I watched the video of his Google talk on his book Leadership BS, where he was interviewed by Karen May, who I think functions in management development at the company. Several take-aways:
1. Management advice is a field filled with baloney sandwiches, which can be defined as opinions not backed by any statistical evidence. Pfeffer is very strong on that point.
2. There is an inherent tension in leadership between doing what is best for the leader’s career, doing what is best for organizational success, and doing what is best for employees. You can never attain perfect alignment of those.
3. Intellectual curiosity is an important but all-too-rare trait at high levels in a company. One symptom is that many executives do not read any books at all.
About minute 32 or 33 of the video, in the midst of all this talk about the need to be evidence-based and scientific rather than base leadership behavior on hunches and anecdotes, Karen May says that Google prides itself on looking at evidence and data in its management approach. The video was shot in November of 2015. Since then, we have seen James Damore fired for exhibiting these traits. Which relates to another take-away:
4. Hypocrisy is pervasive in the workplace, as Robin Hanson could have told you. Pfeffer points out that what leaders say they value and how they actually behave are not necessarily aligned. So before you believe “How to work with Arnold” you should do some due diligence and talk to people who have worked with me.
By the way, here was my route to the Pfeffer video:
The Medium site suggested to me that I would like Ryan Holiday’s list of book recommendations, so I checked it out. These recommendations included Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power. I was intrigued by the Kindle sample, but not convinced to buy it. So I researched Greene on Wikipedia, and I found a Wikipedia page on that specific book. The Wikipedia article included a quote from Pfeffer complaining that the book was not evidence-based. So then I looked up Pfeffer. I am going to investigate Pfeffer’s book on power. Meanwhile, when I Googled Pfeffer, I found many YouTube videos. So far, I have only watched the one.
Might I suggest Gerald M. Weinberg’s, “Becoming a Technical Leader: An Organic Problem Solving Approach” – (available from several sources).
The essence of the book and story is condensed in a passage in the introduction: (I’m paraphrasing here)
“Leadership is an act of creating an environment where people are empowered.”
It has been my experience that true leaders focus their attentions on creating better environments, rather than attempting to create better people.
I think Pfeffer has a point (I have listened to many video’s, not read his book yet) but if you’re interested in power then also listen to the video’s of Robert Caro. He has studied power accumulation in his biographies (I’m reading his book).
https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/robert-caro-power-reveals-and-not-always-for-the-better-a3104581.html
And recently I discovered the YouTube lectures of Stephen Kotkin, the Stalin biographer. He also has many interesting observations on power accumulation (but I’m afraid his book would be much too depressing).
In my career I think I’ve observed four categories of leaders.
1. Great
2. Good / Adequate
3. Poor
4. Toxic
Producing great leaders, or making oneself in to a great leader, is incredibly challenging. It’s probably not wortwhile to try and learn that kind of stuff from an airport book, except to the extent it gives one a kind of short-lived motivation and reflection boost.
On the other hand, I think one can reach good / adequate by avoiding the failure modes and bad practices of the poor and toxic leaders, which are much easier to define and identify (though there are some subtleties here, sometimes people unfairly mistake unavoidable annoyances and frustrations and circumstances they simply don’t like and blame them on “bad leadership”.)
A common aspect of bad leadership I’ve seen many times in my own life is failure to appreciate trade offs and trying to have one’s cake and eat it too, with regards to subordinate performance and empowerment.
For example, deadlines (and missing them) are a big deal anywhere you go, but it’s not uncommon for bad leaders to try to hold intermediaries or subordinate managers accountable without giving them the authority to “rock the boat” by laying the hammer down or “naming and shaming” when necessary. If accountability turns out to be a lot of bluffing, then it tends to only take one or two missed deadlines without consequence to completely reset corporate culture to a bad equilibrium. That in turn gives rise to an insouciant mindset in which exaggeration becomes normal and every appeal to urgency is treated as crying wolf.
Many of the good / adequate leaders I’ve observed are that way mostly by taking care not to do demoralizing things like that, which is good enough to sustain an inherited healthy equilibrium.
Pfeffer is not necessarily more scientific on power, but focuses his analysis on modern corporations using things like HR review data, but reads largely anecdotal. It has more of an organizational psychology perspective.
Greene is more like collecting and updating ideas from people like Machiavelli in terms of thinking through strategies in dealing with various situations. It has more of a self help perspective.
I enjoyed both.
I have read/listened to 48 Laws of Power. I found it a good source of historical anecdotes, some old and some new to me, but the overall philosophy was weak, which made the author’s confident prose a bit grating.
I read it like I would listen to a friend at the bar, genuinely interested in the story, a smile on my face but knowing there was a lot of bullshit and bravado in the things said and a lot of things unsaid.
If you want an effective data-driven management book, I don’t think there is a better one than “Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter” by Wiseman and Mckeown.
Don’t bother reading leadership books. Just watch the HBO TV series “Band of Brothers” and observe the different styles of leadership on display there in.
When I took over a team of 70 policy researchers several years ago, I vowed that I would never be like the absentee captain “Foxhole” Norman – a poor leader in Handle’s list above, nor would I be like my predecessor who was a lot like the martinet Captain Sobol – a toxic leader in Handle’s list. I like to think that I was a good leader.