Empirical Roundup: Zombies, Massages & IVF

Get Ur Freek On

Previously we have talked about evidence-based management and what stops it from happening. Lets see what’s popped up recently. My commentary will largely be limited to memes. Bite me, Reviewer 2.

1. Zombie leadership: Dead ideas that still walk among us - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1048984323000966

“Considerable progress has been made in the field of leadership in recent years. However, we argue that this is undermined by a strong residual commitment to an older set of ideas which have been repeatedly debunked but which nevertheless resolutely refuse to die.”

Axioms of Zombie Leadership:

1. Leadership is all about leaders

2. There are specific qualities that all great leaders ‘have’

3. There are specific things that all great leaders do

4. We all know a great leader when we see one

5. All leadership is the same

6. Leadership is a special skill limited to special people

7. Leadership is always good and it is always good for everyone

8. People can’t cope without leaders

Championing theoretical and practical alternatives to Zombie Leadership. Four key priorities

1. Champion approaches that broaden our understanding of leadership beyond leaders.

2. Champion approaches that see leadership as a process to which everyone can, and needs to, contribute.

3. Champion approaches that recognize that success depends upon connections between leaders and their group.

4. Champion approaches to leadership development that prioritize these objectives.

Ultimately, then, our analysis of zombie leadership is, above all, an invitation to join — and to both follow and lead — the Anti-Zombie Leadership Alliance.

Alex Haslam even has some merch in mind.

2. Employee well-being outcomes from individual-level mental health interventions: Cross-sectional evidence from the United Kingdom - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/irj.12418

Initiatives that promote mental well-being are formally recommended for all British workers, with many practices targeting change in individual workers' resources. While the existing evidence is generally positive about these interventions, disagreement is increasing because of concerns that individual-level interventions do not engage with working conditions… Overall, results suggest interventions are not providing additional or appropriate resources in response to job demands.

Rather trying to stop overworked people having breakdowns by offering them a massage, stop them from having a breakdown by giving them less work.

3. Freek Vermeulen - Why Management Myths Persist

In short: Collective Inertia, Causal Ambiguity, Management Myopia, Self-Perpetuating Myths, Selection Bias. The IVF story is in the video below.

Vermeulen’s Breaking Bad Habits looks like it would pair well with The Stupidity Paradox. The co-author of the latter was also a co-author of the Zombie paper.

Notes:

• “Roll Safe” actually seems like a lovely guy.

• Vince McMahon probably not so much.