Books
Analytics, leadership and ethics
Analytics at Work
Thomas H Davenport, Jeanne G Harris and Robert Morison
Harvard Business School Press, £19.99/$29.95
There has long been a call for the systematic use of data – not gut feel or instinct – to make decisions or decide on appropriate action in business. Although the authors – who are all experienced researchers – admit experience-based and intuitive decisions can work out well, too often “they either go astray or end in disaster”.
Their book, subtitled “Smarter decisions, better results”, aims to minimise ill-informed decision-making by demonstrating how using analysis, data and systematic reasoning can bring about improvement in key business areas including supply chain management.
Although they provide a comprehensive lowdown on how to apply analytics, the authors don’t neglect the basics. They examine how to ensure data is good quality and accessible, as well as looking at the important questions of building an “analytical” business culture and reviewing processes so that it is not a one-off activity.
Pros: Comprehensive with useful appendix of key points
Cons: Can’t easily be skim read
The Elephant in the Boardroom
Adrian Furnham
Palgrave Macmillan, £25/$40
Leadership is a popular topic in business literature. Readers want to learn high flyers’ secrets and how CEOs think so that they can emulate their success. But Adrian Furnham, a professor of psychology at University College London, deals with a disconcerting truth: many great business leaders – or those who have the potential to get noticed and promoted – are among the most unstable people we will meet.
He cites research showing that two-thirds of managers are insufferable and half will eventually fail. “Derailing and derailed leaders can destroy organisations and whole countries,” he warns.
They can range from the tyrannical, toxic, despotic, and aberrant to plain old incompetent, among categories that can crudely be categorised as mad, bad or sad. But Furnham asserts it is important to recognise the factors that push these leaders over the edge as well as identify the danger signs: “This is as much about prevention as cure.”
Pros: Insightful into dysfunctional behaviour at work
Cons: May start to wonder whether you’re mad, bad or sad
Warren Buffett’s Management Secrets
Mary Buffett and David Clark
Simon & Schuster, £14.99/$25
Better known as an investor, Warren Buffett has now gone public with his management advice. This slim volume – barely 170 widely printed pages that will fit neatly into your jacket pocket – begins by suggesting you pick the right company to work for. The tests for these are, Buffett suggests, its per-share earnings, debt and share margin test.
However, if this sounds like investment advice dressed up as management guidance, the book does get around to its title. Among the idiosyncratic but commercial advice is: delegate “almost to the point of abdication”; asking the managers of the businesses he buys to write to him once a year saying who would replace them if they died tomorrow, which is an unusual form of succession planning; and to gladden the heart of any procurement professional, Buffett puts buying at the centre of the business, because costs “determine the pricing of the product”.
Pros: Sets out principles with clarity
Cons: Brief to the point of being gnomic
Supercorp
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Profile Books, £15/$27.50
Can a company aim to be both ethical and profitable? Business writer Rosabeth Moss Kanter draws on the likes of IBM, financial services company ABN Amro, Tata Motors and fast-moving consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble to argue that the future belongs to businesses that use their power for social good as well as their shareholders’ benefit.
“The leaders of these companies aren’t soft-hearted do-gooders,” she writes. They are aggressive, willing to sue and happy to press their suppliers. However, one of these supercorps – IBM – supported relief efforts after the Asian tsunami struck India. The result was better staff and potential access to new markets because, at the time, it rejected publicity for its work.
She moves through the opportunities for this new wave of businesses, then deals with strategy and business – including the dividends of innovation – before confronting sceptics of the idea that businesses can work for, say, subcontractors’ rights, education and health.
Pros: Many examples of firms putting ethics over profits
Cons: Woolly claims that supercorps beat market in downturn
