Good questions do not necessarily have good answers, or even no answers at all, but they are worth asking people to ask again.
Why to read
Whether in the workplace or in life, we will inevitably encounter communication dilemmas and problems: prejudice, encountering paranoid people, strong psychological defense mechanisms, “speaking with chickens and ducks”, and so on. Only by eliminating communication problems can we achieve more effective communication and better control of the situation. The author of this book Harvard Negotiation Thinking: International Negotiation Experts teach you how to get rid of communication difficulties As a negotiating expert, he played an important role in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and established a consulting company to train senior executives in many political circles around the world. I hope he can help you solve the communication problems encountered in life.
Good questions and good answers —— Book Review of Halo Effect
Yue Zhanren / text
Some uninhabited indigenous people live on some small islands in the South Pacific. During World War II, Allied aircraft turned over supplies on these small islands. These natives saw the plane land on the ground and unloaded a bag of good things. After the war, the plane naturally stopped coming, and the indigenous people missed the good old days, so they made something similar to the runway, lit a fire on both sides, built a small hut, sent someone to sit there, and tied their heads The two coconut shells pretend to be headphones, and a bamboo plug pretends to be an antenna, thinking that this is equivalent to the pilot in the control tower-then they wait and wait for the plane to land.
—— This is the story of “Grassbag Science” told by American physicist Richard Feynman. The aircraft never landed naturally. Although the indigenous people did everything similar to the situation in wartime, this is a story they unconsciously made up after all. It is not a good idea to use the story to predict the future.
Phil Rosenzweig, professor of strategy and international management at the International Management School (IMD) in Lausanne, Switzerland, quoted this story in his book “Halo Effect”, including “The Pursuit of Excellence”, “Eternal Life” Although the best-selling business books such as “From Excellence to Excellence” have topped the best-selling list in recent years, although they are wearing a scientific coat, they are actually the same as the “straw-bag science” of Feynman, and their predictive abilityIt’s like a coconut shell earphone on a small island in the South Pacific.
the trap of thinking
Rosenvy believes that these best-selling business books, as well as various other business reports and research articles, are basically based on a mission to explore the reasons behind corporate performance, and are based on a large number of scientifically rigorous investigations. A number of “eternal laws” towards success have been found, but the logical premise of many researches is wrong. The authors ’thinking is dominated by a series of illusions, and they cannot achieve sober thinking. Naturally, there are many data that are looking for Biased, the conclusions drawn are problematic.
The halo effect bears the brunt of this series of illusions. The halo effect was a concept proposed by American psychologist Edward Sandeck during World War I. A study conducted by the psychologist in the army found that officers tended to think that the handsome and tall soldiers were excellent in all aspects: shooting a hundred shots, excellent housekeeping, and versatility. Rosenville pointed out that the halo effect is a way for humans to create and maintain a coherent and unified picture psychologically, thereby reducing cognitive dissonance.
The halo effect is an inherent natural tendency of human beings. For most people, it is not easy to measure different traits independently; in addition, for things that are not easy to measure directly, people tend to seize those views. You can see touchable and objective information, and then describe some ambiguous factors as the motives of the information.
Taking the perception of the company as an example, people always form their own opinions through the company’s financial data, because “numbers will not lie”, and naturally take some less objective and specific factors as the motivation behind the data. If a company’s performance is good and the stock price rises all the way, observers will say that this is because the company is good at listening to customers’ voices, the corporate culture is very cohesive, and its strategy is wise, etc.
On the contrary, if the company ’s performance declines and the stock price is frustrated, observers will immediately change their tone and draw diametrically opposite conclusions. This plausible judgment widely exists in people’s daily conversations, newspapers and magazines and even many business studies. Rosenville analysis believes that the main way for business books and other business books to collect data at the research stage is through various business publications and books to report and analyze those prestigious companies, as well as related company documents and company management personnel. Interviews, etc., the data obtained in this way are likely to have been “contaminated” by the halo effect.
In addition to the halo effect, there are a series of illusions that can easily cause researchers to fall into the trap of thinking, such as arbitrary causality, a single explanation, focusing only on the winner, and looking at the company’s performance in isolation from the competitive situation. Therefore, it is not surprising that researchers have encountered many difficulties in finding the drivers of company performance.
Even if we avoid the halo effect, the investigation is conducted vertically,Still can not avoid the problem that various explanations can be replaced with each other. There are countless reasons behind the company’s performance. I want to assert how hard a certain factor is ….
The problems of commercial best-selling books are not only related to the flaws of the author ’s research logic, but also related to the potential psychological needs of the readers of these books. Managers are busy people, on the one hand, they must bear the pressure of value-added income generation, and on the other hand, they must think about bringing more benefits to shareholders. They naturally prefer some ready-made answers, easy-to-learn moves, and fantasy to lead their competitors.
