Further to the last post, Paul Gibbons asks: “The deep question is why the "evidence-based" revolution hasn't taken root. It transformed medicine in about a decade, but my heroes have been at it longer than that.”
I’m sure Paul has his own theories on that. Here are some hypotheses:
The first is a simple challenge to his proposition. Modern medical research began in 1948 with the first proper RCTs and then evidence-based medicine began to appear in the early 1980s. It took over 30 years from the introduction of the RCT before EBM properly emerged. Between 1980 and 2000, there was an uptake of evidence-based assessment by government agencies and health insurers. By 2009, about 50% of UK medical schools teach EBM. A significant number of medical misdiagnoses still happen every year. So the process has happened in fits and starts. However I would agree that EBMa has lagged EBM.
Management lacks an assessment tool as robust as the RCT. Obviously RCTs are not the only assessment tool. But, in general, techniques to assess the impact of different interventions on companies are not as well-developed as those in medicine. And what assessment tools exist are not enforced in any meaningful way. As I noted before, no one needs FDA approval to become a LinkedIn Thought Leader.
Sources of management advice are often commercially compromised. Typically they charge users a fee for service so will follow the fads and fashions that their customers are interested in. The blind are leading the blind while both parties yell how awesome the other one is.
The trademarking of particular methods and approaches often means that any testing that does happen cannot be replicated. A similar issue can be found with drug companies - which is why they can and should be regulated up the wazoo. And when that regulation fails, millions of people, say, get addicted to opioids and many of them die. The enemy of commerce may be commerce itself.
Many academics are primarily interested in career advancement through the academy via publishing research in academic journals. What research they conduct stays largely unread - which is not necessarily a bad thing because it’s largely unreadable.
Most managers are woefully undereducated. Doctors require years of training. Many MBAs can be completed in less than 12 months. Many managers do not have an MBA. No managers need to be board certified to practice.
When doctors screw up, they get sued. Peddlers of management advice rarely get sanctioned and managers who follow that advice only get sued if they break a relatively narrow set of rules. The bar for negligence is too high.
Those who should be regulating businesses typically only look at a few areas - e.g. financial viability (as reflected in financial accounts and reporting) or health and safety. There is no annual report that audits the initiatives that the organization has undertaken. Instead there is a picture of the CEO with their arms crossed trying and failing to look authoritative yet approachable and some verbiage about how awesome everything is.
Those who might exercise control (i.e. investors and boards) are even less knowledgeable than the managers who supposedly work for them.
Most managers hate looking wrong and would rather cover up a mistake than admit to it.
Markets are not perfect. While in theory better managed companies should outperform and ultimately replace more poorly managed ones, in practice, badly managed companies can keep going for a long time (esp. if they occupy a monopolistic or protected position in the economy). The market can stay crazy far longer than you can stay solvent - or indeed sane.
Many successful management tools are simple and make the users feel good. Regardless of whether they are true or not.
Management is very much fad and fashion driven. No one wants to look out of touch or out of date. We don’t care if the Tomato Girl Summer look is true or not, simply whether our Insta followers go up.
EBMa has sometimes been rolled out in dumb ways. Telling people they need to follow a piece of academic research or some abstract standard that may not be relevant to them. Not properly understanding the context. Not reading the politics of the organization.
Assuming that EBMa is the same as analytics and just putting in another dashboard.
EBMa just sounds really hard and a bit of a bummer.
It’s not all doom and gloom. But as noted yesterday: Delusions are inexhaustible…