Jeffrey Pfeffer Quotes

Your most important task as a leader is to teach people how to think and ask the right questions so that the world doesn't go to hell if you take a day off.

The sun’s rays, focused, are much more powerful than they are without focus. The same is true for people seeking power.

Being memorable equals getting picked.

When two people always agree, one of them is unnecessary.

Michael Schrage is right: “A collaboration of incompetents, no matter how diligent or well-meaning, cannot be successful.

a large body of empirical research conducted over decades suggests that student evaluations are more than unhelpful; instead, they are likely to change the behaviors of presenters in ways that make learning and personal growth less likely. That is one reason why Armstrong concluded that “teacher ratings are detrimental to students.

Thinking is very hard work. And management fashions are a wonderful substitute for thinking.

If doctors practiced medicine the way many companies practice management, there would be far more sick and dead patients, and many more doctors would be in jail.

No one who is unmemorable is going to be chosen for an important job, because one cannot select what one cannot remember.

Believing that the world is fair, people fail to note the various land mines in the environment that can undermine their careers.

The two fundamental dimensions that distinguish people who rise to great heights and accomplish amazing things are will, the drive to take on big challenges, and skill, the capabilities required to turn ambition into accomplishment. The three personal qualities embodied in will are ambition, energy, and focus. The four skills useful in acquiring power are self-knowledge and a reflective mind-set, confidence and the ability to project self-assurance, the ability to read others and empathize with their point of view, and a capacity to tolerate conflict.

Asian professionals are frequently held back from senior positions by the perception that they don’t have “executive presence,” a factor that similarly operates against other minority groups in the workplace, including women.39 And what constitutes executive presence? Certainly not modesty:

that leaders inspire trust, be authentic, tell the truth, serve others (particularly those who work for and with them), be modest and self-effacing, exhibit empathic understanding and emotional intelligence, and other similar seemingly sensible nostrums.

Deming argued that if there are performance problems and quality defects, one needs to understand how those problems arise almost naturally as a consequence of how a system has been designed—and then fix those design flaws. Put simply, attack the problems by fixing the system, not scapegoating the necessarily fallible human beings working in and operating that system—whether or not they deserved it.

Planning is essentially unrelated to organizational performance

companies with high levels of workplace trust enjoy higher stock market returns.

Nortel—another troubled networking company that suffered operating problems as a result of botched mergers.

You can’t be normal and expect abnormal returns.

If you want power to be used for good, more good people need to have power.

Condoleezza Rice is right: people will join your side if you have power and are willing to use it, not just because they are afraid of your hurting them but also because they want to be close to your power and success.

One study of relatively highly paid contractors in Silicon Valley found that free agents didn’t really feel free because of the need to be always searching for their next gig and therefore frequently took less leisure time than regular employees.

Using both experiments and field data, a recent study found that economic insecurity was associated with increased consumption of painkillers and produced actual physical pain and reduced pain tolerance, with the absence of control providing one mechanism explaining these results.

Measuring the wrong thing is often worse than measuring nothing, because you do get what you measure. So if the assessments focus on how much people “enjoy” the experience—be that reading a book, watching a talk, or going to a training session—those same books, talks, and trainings will respond to those measurements by prioritizing the wrong outcomes: making participants feel good and giving them a good time. Simply stated, measuring entertainment value produces great entertainment, not change; measuring the wrong things crowds out assessing other, more relevant indicators such as improvements in workplaces. Improvement comes from employing measurements that are appropriate, those that are connected to the areas in which we seek improvement. In the case of leadership, that appropriate measurement would include assessing the frequency of desirable leader behaviors; actual workplace conditions such as engagement, satisfaction, and

Research by Cornell’s Robert Frank and his colleagues showed that the percentage of students choosing unethical options on an honesty test increased dramatically among students taking microeconomics courses, but not among students in astronomy classes.

Schoorman asked

Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at Stanford, has marshaled evidence that shows that when it comes to getting promoted in your job, strong relationships and being on good terms with your boss can matter more than competence.

Necesitamos empresas saludables con valores que regeneren la cultura tóxica para construir una sociedad sostenible. Y la bisagra para el cambio necesario, la especie clave del ecosistema humano, el roble del que depende que crezcan y se desarrollen tantas otras especies, y que se oxigene o se contamine el ambiente, es el llamado «líder empresarial».

