Charles Jacobs


This recent book claims that new discoveries in brain science are ‘revolutionising management’. The first page of the book states the author’s case clearly: “It turns out that most of what we thought we knew about management is probably wrong. New research shows that our emotions lead to better business decisions than our logic. Positive and negative feedback don’t only improve performance, they tend to make it worse. The quantifiable objectives that are a critical part of our strategic plans cause us to focus on the short term at the expense of the long term. Many of the management practices we’ve taken for granted are not only ineffective, they actually produce the opposite of what we intend.’ These three orthodoxies are not the author’s only targets – he also, for instance, wants to challenge the traditional management focus on managing behaviour, rather than ideas. The author – Charles Jacobs, a highly experienced management consultant - has thus set himself a daunting task to demolish so much conventional wisdom.

Take the issue of managing behaviour. Jacobs argues that “according to neuroscience, such an approach will be much less effective than using ideas to change the thinking that drives the behavior”. Yet many psychologists have argued that behavioural change, in fact, often has to precede attitudinal change (a chronically shy person, for instance, may often be better off learning some simple skills that enable them to change how they behave in social situations rather than overly introspecting), so there seems plenty of evidence to suggest attitudes follow behaviour as much as they precede it. Jacobs is right, however, to suggest managers simply enforcing ‘a set of behaviours (on employees) that will be executed with indifference or contempt” is misguided, so, read as a caution of a naively behaviouristic approach to managing staff, his point is well-made.

Perhaps the biggest orthodoxy Jacobs challenges, however, is the usefulness of feedback in managing performance. The importance of feedback in driving performance is, of course, a view not confined to management – the idea is fundamental to elite sports coaching, and many other areas where high performance is required/desired. Jacobs sees the theory of cognitive dissonance – the need for us to maintain our own self-image, and thus rationalize away the feedback we get – as being critical. “If the feedback we receive conflicts with the self-image we have spent a lifetime honing, it will be experienced as uncomfortable, and we well do all that we can to eliminate the discomfort. The most productive response would be for us to take the feedback to heart, change our self-image from infallible to fallible, and work at learning a new way of behaving that incorporates the feedback. But that kind of change is the most difficult because of our deep-seated need to maintain our self-image.”

Perhaps Jacobs’ strongest message, however, is the importance of ideas in business: “Ever since Frederick Taylor, there’s much to be done and not enough time to do it in. So its going to require a lot of fortitude and discipline, because you need to take time out to stop and think.” As Jacobs acknowledges, it is a big ask in a business world where a “bias to action” is seen as high praise indeed. Jacobs’, however, has succeeded in providing food for thought.