The Halo Effect ... and the Eight Other Business Delusions that Deceive Managers------Phil Rosenzweig

Any next door bookshop shall be flooded with the “self-help” management books which tend to teach you how to replicate the success of a “blue-chip” firm in your company. The story line is always similar. A hard nut CEO surrounded by a bunch of buffoons around him to give him the “innovative” ideas and the extra zing. A clear set of mystic alphabets like 5Cs and 7Ps and these consolidated by a very meaningful insight in jargons like Strategy and Execution. Well, that in a “nut” case is defined as a typical business best seller. Such books are scoffed at in the B-school environment as giving a lot of “Gyaan”, an encyclopedic volume filled with jargons meant to confuse and bedazzle any mortal who takes interests in them.

This book by Phil Rosenzweig is a total deviant’s handbook. It has tried rationally and critically why one should not be swayed by the things that are said a lot about the way business is run in the real world. It labors hard to dispel the various myths that have percolated the able minds which run our industry and businesses. Of all the myths, one that is the root cause of all myths is the “halo effect” or the hindsight bias. The author has mentioned 9 delusions that commonly circulate in the elite “business” circles. The dig taken on books like “good to great” and “built to last” is worth reading. In this case, it happens to be one of the best books to read during an MBA course.

The book is a must read to regain some sanity of the multiple variables that play in the nature of doing business and how effective decision making occurs. It also tells us to critically analyze the “news” that is brought by the new-age journalism that so very well surrounds us. Today, there is hardly any difference between worthwhile news and noise. Each and every thing is over-analyzed by a zealous naïveté and then given on a platter to the experts who tend to get swayed by this. The criticism of magazines like “Businessweek” and “Newsweek” is a real eye-opener. The description as to how true leaders are and where can they be found is also worth mentioning. The book reiterates the oft-repeated aphorism that success has many takers and among them are journalists who tend to make meaning out of each nonsense generated about a firm.

Do visit the author’s blog to gain further idea about the book:

http://www.the-halo-effect.com/