Does Management Actually Matter? One Trial Says Yes.
A randomised trial in Indian textile mills cut quality defects 43% and inventory 22%. The productivity result everyone quotes is the weakest one.
Leadership
Understanding how responsibility changes as you progress.
What changes when the work becomes other people: the evidence on whether management quality matters, how hiring decisions actually predict performance, and why most people take a management role for the wrong reason.
5 pieces
All pieces in Leadership
Two Famous Management Statistics That Do Not Hold Up
Managers drive 70% of engagement variance. Firms pick the wrong manager 82% of the time. Neither claim has a published derivation.
Why Most People Become Managers Before They’re Ready
Management is usually the only promotion on offer, so people take it. That is an organisational design failure, not a personal one.
The Peter Principle Is Real. Someone Finally Measured It.
A study of 38,843 sales workers found that the better someone sold, the worse they managed. Firms promoted them anyway, and knew they were trading.
Unstructured Interviews Can Make Hiring Decisions Worse
In one experiment, interviewers given deliberately random answers formed confident impressions. Interviewing made the predictions worse than the file alone.