Skeptics of Agile—myself among them—are indebted to Dwight (“Ike”) Eisenhower, U.S. president from 1953–61. “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence… by the military industrial complex,” he said that last year. “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”1 From this was coined …
Tag: evidence
A Response to Major Change with a Major Twist
“…we must analyse whether the corporation is satisfying these basic demands: the promise that opportunities be equal and rewards be commensurate to abilities and efforts; the promise that each member of society, however humble, be a citizen with the status, function and dignity of a member of society and with a chance of individual fulfillment …
Data on the Great Resignation Suggest Solutions
No, the “Great Resignation” was not just about COVID-19. In fact, four of the biggest reasons people quit jobs last year are always around, and almost entirely within a manager’s control, which means there are solutions within a manager’s control. I’ve read a lot of articles by people claiming to know what caused the Great …
Drop the Carrot and Stick: The Science of Motivation
In 1999, before I danced away the millennium on New Year’s Eve to Prince while ignoring fears about the Y2K Bug, a major study began changing the way researchers viewed worker motivation. Lead author Edward Deci was the first to propose in 1971 that workers might have internal motivations that had nothing to do with …
Proof Empowerment Improves Performance
You wanted proof to give your managers about the need to empower your teams, and here it is: Two major studies prove that if workers have “a sense of control in relation to one’s work,” it improves performance by individuals and teams of all types. These are “meta-analyses,” drawing on data from a total of …
The Origin of Kanbans (Yes, Plural)
One of the ongoing debates in the Agile blogosphere boils up to, “Scrum vs. Kanban.” I have seen endless discourses, based mostly on the proponents’ personal experiences, as to which is the better way to run a project. As an evidence-based manager, I wanted to know if there were any objective data one way or …
Think Like a Scientist to Make Better Decisions
Many people are skeptical of science these days. Though my successes over 30 years have been based on scientific learning, I understand why. Scientists make mistakes like everyone else, but the profession makes it easier to admit that, so the public sees the errors. Some cross ethical lines, as in every profession. Most scientists have …
Should Only 20% of Projects be Waterfall?
Two seemingly unrelated topics crossed paths while I was researching this post. A common theme in my writings is the questionable nature of statistics bandied about the Internet and presentations. Within the past few months, I heard again the myth that “90% of all communication is nonverbal,” which was thoroughly debunked in the 1980s—by the …
Harpo the Ferret on Experts vs. Evidence
We had a health scare in the Morgan household recently. During an annual checkup, Harpo was found to have an enlarged lymph node in his torso. Harpo is a ferret, named like his brothers for members of the Marx Brothers comedy team of the 1930s, because ferrets are the funniest animals I’ve lived with. In …
Should Startups Take Time to Get Organized? Here’s the Evidence
When I was working as a group manager at a mid-sized startup near Seattle years ago, a fellow manager said it was the fifth startup he had worked in. Of the other four, only one survived. That one had stopped work for two months to get its processes in order. Our current startup was a …
Half-a-Dozen Proven Ways to Innovate
For those of you trying to decide right now the best way to get creative about your products, processes, or problems, a new report is worth a look. Nesta, “The Innovation Foundation” in the United Kingdom, recently released A Compendium of Innovation Methods. It was written by 24 contributors including researchers, leaders of innovation organizations, …
Find Good Management Evidence on Your Own
Free Sources of Management Studies Those who have read my earlier posts on evidence-based management have learned about “The Management Knowledge/Practice Gap”; discovered one reason for it is that “Good Evidence is Hard to Find”; and become skeptical readers about science because “Studies Say, Question Articles about Studies.” Now comes your chance to close the …
Studies Say, Question Articles about Studies
Start with the Source In previous posts I talked about attempts to close the management knowledge-practice gap through evidence-based management (EBM), and the problems with the information sources most managers use. Science is only one source in EBM, but it is the least understood, so in this post I will give you the tools to …
Good Evidence is Hard to Find
A Short History of Scientific Evidence for Managers In my first post on evidence-based management, I explored the gap between what researchers know managers should do to improve organizational performance, and what managers do. Before telling you how to close that gap for yourself, in this post I want to make clear you aren’t responsible …
The Management Knowledge/Practice Gap
Dangers when Doctors Ignore Science In the 1980s, researchers began raising alarms about the lack of current scientific knowledge among practitioners in a business clearly based on science: medicine. Although hundreds of medical studies were published every year to update our understanding of the human body, only a small percentage of doctors were consulting that …