Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time

I had a chance to read an advance copy of this book (and in full disclosure, I endorsed it). This is one of the most important books on leadership that has come out the last decade. Professor Pfeffer of the Stanford Business School is bringing up a central issue on the topic of leadership: how do we know what is effective leadership from practices that aren't? He argues that the entire "leadership industry" as he calls it—management thinkers, executive coaches, CEOs, consultants, executive search firms—often gets it wrong. The title of the first chapter “Why inspiration and fables cause problems and fix nothing” tells you where this book is going. It’s a fascinating read, whether you agree or disagree with Pfeffer's arguments. It gets more provocative: We wish for modest leaders, but many of the best aren’t; we wish that leaders are “authentic” but again many good ones aren’t all the time; and leaders put themselves first (chapter title: Why leaders “eat” first). Backed by research, Pfeffer challenges key conventional wisdoms about leadership. If you’re in the “leadership industry,” this is a must read. If you’re being led by someone, then chapter seven (“Take care of yourself”) is a must read.

Jeffrey Pfeffer, is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He is one of those writers on business issues whose books one should not overlook. His books, The Knowing-Doing Gap, and Power, rank high among business books that must be read. This book is a reflection on a serious problem that is very poorly addressed. There are “too many leadership failures, too many career derailments, and too many toxic workplaces… and there is an almost unimaginably vast, list of leadership catastrophes.” Pfeffer asserts. He brings evidence to show that workplaces around the world are, for the most part “filled with dissatisfied, disengaged employees who do not trust their leaders” and that the leaders themselves are failing at ever increasing speed “in part because they are unprepared for the realities of organizational life.” Some 24% of surveyed employees are actively disengaged! Employees are very unhappy with their leaders: with fully 35 percent of U.S. employees reported that they would be prepared to forfeit pay raises just to see their managers fired! Contrast this with the finding by McKinsey that U.S. companies spend about $14 billion annually on leadership development, (that is some R 140 thousand million – even before our currency tanked!) and yet so many workplaces are staffed by disengaged, disaffected, and dissatisfied employees. The leadership industry in most countries is enormous and still growing. It “has failed over its roughly forty-year history to in any major, meaningful, measurable way improve the human condition, (despite) the thousands of leadership books, talks, blogs, classes, and leadership-development programs seeking to make leaders more effective.” Pfeffer notes. This book is Pfeffer’s attempt to explain why so many leaders fail. He draws on solid argument and evidence, as well as well recognized psychological processes to explain this frightful state. “Around the turn of the twentieth century, medical practice and medical education in America were pretty dismal. People were hawking untested and unproven “cures,” dependent more on their slickness and persuasiveness than on the actual science or medical efficacy of what they were pushing,” Pfeffer explains. When this became clear to the medical authorities, they closed 1/3 of the medical schools, began the licensing of doctors and the regulation of the medical profession. This has greatly increased the efficacy of medicines and the practice of doctors. The leadership industry, in its current state “also has its share of quacks and sham artists who sell promises and stories, some true, some not, but all of them inspirational and comfortable, with not much follow-up to see what really does work and what doesn’t,” Pfeffer notes. The parallels between these two industries are striking. Medicine is research-based and adapts and evolves with the growth of peer reviewed evidence. New medicines and techniques are constantly reviewed and revised based on their efficacy. In contrast, the leadership industry lacks this rigour. It does not have clear criteria by which to measure what makes a better leader. “Performance? And if so, over what time period and using what metrics? Holding on to your job as a leader? Obtaining the highest-possible salary for yourself? Moving on to a more prestigious position in another company as quickly as possible? Increasing employee engagement and reducing turnover?” Pfeffer asks. What specific workplace conditions should leaders be held accountable for improving? Why don’t our leadership programmes work? Consider the last one you attended and see how many of these more common attributes were present. “Not only do many of the leadership industry’s participants have no particular qualifications or training germane to their activities, but many also seem to possess little of the interest or intellectual curiosity that would cause them to do the work required to read and learn so as to build their expertise,” Pfeffer asserts. Instead, the leadership development is filled with the retelling of myths and inspiring stories that are “worse than useless for creating change.” There are a number of commonly accepted leadership traits that are taken as almost self-evident truths. These include humility, truth telling, modesty, authenticity and so forth. Pffefer debunks each with clarity and precision, and a single purpose: if we have been teaching that great leaders require these traits and they are not the traits required, that alone is a meaningful contribution to what doesn’t work, even if not yet, what does work. Take the need for authenticity, expressing what you really feel, doing what your feel is right, always and under all circumstances. This is often held up as the mark of a great leader. Pfeffer uses the example of Alison Davis-Blake, Dean of the Business School at the University of Michigan to illustrate his view. Within her first two years, she hired 21 new faculty members, increased undergraduate student numbers by 20%, introduced new master’s programmes, and facilitated raising $100 million for the business school. For any Dean to achieve this, they require qualities much the opposite of Davis-Blake’s introversion and a reluctance to speak. Quite the opposite of “authenticity”, leaders in the real world must be able to put on a show. It would be an error to foster being authentic as a desirable leadership trait. Setting unrealistic expectations for leaders must be a contributor to leadership failure. No, humility is not what make for leaders who deliver, nor is modesty, truth telling, servant-style leadership, and more, Pfeffer argues with cogency and evidence. Leadership BS was written to cause people to “rethink, to reconceptualize, and to reorient their behaviors concerning the important topic of leadership… it encourages everyone to finally stop accepting sugar-laced but toxic potions as cures.” Pfeffer’s call for accurate and comprehensive data, and development back-up by standards and measurements, that are made visible through charts, has the potential to do for leadership what it did for medicine. Readability Light -+--- Serious Insights High +---- Low Practical High ----+ Low Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy

I'd give it 6 stars had they been available. Iconoclastic analysis delivered with a style reminiscent of Lewis Lapham. I reviewed it on my KHIT.org blog, where I rant a lot on "leadership" issues in the fractious health care space (an arena rife with dystopian, Machiavellian BS). After I finished I bought my wife a hardcopy for her convenience. She's a C-Suite exec at the top of her game, an adroit survivor of the shark-infested corporate waters, a woman Corporate Director of Quality in a construction and engineering firm. She probably could have written this book. Midway through I recall thinking "uh-oh, are we gonna go all Hoover Institute here?" No. In the end, the book is hardly ideological. It's actually quite balance and humane. My only minor reservation is the author's claim that the book is "scientific." Citing myriad studies is a good and necessary thing. Whether this rises in the aggregate to scientific "meta-analysis" is another matter. The findings are "qualitative" to a great degree, and the risks of "confirmation bias" and "publication bias" remain a potentially nagging question. Still, there are myriad eye-rolling examples of irony, paradox, Dlibert-Zone wrong-headedness and, well, BS. I recall thinking of the joke about DC. It applies to corporate environments as well. "If you want a friend (in the workplace), get a dog." All of the cherubic chatter about the humanistic-value leadership "oughts," corporate cultures remain largely transactional, future-oriented, and carnivorous. No one gives a flip about what you've accomplished. What matters is the assessment of your future value. And notwithstanding that you may be in a collegial "Just Culture" today, it will likely not remain so. Shorter Pfeffer: "Keep Your Ear to the Ground, and Your Powder Dry."

This book is a thorough indictment of the "Leadership Industry" which has for decades been paid to tell inspiring stories of how sweetness and good deeds make better leaders--despite the obvious fact that many leaders climb to the top over the bodies of those who get taken advantage of. In that sense, the main title is spot on: it calls "BS" on Leadership Industry fantasies. However, the subtitle is almost completely misleading--this book will not help fix workplaces, or more than a few careers. Mr Pfeffer spends 80% of the book documenting that selfish, backstabbing, dishonest behaviors pay handsomely in the modern Western business world, and his advice at the end boils down to "do as the winners do, or suffer as their employees do." I have to give The author credit for his truthfulness, and for including extensive references for his facts. It is probably difficult to argue with him even if you haven't, as I have, spent decades in big organizations watching the self-serving tactics of those who rise to power. But having read so many pages describing the situation, I expected a lot more at the end, definitely more than what amounts to accepting the situation at it is, which is all he has to offer. This was like reading a murder mystery, but having the detective conclude the crime cannot be solved. I feel the author just ran out of steam and stopped typing. He describes a trend over several decades toward greater employee dissatisfaction, quicker employee turnover, and ever shorter--yet ever more lucrative--executive tenures. He presents this in the tone of a problem, something to be solved. But he doesn't have a solution, nor has he been brave enough to say where this trend is taking us. Having chickened out on prognostication, he thus neatly avoids the implication that something could or should be done to change the trend.