In Rosenwig ’s view, the authors of business books are facing such psychological needs, telling managers the success stories that follow a few rules one by one. If there are differences between them, it is that some stories are better told. For example, “From Excellence to Excellence” seems to be better: its basic composition coincides with the classic narrative structure of “sparrow changes to phoenix”. “Responding to the eternal dream and deepest fantasy in our hearts.”
After breaking the myths of the “eternal law” revealed by business bestsellers, Rosenville believes that the ability to develop critical thinking is important for managers to distinguish reliable from unreliable discoveries. Discrimination. They need to realize that success is not just following a few formulas, but that they must make decisions and implement them at any time in uncertain situations.
Decision-making is fraught with danger because it can only be based on our guesses about customers, opponents, technology, and our own internal capabilities; execution is equally fickle, because the true state of management is always more uncertain than we think Well-established practices may not be suitable for other companies. “All this shows that those tempting stories are untenable, and there is no universal formula for success in the world.”
In the new edition of 2020, Rosenweis added two chapters, namely Chapter 11 “Greedy and the Great Economic Recession” (an analysis of the causes of the 2008 financial crisis) and Chapter 12 “Return to the Present” (Introduce the latest progress of the cases and characters involved in the 2007 edition). In the eleventh chapter, the author refuted the popular opinions after the 2008 financial crisis.
The author points out that the view that attributed the financial crisis to greed, while satisfying the public ’s expectations of a simple and satisfactory explanation, is actually just another example of the halo effect. . This example once again reveals to us the reason of this cognitive trap that is difficult to avoid: once the result is known, people often can’t wait to label the facts, but they can’t perceive the truth when things happen.
Good questions and good answers
In Rosenwerk ’s view, the flaws in the aforementioned logical premises in many business bestsellers distorted our understanding of the company ’s performanceTherefore, they are not only worthless, but also poisoned in the business world, which is not harmful. Such a totally negative position on commercial bestsellers seems too one-sided. The meaning of business bestsellers is not entirely in the “several attributes of successful companies” that they summarize and elaborate, but their meaning also lies in raising good questions for the business community and the whole society: what kind of company is a good company? Why are some companies able to survive and develop in the ever-changing market environment?
From “Pursuit of Excellence” to “Everything in the Foundation” to “From Excellence to Excellence”, these several commercial bestsellers seem to be trying to answer such questions, and have made many people excited. Rather than saying that they are selling well because they “concluded the classic narrative structure of ‘sparrows becoming phoenixes'” and told a good story, it is better to say that they throw out an ultimate suspense of enterprise management, so they quickly catch up It has caught people’s attention and caused people’s extensive attention and thinking. Bestsellers have a mechanism for bestsellers. They may not necessarily need to be so scientific, as long as they are very rigorous and scientific. The key question is whether the theme of the book can impress the readers and the public.
Rosenvy believes that good research must first follow the logic of science, and increase the reliability of the data as much as possible in the research process. For example, to avoid the illusion of “focusing on the winner” when selecting samples, use the “double blind method” Do management interviews, try to supplement the lack of horizontal data with vertical data, etc.
He cited several examples of studies that meet these requirements, such as the study of the relationship between specific management behaviors and corporate performance by Nick Bloom and Stephen Dougan. The study concluded that specific management behaviors may affect corporate performance 10%, which means that if a company adopts the best management methods in all aspects, its performance will be 10% higher than those of other backward companies-but Bloom and Dougan are in the research conclusion Also pointed out that there is no guarantee that a company will succeed after adopting a specific management method, because there are more than 700 sample companies in this study, and the average 10% change in the performance of more than 700 companies does not mean anything to the company. influences. It seems that truly rigorous research certainly lacks exciting storytelling and is naturally less attractive.
According to Rosenville ’s opinion, to get rid of the “level of storytelling” in business books, we must achieve something like this, “the research process is designed precisely and the execution process is serious and powerful.” But we should also see that business research and commentary have evolved into an ecosystem including academic, consulting, media, publishing, and many other communities. Different communities have their own missions, characteristics, and internal laws. A single standard to measure and evaluate all groups is sometimes inevitably biased.
Finally, good questions do not necessarily have good answers, or even no answers at all. For example, “What is the meaning of life?” What a good question, humans try to answer, and then developThere is a whole set of philosophy and religion, but there still seems to be no perfect answer.
“What kind of company is a good company” is also a good question, but there seems to be no good answer. There seems to be no standard answer to such questions, but it is worth asking people to ask and continue to explore and find. Because in a sense, these problems are people’s ideals and pursuits. They hope to have an enterprise organization that will always remain competitive, and hope that such an organization meets the desire of human nature.
Book title:
“Harvard Negotiation Thinking: International Negotiation Experts teach you how to get rid of communication difficulties”
Author: Donnie Ai Rubenstein
Publishing time: April 2020
Publisher: CITIC Publishing House