BKHUMEQU.RVW 990530 "The Human Equation", Jeffrey Pfeffer, 1998, 0-87584-841-9, U$24.95 %A Jeffrey Pfeffer %C 60 Harvard Way, Boston MA 02163 %D 1998 %G 0-87584-841-9 %I Harvard Business School Press %O U$24.95 800-545-7685 fax 617-496-8866 http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu %O http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0875848419/robsladesinterne %P 345 p. %T "The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First" Management is hard. It involves balancing a bewildering variety of conflicting, or, at best, orthogonal factors. The tenets resist codification. It has to deal with the least tractable objects in the known universe: human beings. And, management is important. Good management can make a business with the most mundane and undifferentiated of products thrive: bad management can kill the most desperately needed service. With these two elements of consequence and challenge, then, it is almost axiomatic that there will be a market, and a large one, for books on management. Given demand, of course, a supply rushes in to take advantage of it. Therefore, we have a plethora of books on management, but, since management is hard; and writing is hard; most of these books have value only in the eyes of publicists and marketers. A few stand out. About forty years ago there was an article, rather than a book, that rocked the business establishment. It posited that the traditional "Brand X" style of "show 'em who's boss" management might be less effective than paying attention to your people. Twenty years later, a book tried to pursue the components of excellence, and zeroed in on the rather neglected aspect of paying attention to people. Now, Pfeffer asserts that we can best build the bottom line by paying attention to our people. It's often been said that we require much more reminding than we ever need teaching. This book will be a classic. Get it, read it, and implement it now, in order to take the greatest advantage over the longest time. With respect to those of us who do actual reviews, rather than merely reprinting recycled press releases, it is often felt that we somehow enjoy ripping a book (or other item) to shreds. The plain fact is that it is a lot easier to review a bad product than a good one. Identifying and pointing out flaws is fairly easy, and so a bad product gives you a lot more material to write about. But, while we can all spot a goof, how do you explain greatness? What do you say, beyond, "This is a good book. Buy it." Interestingly, Pfeffer writes something to this effect in chapter four, while pointing out some of the tragically flawed beliefs and practices of modern business. He notes that the formal evaluation process, so beloved of management, requires that experts explain their conclusions to non-experts. However, experts make decisions based on accumulated experience and an almost intuitive level of knowledge. This reasoning generally cannot be explained to novices, who can only rely on common knowledge. The explanation, therefore, must proceed at the novice level. As the old saw has it, if you can tell the difference between good advice and bad advice, you don't need any advice. If an institution has need of expert advice, then the organization obviously does not command the expertise to fully evaluate that advice. The requirement to have the expert explain conclusions means that easy, and therefore unimportant, decisions can be easily explained, while more complicated, and significant, resolutions will be much harder to explain, and thus have less chance of survival. Those, then, who have been kind enough to grant me "expert" status in this reviewing game will probably have already left for the bookstore, and I rather suspect that they will be the ones to benefit most from Pfeffer's book. For the audience now remaining, I will attempt to convince you, as well. The author's attitude to his own book is very interesting. While Pfeffer believes in what he is saying, he is well aware that what he writes is not going to make for actual organizational change, in most cases. Only half will believe in what he says; of the half that believe, only half will make more than a token effort at change; of the quarter who believe and try to make significant changes, only half will let the experiment run long enough to see results. (However, his admission of this reality doesn't appear until the end of chapter one, and a note that many managers may not be in a position even to try the program is almost the last point in the entire book.) Nevertheless, the author's mildly gloomy perception forms the structure of the book: part one outlines people-centred management, while part two examines all the barriers arrayed against those who would try it. Chapter one looks at the received business wisdom about "going global," becoming "lean and mean," and "re-inventing" the corporation- -and, through citation of extensive business studies, shows that the common body of knowledge is all wrong. (It's a bit like "Four Days with Dr. Deming" [cf. BKDEMING.RVW] with somewhat more authority.) The real heart of part one is probably the business case, supported by studies, for managing people properly, in chapter two. The outline for people-centred, high performance, or high commitment management is given in chapter three. While training, team organization, job security, and elimination of status distinctions all play a part in the practice, the material is more of a series of examples since people-orientation, almost by definition, resists definition. Chapter four notes that it is not good enough to talk the talk: you also have to walk the walk. Chapter five is almost chapter one in more detail, showing how modern (and particularly American) management training has concentrated on financial metrics to the detriment of overall regulation, and often to the disadvantage of business. The lack of job security is clearly shown, in chapter six, to be behind the loss of employee loyalty. Common mistakes in pay rate considerations are reviewed in chapter seven. Unions are not bashed in chapter eight. Perhaps the most startling material is that in chapter nine, noting a place for public policy. The final chapter is a summary. What differentiates Pfeffer's tome from a number of texts with similar theses is that he moves out of the rationalistic realm; analyzing why doing good should make you do well; and into the area of empirical facts. The work relies very heavily on great volumes of hard, cold business studies that show first, how traditional management practices fail, and then, how humane methods improve the bottom line. In most cases the studies are not merely cited for results; enough of the method is given for the intelligent reader to determine whether the study should be accepted as valid or not. Anecdotal examples are given as well, but they serve merely to illustrate points already well supported. Logical models are not abandoned, but they are used to explain already established facts, instead of attempting to prove speculation. Another aspect that makes a good book more difficult to review is that there is more to it, and therefore, it takes more time to read. There is a lot more "meat" to this work as compared to a great many management tomes--much greater conceptual and informational density. This is what a book should be. The fact that we are surprised at the richness and weight of Pfeffer's text is rather disturbing. We should, rather, be astonished at the fluff and lightness of so many of its rivals. (Although, truth to tell, it hasn't much competition.) This book is not about quick fixes: Pfeffer frequently points out that changing to a people-centred approach will not necessarily show results even within one or two years. This is not a management cookbook: the material keeps repeating that proper management is a hard task, and the benefit lies in your competition's unwillingness to do it. Decades of rapacious, short term, profit-taking mismanagement have sadly damaged not just individual companies, but an entire industrial and business base, with results as far reaching as the current mythical technology labour shortage. This volume is a blueprint for the long, hard job of rebuilding needed to get back on track--and an indication of the rewards for those willing to do the work. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1999 BKHUMEQU.RVW 990530