The problem is that there are too many organizations where having a mission or values statement written down somewhere is confused with implementing those values.

people who first had the opportunity to demonstrate that they were nonprejudiced were subsequently more willing to express attitudes that showed bias.

narcissism levels have increased significantly among college students over the past several decades.

Narcissism levels are higher for Americans than for citizens of many other countries and regions,

Men tend to be more narcissistic than women, possibly because men are somewhat more competitive and women are more communal, and also because narcissistic behavior would be much more gender-role discrepant for women than for men.

Business school students seem to be particularly narcissistic, an important fact because many leaders in both the for-profit and the nonprofit world come from business school backgrounds, particularly in the more recent past.

overconfident individuals achieved higher social status, respect, and influence in groups.

people with higher narcissism scores were more likely to emerge as leaders during four-person initially leaderless group discussions.

a tale about America’s first president not lying is itself apparently a lie.

We prefer to say that Larry has a problem with tenses. For example, ‘our product is available now’ might mean it’ll be available in a few months or that Larry was thinking about one day developing the product.

although most people believe they can reliably discern when they are being lied to, the evidence suggests that they can’t.

Individuals who wear fake (counterfeit) branded sunglasses cheat more often across a number of different tasks.

if little changes in the informational environment that people confront.

lying produces few to no severe sanctions, lying increases in frequency.

Lincoln lied about whether he was negotiating with the South to end the war. . . .

He also lied about where he stood on slavery. He told the American public and political allies that he didn’t believe in political equality for slaves because he didn’t want to get too far ahead of public opinion, Mott says.45

But I no longer believe that trust is essential to organizational functioning or even to effective leadership. Why? Because the data suggest that trust is notable mostly by its absence. Nevertheless, organizations continue to roll along, as do their leaders who seemingly suffer few consequences for being untrustworthy.

the percentage of people in administration inexorably increases.

gap between average employee and CEO pay is largest in the financial industry and smallest in technology.

thirteen months later, Costolo did take over as CEO from the then-CEO Evan Williams, a cofounder of the company.

one in 10 text messages involves a lie of some kind. . . .

weight gain was dependent on the weight gains of others with whom that person was socially tied.

evidence shows most workplaces filled with distrustful, disengaged, dissatisfied, despairing employees.

when times are good, the number of administrators (and probably everybody else) expands,

SAS Institute has resisted going public because Jim Goodnight, the CEO, is concerned about the effects of public ownership on its employee-centric, family-oriented culture. So long as he holds all the cards, his workers’ loyalty is probably justified, but only so much as they can be certain that he’ll be in charge forever. Which

Leaders who have come up through the ranks and have done many if not most of the organization’s jobs are much more likely to look out for the interests of those they lead because they have been there themselves.

women tend to underrate their achievements, and have less confidence in their abilities than their line managers have for them.

narcissistic CEOs led firms to bounce back more successfully during the post-crisis recovery.42

the level of narcissism has increased in presidents over time.

the higher one rises in an organization, the more likely it is that people will tell you you’re right. People will agree with powerful leaders as a strategy of ingratiation, as nothing is as flattering as others’ telling you how right and how smart you are.

were also among the least successful, and he provided advice about how to be generous without being a patsy.

givers were not only among the most successful individuals,

is also famous for his outbursts of temper and his put-downs of employees,

our ability to accurately discern who is taking advantage of us is remarkably poor.

most mergers—some estimates are 70 percent or more—fail to deliver their intended benefits and destroy economic value in the process. A recent analysis of 93 studies covering more than 200,000 mergers published in peer-reviewed journals showed that, on average, the negative effects of a merger on shareholder value become evident less than a month after a merger is announced and persist thereafter.2

he was ultimately being pushed out of the company by his alumni mentor.

80 percent of founders are forced out of their companies by their venture capital investors,

John Freeman and Michael Hannan asked why the size of the administrative component—administrative overhead—seems to rise inexorably in organizations.

when times are bad, administrators, closer to the locus of decision-making and with more power, protect their jobs disproportionately,

The way leadership gurus try to demonstrate their legitimacy is not through their scientific knowledge or accomplishments but rather by achieving public notoriety—be it the requisite TED talks, blog posts, Twitter followers, or books filled with leadership advice that might or might not be valid and useful.

career prospects of employees who report corporate malfeasance are so dismal that it is surprising that people whistleblow at all.

