Leadership BS
"'The leadership industry has failed,' charges Stanford Business School professor Pfeffer in this lively critique of a professional discipline driven, according to him, not by wisdom or a desire to foster leadership, but by money. Its precepts, he writes, are 'based more on hope than reality, on wishes rather than data, on beliefs instead of science.' Pfeffer sets out to help his readers rethink leadership by focusing on the root causes of failures in business leadership. Pfeffer counsels readers to look away from the 'inspiration and fables' that glut the market, and to accept that some of those truisms are fallible: authenticity can be overrated, and honesty is not always the best policy for leaders. Pfeffer has taken on an ambitious project, given the uniformity of current thinking on business success, but his bluntness should go a long way toward slaughtering the sacred cows of the leadership industry."
Stats for nerds
1recommend
8mentions
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2018–2026years
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- You might find Jeffrey Pfeffer's Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time interesting - https://jeffreypfeffer.com/books/leadership-bs-fixing-workpl...
Also checkout his other books.
- The best way to study this is starting with Jeffrey Pfeffer's Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time.
- You have missed the point.
It has nothing to do with coding but everything to do with adding tangible value towards achieving an Objective Goal (Business/Technology/whatever). Hence the Problem Domain and technologies used in the Solution Domain are what matter and everything else is ancillary. The Processes/Methodologies used are only useful in as much as they help us understand the problem domain better and map it to a specific solution. Thus the application of the former is informed by knowledge of the latter and cannot exist by itself. Hence the reason we have so many types/variations of Processes/Methodologies; there are some common principles but will always need to be adapted/customized to the problem and tools at hand.
This is what is the problem with modern-day Management/Leadership and eloquently pointed out by David Graeber(Bullshit Jobs - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs) and Jeffrey Pfeffer(Leadership BS - https://jeffreypfeffer.com/books/leadership-bs-fixing-workpl...).
I highly recommend reading this speech by David Packard (one of the founders of Silicon Valley via HP) to new Managers given in 1960 and note how relevant it is for all companies today - https://gizmodo.com/the-hp-way-how-bill-hewlett-and-i-built-...
Relevant Excerpt:
Over the years we have developed the policy that it is important for the supervisor to thoroughly know and understand the work of his group. A debate on this has been carried on by management people for years. Some say you can be a good manager without having the slightest idea of what you are trying to manage, that the techniques of management are all important. There are many organizations which work that way. I don't argue that the job can't be done that way but I do argue strongly that the best job can be done when the manager or supervisor has a real and genuine understanding of his group's work. I don't see how a person can even understand what proper standards are and what performance is required unless he does understand in some detail the very specific nature of the work he is trying to supervise. We have held closely to this philosophy and we intend to continue to do so. We expect you who are supervising to learn techniques of supervision and keep up to date. I want to emphasize you can supervise best when you know a great deal about the work you are supervising and when you know the techniques of supervision as well.
- Why do people insist on not facing Reality? Management/Leadership IS about Power/Conflict/Negotiation/Human Behaviour/Goals.
It is the process which is used to achieve these objectives i.e. whether by Diktat (conventional organizational management) or by Cooperation/Empathy (not easy at all) that varies.
Some selected resources:
* Speech by Dave Packard to HP Managers - https://gizmodo.com/the-hp-way-how-bill-hewlett-and-i-built-...
* Management: A Political Activity by Ted Stephenson.
* Managing with Power by Jeffrey Pfeffer.
* Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time by Jeffrey Pfeffer.
* Power: Why Some People Have It―and Others Don't by Jeffrey Pfeffer.
- +1; Very good suggestion. I came to Jeffrey Pfeffer through his other book Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time which is a must read too.
- Here is my favourite; David Packard's (of HP fame) address to HP managers - https://gizmodo.com/the-hp-way-how-bill-hewlett-and-i-built-...
Read and memorize the above.
There is a whole lot of BS in the Leadership Industry and we should first educate ourselves on the realities. Start with Jeffrey Pfeffer's "Leadership BS".
The above same charge of BS can also be laid at the door of of various Management "theories". A good antidote is Ted Stephenson's "Management: A political activity".
Leadership/Management is more about understanding People/Organizational psychology and behaviours and not "feel good" theories.
