little critters – but if I worried about this stuff, I wouldn’t get out of bed. OR I’d just go find me a nice cozy corporate job and put this book on my desk to hold up my hand as I point a finger at one failing or another…
This book would make great fodder for “The Office” and the folks at Dunder Mifflin. I can just see Michael or Dwight explaining the concept that a company can get better and fall further behind at the same time.
*gack*
Rating: 1 / 5
Other reviewers have listed the delusions, so I will not do that. This book was recommended to me by a disgruntled reader of one of my reviews, and I care what thinking people say in the Comments, so I got it and went through it.
The author is as good as it gets in terms of deep academic and practical understanding of business. This book is the equivalent of saying that not only is the Emperor of Business naked, but so are all of his courtiers.
I recommend the book in part because the author has done a lovely job of integrating and reviewing, with scathing subtlety, every major business weekly and business “guru”, showing how they are all blowing the breeze and have no clue which way is up.
I am reminded of Michael Lewis’s “Liar’s Poker” about Wall Street exploding the client (one reason most investment firms do well is because they off-load the bad stuff to their low-end customers–they play the upside of the IPO and then bail out leaving the little guy to take all the risk and suffer the consequences after the smart money bails out).
I did find it off-putting that the author thinks Rubin bailed out Mexico for some grand strategic reason. My reading of the situation is that Rubin bailed out Mexico to bail out all the idiots on Wall Street that invested in Mexico and were not prepared to suffer the consequences of their ill-advised investments. Here I am reminded of General Smedley Butler’s book, “War is a Racket,” where he rails against Wall Street lending money to decrepit Third World nations and their corrupt leaders, and then sending in the Marines when it all goes bad. See also my review of “The Global Class War” and of “Unintended Consequences: The United States at War.”
This book is worth reading if you are all too prone, as most are, to accept conventional wisdom and blatant lies (e.g. “our books are balanced” or “there is no doubt Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.” For the rest of us that are skeptical about virtually every statement by any corporation chief or any politician, this book is reinforcement on the margins.
Like Al Gore, the author does a good job of showing us what the problem is. He does not offer solutions or any new integrated concept of business analysis that properly provides for all that is external to the corporation.
I am especially struck by the fact that “green” or “environment” or “Capitalism 3.0″ or “Natural Capitalism” do not appear in this book. Let us conclude then, that the author has done an excellent job of burying the past, and now needs to spend some time thinking about the future (see my list on Natural Capitalism).
I am nominating Paul Hawkins, Herman Daly, and Lester Brown for the Nobel Prize. Al Gore is not even close–his Hollywood Oscar will have to do. Paul Hawkins especially (see his latest, “Blessed Unrest” and also the online World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility) has actually mobilized and organized and suffered for the future.
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
The Global Class War: How America’s Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back
Liar’s Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street
Unintended Consequences: The United States at War
War Is a Racket: The Anti-War Classic by America’s Most Decorated General, Two Other Anti=Interventionist Tracts, and Photographs from the Horror of It
Rating: 4 / 5
Pretty much the obvious blatant truth to which nobody wants to face up. There are no easy answers to great success in business. It is hardly an exact science like physics or chemistry… it is not a science at all. If it were, there would be observable and testable hypotheses, and accurate formulae for success would have been worked out long ago.
Essentially, luck is a huge factor and cargo-cult mentality is the underlying theme of most failed “best practices” business philosophies. Some of the worst ideas come from emulating trivial behaviors of successful companies. Ergo, the proliferation of failed Silicon Valley dotcoms in the late 1990s, who put too much money into pinball machines and pool tables in the employee rec rooms, because Apple had pinball machine and pool tables, and Apple was a successfull Silicon Valley company, so one must relate to the other. A gross oversimplification, but coming from someone who worked in a number of Silicon Valley internet late-1990s start ups, its frighteningly true.
The point of this book is best summed up in a classic episode of the Simpsons, in which Homer decides he wants to be a famous inventor, so he reads a biography of Thomas Edison and takes up his habits. When Bart finds him relaxing with a cigar and asks what he’s doing, Homer replies “Thomas Edison smoked cigars.”
To which Bart responds, “Yeah, and he invented lots of stuff, ,too.”
Rating: 5 / 5
Prof. Rosenzweig takes to task business best-sellers and magazines alike for a seemingly wide array of social-science lapses. Statistically speaking, their crime is simple and oh-so-common: sample bias. Analyze winners and what do you get? Fun stories that aspiring tycoons might buy! (or at least will be more likely to buy than stories about loser companies!)
Not so revolutionary. Most readers with statistics, economics, or science experience probably don’t take much business writing seriously anyway. Again, it’s about the stories.
The book is crisply written and a fun, fast read. It is long on surfacing issues but short on recommending improvements or citing work that “gets it.” While pehaps not as relevant for general managers, there is much work in finance or economics that could easily clear the bar the author sets. Some of these papers would better reinforce the author’s points than his examples from Intel and Logitech, which suffer from the very PR taint he derides.
Rating: 4 / 5
Buy this book. Read it. Learn it. And live it. Dr. Rosenzweig’s book is fantastic. It shows using historical data and well thought out thinking, that much of what is held as truth by line manager to the C-suite is false. It should be a requirement for business students to read. It’s too bad that not enough business managers will read this book. If they did, they would manage and lead differently.
Rating: 5 / 5