Flawed Advice and the Management Trap: How Managers Can Know When They're Getting Good Advice and When They're Not 1st Edition

by Chris Argyris (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0195132861

ISBN-10: 0195132866

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Flawed Advice and the Management Trap: How Managers Can Know When They're Getting Good Advice and When They're Not is the first book to show how and why so much of today's business advice is flawed, and how managers and executives can better evaluate advice given to their firms
Practitioners and scholars agree that businesses in the coming millennium will be managed differently than firms of the 20th century. And getting there from here, according to today's best advice, will require creative change. In this pioneering work, Argyris, one of the world's leading organizational thinkers, reviews a wide array of business advice from the best and brightest thinkers and consultants and concludes that as appealing as their ideas may be, most of them are simply not workable. They are too full of abstract claims, logical gaps, and inconsistencies, to be useful. And ironically, even when their recommendations are implemented correctly, the result is often failure. Why do these gaps in logic exist, and how can they be more effectively discovered? Applying a disciplined critique to numerous representative examples of advice about leadership, learning, change, and employee commitment, Argyris shows readers how to be more critical of the advice they are given, how to learn new approaches for appraising employee performance, and how to generate an internal commitment to values and better strategy.
In our ever expanding global market, innovative business advice is at a premium, and giving this advice has become a lucrative industry in and of itself. This book provides the critical lens necessary to evaluate which advice is best for your organization.

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Amazon.com Review

Management consulting is big business. Consultants often make very good money, and the good ones throw intriguing ideas on the table and get people excited about their work. But is any of their advice actually useful? Does it get implemented and lead to more productive workplaces? Chris Argyris thinks that most of it doesn't work, because it has too many "abstract claims, inconsistencies, and logical gaps to be useful as a concrete basis for concrete actions in concrete settings." No matter what managers hear from consultants, they ultimately resort to these five behaviors, according to Argyris: State a message that's inconsistent ("You're in charge of this, but check in with Steve"); act as if it's not inconsistent; make the inconsistency undiscussable; make the undiscussability undiscussable; act as if you're not doing any of the above. Flawed Advice and the Management Trap shows managers how to break out. He shows that a choice is sound when the emphasis is on facts and accumulated data and isn't influenced by the relative power positions of the people involved.

Top company managers and human-resources professionals will probably find this book most interesting. For them, the ideas in Flawed Advice and the Management Trap show the path away from a management style that breeds resentment and internecine warfare and points toward one that allows the facts to speak for themselves. --Lou Schuler

About the Author

Chris Argyris is James Bryant Conant Professor of Orgnizational Behavior, Emeritus at Harvard University.

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Technical Details

Publisher

‎Oxford University Press; 1st edition (January 13, 2000)

Language

‎English

Hardcover

‎272 pages

ISBN-10

‎0195132866

ISBN-13

‎978-0195132861

Item Weight

‎1.24 pounds

Dimensions

‎9.21 x 0.63 x 6.14 inches

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Chris Argyris

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Chris Argyris is the James Conant Professor of Education and Organizational Behavior Emeritus at Harvard University. He has consulted to numerous private and governmental organizations. He has received many awards including thirteen honorary degrees and Lifetime's Contributions Awards from the Academy of Management, American Psychological Association, and American Society of Training Directors. His most recent books are, Flawed Advice and the Management Trap (OUP, 1999), and Reasons and Rationalizations (OUP, 2004). A chair professorship was established in 1994 at Yale University. He is a Director Emeritus of Monitor Group.

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Maxim Masiutin

tools to examine advices

Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2003

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The author presents tools to examine advices from executives, change consultants, academics, etc., and offers four basic tests for the actionability of advice. The good advice should specify the detailed, concrete behaviors required to achieve the intended consequences; it must be crafted in the form of designs that contain causal statements; people must have, or be able to be taught, the concepts and skills required to implement those causal statements; and the context in which it is to be implemented does not prevent its implementation.
Argyris' theory of good advice, being highly practical and actionable, is based on the author's theoretical framework of "Model-II", exposed in his book "Organizational Learning II", co-authored with Donald Schoen.
The book does also contain a brilliant section about effective strategic choices, written by Roger Martin in very friendly tone. A high-quality strategic choice, according to Martin, possesses four key attributes: it is genuine; it is sound; it is actionable; and it is compelling. The section uncovers these principles in details.
The book shows the difference between external and internal employee commitment to the advices and helps to create and foster internal commitment.
You can test the actionability of the advices given in this book using these advices themselves.
I would recommend "Organizational Learning II: Theory, Method and Practice" prior to reading this book. I would also recommend "Leading the Revolution" by Gary Hamel in addition to these books.

9 people found this helpful

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Achmed McGillicuddy

Despite how useful or original his ideas are

Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2016

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Despite how useful or original his ideas are, Argyris is not a good writer. It is torturous to read him.

