Summarize Pfeffer and Sutton's seven implementation principles to help companies that are committed to profit from evidence-based management. Placing yourself in the position of the CEO of Safe Home, a home-security company, give an example of how you might apply three of the implementation principles to your business.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Evidence-based decision making means managers make decisions based on what actually works. They face the hard facts and use the best evidence to help navigate the competitive environment.

Pfeffer and Sutton identify seven implementation principles to help companies that are committed to doing what it takes to profit from evidence-based management:

1. Treat your organization as an unfinished prototype. Your home-security company provides home monitoring, but what other services can the company provide to homeowners? Are you selling security services—or are you selling something less tangible, such as peace of mind? Until recently, security systems were controlled with a keypad. Now, customers want apps on their smartphones, so you must keep innovating to keep up with your market.

2. No brag, just facts. To apply this principle, you will want to spread good news about your company without exaggerating. For example, you might provide data to prospective clients that a Safe Home system decreases by 88% the chances that a house will be robbed.

3. See yourself and your organization as outsiders do. You will want to put yourself in the role of a possible client, evaluating how Safe Home compares to its competitors, such as Slomin's, ADT, and SimpliSafe. You will compare prices and read reviews on the Web to see how your company compares to your competitors.

4. Evidence-based management is not just for senior executives. As the CEO, you will make sure that you emphasize the importance of evidence-based management to your direct reports, telling them to make sure they "cascade" this information down to even the most junior employees.

5. Like everything else, you still need to sell it. As CEO, it's your duty to explain why the principles of evidence-based management will help the company thrive in a heavily competitive business climate. You might give a presentation in which you provide statistics and examples of companies that have succeeded greatly by using evidence-based management.

6. If all else fails, slow the spread of bad practice. As the CEO, you set the tone for your company, but you may realize that certain guidelines or "rules" do not work at Safe Home. Rather than stick to your guns or have slavish adherence to all the tenets of evidence-based management, you may decide to practice "evidence-based misbehavior"—that is, ignore ideas that you know to be wrong.

7. The best diagnostic question: What happens when people fail? While you certainly want to celebrate your successes, you do not want ignore your failures. You want to learn from them. Perhaps you decided not to spend money on marketing this quarter—but ADT did and sent a postcard to all the houses in targeted ZIP codes. As a result, ADT gained business and you lost customers. This situation is painful, but it is a reminder to engage in competitive intelligence on a regular basis and to stay one step ahead of your competitors.