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The Halo Effect - Phil Rosenzweig

By Josh Kaufman

In this book, Phil Rosenzweig kills all of the sacred cows of modern management theory, grinds them up into hamburger, adds a massive pile of charcoal, strikes a match, and creates a bonfire large enough to be seen from space.

In The Halo Effect, Rosenzweig argues that most business managers and the business press are systematically delusional when it comes to picking theories about the reasons for strong company performance.

The nine delusions covered in this book read like a management-oriented version of How to Lie with Statistics: confusing temporary fortune with lasting success, correlation vs. causation errors, pervasive sample bias, favoring for single explanations instead of multiple factors, inadequate business comparisons, poor data quality, comparing results on absolute instead of relative terms, and searching for the “formula” for perpetual success.

Rosenzweig isn’t shy about kicking butt and taking names: you’ll learn why Good to Great, Built to Last, In Search of Excellence, and other high-profile business books of the past few decades have more value as “business bedtime stories” than as blueprints for improving company performance.

After reading The Halo Effect, you’ll develop a healthy degree of skepticism when it comes to the latest management fads, be able to identify when you’re in danger of succumbing to wishful thinking, and be better prepared to avoid falling for the promise of a simple solution to management issues.

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