2 people found this helpful

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T. P. Moran

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2017

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An OD classic

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Stephen Parry

Good Advice is in the eye of the beholder,

Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2009

Let me start by saying this book is much needed by the management community, whether the world of management realises it or not is another question.

The book describes a method for the application of scepticism to management claims and theories, it provides a structure which exposes the logical fallacies inherent in much of what I call pseudo-management ideas.

As a critical thinking primer it works very well, but it will take quite a bit of study and practice to master the ideas to a level which can be applied ad-hoc at management meetings. That said it is something which should become a basic skill for all managers. I suspect managers who like to think about 'why' they think the way they do will readily warm to these ideas.

Chris Argyris realises that the management school of 'Command and Control' has created a climate which does not foster critical thinking (for lots of reasons too long to go into here) ... learning to think clearly is ultimately what this book is all about, often better thinking, leads to better decisions and better organisations.

So where is the flaw in this book about Flaws? it assumes managers want to deconstruct command and control structures to allow them more freedom to think and criticise the status-quo, Alas too many are contented with the way it is. For those managers who want to change this is a great book. The Flaws are only flaws if you want to change.

Highly recommend this book.

4 people found this helpful

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Overcome the Communications and Defensiveness Stalls

Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2000

This is one of the most interesting and useful management books I have read in many years. I would give it 10 Stars if that were possible!
As a management consultant, I always begin assignments by asking our clients what has worked well and what has not worked well with past assignments that consultants have done for them. Almost all of the problems are associated with so-called experts who espoused a theory, had a few examples of where the theory seemed to fit, and left the client with no idea of how to use the advice.
Recently, I had a chance to read Simplicity, which points out that most employees would love to implement new directions, but they almost never receive the information, learning opportunities, or tools to make it possible. As you can imagine, this can lead to a lot of frustration. One of my hypotheses about why this occurs is because the executives espousing the change don't know how to provide the information, learning opportunities, or tools needed.
As someone who reads and reviews a lot of business books, I am constantly struck by the flaws in the arguments that the authors propose. You can imagine how pleased I was to see that Chris Argyris (one of the best management thinkers around) was bothered by many of the same flaws. You will get a chance to see obvious errors in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey and Managing Change by John Kotter, just to mention two examples from the book.
Argyris argues that the authors of these flawed theories are themselves unaware of the flaws. Essentially, all useless management theories have problems in one or more of these areas: the executive is in unilateral control of whatever is going to happen next (rather than letting everyone participate in a meaningful way), the executive focuses on winning instead of losing, the executive suppresses her/his negative feelings as well as those of others, and action is based on rational principles. The result of this approach is to discourage communication, and to make everyone feel defensive. This habit reinforces two of the most common sources of stalled progress in organizations.
Argyris proposes an alternate approach which feature relying on valid information that can be independently verified (99 out of 100 business books have no such grounding); detailed information about what needs to be done; and free and open discussion of the subject and process. Books like Harnessing Complexity and The Soul at Work would applaud these points as well.
Essentially, Argyris says that consultants and authors are proposing command-and-control solutions based on rhetoric that the proposers do not really believe in and apply themselves. That's a pretty big indictment. If you go back and read the early books on subjects like reengineering, TQM, and Economic Value Added, look for the independently verifiable data, encouragement for all to discuss, and directions for how each person in the organization should apply the ideas. If you are like me, you won't find them. Hmmmm! Something to think about!
Argyris indirectly points out that companies discourage people from raising fundamental questions, like what are our objectives in this situation, how are we supposed to reconcile conflicts, and how can we get back on track. That's an essential part of the stalled mindset like so concerns me in my writing and consulting.
In fact, Argyris points out that success can reinforce complacency and command-and-control management by creating the presumption that everything the company does is perfect.
If you can learn to avoid and ignore flawed advice, you'll be on your way to becoming an irresistible growth enterprise! A great step in that process is to help everyone in your organization to learn ways to locate actions that will leave you better off, regardless of what happens next with important forces beyond your control. Get growing faster by helping everyone grow their capabilities in your organization in this critical skill set!

75 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Mr P

Damning book on the behaviours in organizations

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 24, 2016

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For those willing to look deep into human behaviour at work. Particularly if you have a psychology background. It seems fundamental in today's age that organizations should develop an internal awareness of what goes wrong, but they don't. Here Argyris demonstrates on an organizational level the defensive routines of people who run organizations.
It's enlightening but in reality, I can't ever see companies getting out of the ruts they put themselves into. Especially when they are still steered by bosses who prefer to just turn up for their paycheck and not do anything else.

Stephen Parry

Good Advice is in the eye of the beholder

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 5, 2009

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4 people found this helpful

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Flawed Advice and the Management Trap: How Managers Can Know When They're Getting Good Advice and When They're Not 1st Edition

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