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Masters of the obvious facts

Below is the translation of a note by Robert Sutton. The original version is here .
Translation Sabine Rolland

As the singer Jimmy Buffett said: "Some things in life are a mystery to me, while other things are far too obvious. That sentence pretty much sums up what I learned from the study of organizations and my efforts to help managers implement best evidence. Some things are really difficult or impossible to solve. Take leadership. There are valuable lessons that make good leaders, but it is difficult to discover. So much crap and so many beliefs circulate through the management literature, including the leaderships of the most effective, there will always be an author to defend the merits of a particular leadership style. When Jeffrey Pfeffer and myself were in the midst of writing Facts and hogwash in management, has tapped Jeffrey "The secret of leadership" ("Secrets of Leadership") on Amazon. The first book Research to appear was "The Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun" ("The secrets of leadership of Attila the Hun"). The second was "The Leadership Secrets of Santa Claus." When I started my research, the title had been replaced by "The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell."

At the same time, I developed the conviction follows: managers and their staff progressed much more if, instead of trying to solve complex issues such as "what a great leader? "They concentrated their efforts on things both true and easy to implement. To quote Jeffrey Pfeffer, the main "secret" of the top leaders is to be "masters of the obvious."

Take my favorite example: the meetings where people are standing and where they are seated. A study by the University of Missouri compared groups whose members were standing for short meetings (10 to 20 minutes) to groups whose members were sitting. Groups whose members were standing put 34% less time to make a decision as good as that of groups whose members were sitting. Do the math: How many people work in your organization? How many meetings of 10 to 20 minutes per year do you organize? Certainly in some situations it is better to sit, especially to discuss sensitive issues. But in most cases, the vertical position is preferred. Take the energy giant Chevron-Texaco, a company of 50,000 employees accused of making a profit out of customers. If every employee meeting replaced a sitting of 20 minutes per year by a standing meeting, each meeting would last about 7 minutes less and would be equally effective. This would save 6,000 hours worked. You could remove some chairs Meeting and replace them with a bar. You would save much time and money.

Or take the example of medicine. Cancer and heart disease are difficult to treat and research devotes billions of dollars - as they should. But some problems can be solved with a little soap, water and elbow grease. Nearly 100,000 Americans die from nosocomial infections. One of the most effective ways to lower this figure is to require doctors to wash their hands after touching a patient, yet recent studies show that less than 50% of doctors wash their hands as often as necessary. Some forget. Others are overwhelmed. And still others do not believe in proven facts that exist in this area. I know a hospital in Florida attempting to fight against this problem by displaying symbols and distributing patient badges that say "Dare to Ask" - dare ask the doctor if they have washed their hands before examining you. The director of the hospital told me that doctors hate these cards because they do not like being told what to do. But they fail less often to wash your hands!

While it is useful trying to solve difficult problems, such as "What a leader effective? Or "How to manage creative work? . But I am astounded that so many leaders and organizations are chasing the impossible and prefer to ignore the obvious and simple things whose effects can be considerable.