I just wanted to say thank you Jeffrey for a wonderful book on leadership. You have validated almost everything I witnessed in my past career as a consultant and director. I have always maintained that you have to lie, steal and cheat to get to the top and once there, continue to do this to stay there. Unfortunately or possibly fortunately, I never gave into to those and found myself where I started, back as a staffer in the government. I felt compelled to write to you because as I finished your book I was sitting in the concierge lounge of a Marriott listening to two older and very distinguished gentlemen discuss how they could "control" and "manipulate" their next venture to make a tremendous amount of money. In a way, they and so many other CXO / leader types I have met in my life are exactly as you describe and as I finished your book I reminded myself that you don’t have to be like that to be a good or even successful leader. I guess that is why so many people that have worked for me over the years often remind me that I am more of leader than I know. Again, thanks for reminding me what a true leader really is and giving me some extra tools to add to my leadership bag.

This book is very much to the point and interesting. Some of the interesting things that this book mentions are as follows: A lot of what people claim about leadership is based more on hope than reality. Many times leaders fail themselves, their customers, their stockholders, and their employees. No human being is without fault. All human beings are imperfect. The book mentions that with about $7000 George Zimmer in 1973 founded the Men’s Wearhouse. In 2011, when George Zimmer had reached his early 60’s in age, he and the Board promoted Doug Ewert, a longtime employee to be CEO as George Zimmer stepped into the role as Chairman of the Board Of Directors. In June 2013, George Zimmer was summarily fired. He was thrown out of the company he founded. Employees at the Anchorage, Alaska Men’s Wearhouse walked off the job to express displeasure with the Board’s removal of George Zimmer. The Men’s Wearhouse paid higher wages than a lot of other retail stores. Companies sell out, leaders retire or die, and the new people in charge aren’t the same as the old, particularly in how they relate to and treat employees. If people see they will not get sufficient recognition for good work because the leaders hog all the credit, they may reduce their efforts.

I am in the Biotech and Pharma industry and have seen so much leadership BS in organizations big and small. What they tell you is not how they are conducting business, even where human health is concerned! I tried speaking up, but got into trouble or was pushed into a corner (at companies like Roche Molecular Diagnostics). It would literally eat me on the inside as to why things weren't making sense, or why most people continue to brown-nose the BS artists that called themselves leaders (like at Roche Molecular Diagnostics). I honestly felt validated in every single observation that I have made of these so-called 'leaders' and the subservient followers. I am at peace. I think I now know what to do to navigate the extremely toxic work organizations where people who have no business calling themselves leaders, over promote themselves. Thank You Dr.Pfeffer. Wish I had heard about your work sooner.

I first came across Pfeffer's work in a business school class in roughly 2000 or so. I am not exaggerating when I say that "Managing with Power" has helped my career greatly. His most recent work may well have a similar impact, at least for me. "Leadership BS" effectively captures a concept that is absolutely prevalent in today's business world. Who among us cannot look around us and see poor leadership? Perhaps a look in the mirror might even cause us to cringe at times. Whereas I agree with some of the words in the negative reviews, I can't help but coming back to a simple truth. I agree with Jeff. In fact, some of the naysayers actually seem to reinforce his point with their comments - reading something that is negative is not uplifting. The sober truth rarely is, unfortunately. If you internalize the lessons, this book may well change your career. It won't, however, make you feel better as you walk into that next all day offsite on leadership at your workplace. Concepts like those expressed in Jeff's book are bound to inspire a couple of ratings of one or two, as these ideas are polarizing. That's okay. I recommend that potential readers spend some time with this material regardless. Quite frankly, you will probably be better off reading this book even if you completely reject Pfeffer's entire premise. Just as philosopher Herbert Spencer taught, "There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which can not fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance-that principle is contempt prior to investigation."