What Were They Thinking?: Unconventional Wisdom About Management

by Jeffrey Pfeffer

Every day companies and their leaders fail to capitalize on opportunities because they misunderstand the real sources of business success.

Based on his popular column in Business 2.0, Jeffrey Pfeffer delivers wise and timely business commentary that challenges conventional wisdom while providing data and insights to help companies make smarter decisions. The book contains a series of short chapters filled with examples, data, and insights that challenge questionable assumptions and much conventional management wisdom. Each chapter also provides guidelines about how to think more deeply and intelligently about critical management issues. Covering topics ranging from managing people to leadership to measurement and strategy, it’s good organizational advice, delivered by Dr. Pfeffer himself.

Genres: Business, Management, Leadership, Nonfiction, Buisness

241 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2007

About the author

Jeffrey Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University where he has taught since 1979. He is the author or co-author of thirteen books including The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First; Managing with Power; The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge Into Action; Hidden Value: How Great Companies Achieve Extraordinary Results with Ordinary People; Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management; and What Were They Thinking? Unconventional Wisdom About Management, as well as more than 150 articles and book chapters. Pfeffer’s latest book, entitled Power: Why Some People Have It—And Others Don’t was published in 2010 by Harper Business.

Dr. Pfeffer received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Carnegie-Mellon University and his Ph.D. from Stanford. He began his career at the business school at the University of Illinois and then taught at the University of California, Berkeley. Pfeffer has been a visiting professor at the Harvard Business School, Singapore Management University, London Business School, Copenhagen Business School, and for the past 8 years a visitor at IESE in Barcelona.

From 2003-2007, Pfeffer wrote a monthly column, “The Human Factor,” for the 600,000-person circulation business magazine, Business 2.0 and from 2007-2010, he wrote a monthly column providing career advice for Capital, a leading business and economics magazine in Turkey. Pfeffer also was a regular blogger for the Corner Office section of BNET (CBS Interactive), and currently writes for the Harvard Business Review website, Bloomberg Business Week online, Inc., and for the “On Leadership” section of The Washington Post. Pfeffer has appeared in segments on CBS Sunday Morning, 60 Minutes, and CNBC as well as television and radio programs in Korea and Japan and has been quoted and featured in news articles from countries around the globe.

Pfeffer currently serves on the board of directors of the nonprofit Quantum Leap Healthcare. In the past he has served on the boards of Resumix, Unicru, and Workstream, all human capital software companies, Audible Magic, an internet company, SonoSite, a company designing and manufacturing portable ultrasound machines, and the San Francisco Playhouse, a non-profit theater. Pfeffer has presented seminars in 38 countries throughout the world as well as doing consulting and providing executive education for numerous companies, associations, and universities in the United States.

Jeffrey Pfeffer has won the Richard I. Irwin Award presented by the Academy of Management for scholarly contributions to management and numerous awards for his articles and books. He is listed in the top 25 management thinkers by Thinkers 50, and as one of the Most Influential HR International Thinkers by HR Magazine. In November, 2011, he was presented with an honorary doctorate degree from Tilburg University in The Netherlands.

Reviews

[JP · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of distinct lessons was a very readable format on a long car trip with kids. I've always enjoyed organizational behavior topics and Pfeffer's background at Stanford gives him a rich set of examples to leverage. He organizes the lessons into three categories: failure to consider unintended consequences, reliance on naive theories of behavior, and ignorance of obvious answers. The range of points doesn't combine into a unified framework, but it's not intended to do so. These are the pitfalls to avoid, and that approach lets Pfeffer come up with more thought-provoking examples, such as Why spy on your employees? and In Praise of Organized Labor. The final chapter is about stopping corporate misdeeds. With no conclusion following that, the book seems to end abruptly.

[Martin Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a collection of short chapters on particular business issues. Now 15 years old, some feel rather dated, but the underlying issues are persistent. Perhaps the most common issue is the staff, customers and suppliers are human beings and should be treated with consideration. A lot of his observations seem contrary to common wisdom, but provide stuff to think about.

[Yama Chen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Its quality is far away lower than his classic work.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

According to Pfeffer, there seem to be three themes that unify many of the ideas he shares in this volume: “(1) the importance of considering feedback effects – the ideas that actions often have unintended consequences; (2) the naïve, overly simplistic, almost mechanical models of people and organizations that seem to dominant both discourse and practice; and (3) the tendency to overcomplicate what are often reasonably straightforward choices and insights.” Pfeffer provides an abundance of examples of these and other especially common errors of comprehension and, worse yet, errors of judgment. “The message…is that we ought to think before we act, taking into full account feedback effects and using the insights of not only the large body of evidence on behavior but our own common sense and observations. It turns out both common sense and careful thought are in short supply. But that means there are great opportunities for those people and organizations willing to spend the effort to get beyond conventional management wisdom.”

most brilliant strategists who can’t adapt.”
In addition to sharing his thoughts about what’s wrong with strategy, I also appreciated his contrarian opinions about building customer relationships, training expenditures, “taking chances and making mistakes,” working long hours, interview objectives and hiring practices, “persistence,” compensation incentives and rewards, and organized labor (i.e. unions). Ultimately, Pfeffer insists, decision-makers must follow a remarkably simple process that dates back at least to Aristotle:

1. What is the question or problem?
2. What are the possible answers or solutions?
3. What is the best one and how do we know that?
4. What must we now do?

Of course, mistakes are made when making decisions and/or when following through on them but at least it is possible to increase the percentage of correct decisions. I agree with Pfeffer on the importance of considering feedback effects because actions often have unintended consequences. I also share his disdain for “the naïve, overly simplistic, almost mechanical models of people and organizations that seem to dominant both discourse and practice.” As for overcomplicating what are often reasonably straightforward choices and insights, Albert Einstein offers the best advice: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't typically read management books but a recent course I went on made me start thinking about what it meant to lead and developing one's management style. The nice thing about Pfeffer's book is that you don't have to read it in order. You're meant to dip into whichever chapter interests you and go from there. Overall, a short snappy read with some interesting anecdotes from diverse sources such as the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Jack Valenti, IDEO and Singapore Airlines. Not everything is going to be relevant to the reader but as Pfeffer says, just head straight for the chapters you're most interested in.

[Eyad · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn’t like this book….I loved it. It provides a lot of examples of the traps, mistakes and worst practices of management and suggested corrective actions. What I liked the most about this book is the way it was written. Each chapter is a quick-read (4-5 pages) based and has nothing to do with other chapters! In other words, you don’t need to read the book from cover to cover. You can select the chapter that you are interested in and just read it. It could be used as a resource for managers to go back to if they get into similar scenarios to get the experience from others mistakes and avoid it.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stadford business school professor challenges a number of eleemtns of business "conventional wisdom," including the ideas that technology trumps people, that downsizing the work force and decreasing employee benefits are the best way to cut costs, that one should never admit one's mistakes, and that unions are necessarily bad for the bottom line. Well-reasoned and documented and thought-provoking.

[Krishna Kumar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe it is because I have been reading a lot of Pfeffer and Sutton books, but this book didn't do as much for me as their previous ones. Perhaps it is because much of the same ground is addressed in the other books. And also the devil's advocate approach to some issues felt less analytical than a rationalization of certain viewpoints. The authors would have been better advised to include a better critique of opposing viewpoints.

[Ed van der Winden · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of short essays which touch on all of Pfeffers themes and ideas. Because other books I've read of him are sometimes a llittle too long and contain too many examples for my taste, this book is the perfect summary of his work. If you have this book you can skip a lot of the others!