Becoming the Evidence Based Manager: Making the Science of Management Work for You

by Gary P. Latham

From medicine to education, a national movement has been fundamentally changing the way standards of professional practice are set. Once based more on intuition, the demand for measurements backed by hard, scientific fact now finds its rightful place in the business world with Becoming the Evidence-Based Manager. Arguing that there is too much art and not enough science in the way managers manage, Gary Latham brings together a unique combination of research and step-by-step practicality in this compact and highly practical toolkit of research-backed techniques, methods, and quick-to-implement action steps for hiring, inspiring, training, motivating and appraising employees to deliver high performance. From A to Z, Latham shows front-line managers how to put five decades of research into everyday practice as he lays out techniques to inspire employees to execute strategy, ways to coach and appraise employees to be high performers and new approaches to instill resiliency in the face of setbacks.

Genres: Business, Psychology, Leadership, Management, Nonfiction

200 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 16, 2009

Reviews

[Jordan Coy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book on managerial skills in general and evidence-based management in particular. This book is a fantastic start to learning the best practices in managing teams and organizations.

Evidence based management is the science of managerial practices and techniques that are backed up by research and empirical evidence. This book details the practices that have significant effects in the real world and have measurable results.
Some of the major points by chapter:

Chapter 1: Interviews and hiring.
Most interview strategies do not work. The most effective form is situational interviews.
How to create a Situational Interview:
1. Conduct a job analysis
2. Create situational interview questions that describe a dilemma faced by interviewee
3. Create a scoring guide for answers (page 6)

Chapter 2: Executing strategy.
Goal setting is one of the most reliable and time-tested practices a manager can implement.
Create SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-bound Goals (page 37)

Chapter 3: Developing and Training team
Mind set and attitude of the team matters in training. Self-talk (positive internal dialog) sets the stage for effective training and development (59)
Visualization (Mentally practicing your task in your thoughts) improves actual performance (63)

Chapter 5: Create resilient systems when facing setbacks.
Change the expected outcomes, you change someone’s behavior (102).
The “empathy box” helps illustrate this (101-103)

I highly recommend this book for studying management and leadership skills. This book doesn't rely on gimmicks or pithy messages (like many leadership books). Instead, it condenses the studies and research done on managerial techniques and promotes what practices have empirical evidence in producing results.

5/5 Excellent management book

[Jevgenij · Rating 2 out of 5]

The chapter on hiring tools is fine more or less, but it quickly goes down hill from there. For an "evidence-based" book there is very little information on the research that the claims are based upon. I really would like to see the research and its results for how company's vision statement affects anything.
In general, several summary statements are interesting , but notes on implementation details are too abstract or far fetched, useless in other words.

[Steffy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good overview of science backed practices in people management, covering interviewing, performance reviews, motivating employees and more.

[Rev. Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Based on the the theories of Organizational Psychology, this is an easy read, with some really good ideas for enhancing employee motivation, helping employees to develop self-efficacy, and ways to develop resiliency in the face of setbacks. My SHRM accreditation now allows for 20 of my 60 CEU's to be obtained from reading books and taking a test on their content, so this was my first choice to begin that process.

[Bianca Woods · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's some very solid management in this book, which would have normally caused me to give this a 4. Unfortunately this book also has the most distracting layout I've ever encountered, which made reading through this book and all it's sidebar examples deeply disjointed.