Systematic research supports the message of these cases. As noted in an article in the New York Times, “even in the most extreme circumstances—like the financial crisis—directors bore little consequence for their poor decisions.

the leadership industry also has its share of quacks and sham artists who sell promises and stories, some true, some not, but all of them inspirational and comfortable, with not much follow-up to see what really does work and what doesn’t.

By calling BS on so much of what goes on, this book gives people a closer, more scientific look at many dimensions of leadership behavior. Most important, it encourages everyone to finally stop accepting sugar-laced but toxic potions as cures.

airline executives who have created an experience so unpleasant that their best customers flee for private options and others avoid flying if they can;

qualities we actually select for and reward in most workplaces are precisely the ones that are unlikely to produce leaders who are good for employees or, for that matter, for long-term organizational performance.

to change the world of work and leadership, we need to get beyond the half truths and self-serving stories that are so prominent today.

systematic data on workplace bullying report widespread verbal abuse, shouting, berating others, and the general creation of a climate of intimidation.

willingly forgo a substantial pay raise in exchange for seeing their direct supervisor fired.

First full day as Twitter COO tomorrow. Task #1: undermine the CEO,

statistically insignificant relationship between student evaluations and learning,

the more objectively learning is measured, the less likely it is to be related to the evaluations.

Another review also concluded that “teacher ratings and learning are not closely related

empirical research conducted over decades suggests that student evaluations are more than unhelpful;

change the behaviors of presenters in ways that make learning and personal growth less likely.

a recent review of the evidence concluded that there is a very small and statistically insignificant relationship between student evaluations and learning, and that “the more objectively learning is measured, the less likely it is to be related to the evaluations.”48 Another review also concluded that “teacher ratings and learning are not closely related

prioritizing the wrong outcomes: making participants feel good and giving them a good time. Simply stated, measuring entertainment value produces great entertainment, not change; measuring the wrong things crowds out assessing other, more relevant indicators

SAS Institute, where the cofounder and CEO Jim Goodnight evaluates managers by their ability to attract and retain talent, and where people can lose their jobs if their units experience excessive voluntary turnover.

read Jack Welch’s books about General Electric and his management approach and never encounter the phrase “GE jerks.” Yet that is a term I first heard from a now-retired GE senior executive who reported directly to Mr. Welch.

jobs that require employees to display (positive) emotions that they may not actually be feeling can be psychologically demanding and stressful.

is incredibly common and seemingly an important requirement for effective leadership.

lying is then common, it becomes normative, in the sense that norms describe common behavioral patterns. Because lying becomes normative, it isn’t sanctioned,

I have never heard anyone tell me that this would happen to them.

workplaces are primarily instrumental, calculative settings largely free of moral sentiments and even normative constraints.

are frequently based on hope or fear, what others seem to be doing, what senior leaders have done and believe has worked in the past, and their dearly held ideologies—in short, on lots of things other than the facts.

Siebel’s business development executive admitted that all of the company’s acquisitions have failed and noted that an internal study indicated that “cultural conflicts” were the cause in every case.5

Cisco figured out that mergers between similar-sized companies rarely work, as there are frequently struggles about which team will control the combined entity (think Daimler-Chrysler or Dean Witter–Morgan Stanley). Cisco’s leaders also determined that mergers work best when companies are geographically proximate, making integration and collaboration much easier (think Synoptics and Wellfleet Communication, which were not only about equal in size, but 2,500 miles apart), and they also uncovered the importance of organizational cultural

73% of companies have decided that lying to their employees about their potential to advance is the right choice.

[Kildall] couldn’t imagine being knifed in the back—certainly not by Gates. The two had known each other since Gates was a thirteen-year-old hacker in Seattle and Kildall was getting his doctorate. . . . They discussed merging their young companies . .

In everyday social relationships, people expect fair treatment and favors to be reciprocated.

in work settings, things become a lot more calculative. Specifically, people make more evaluations of whether or not coworkers and superiors could be useful in the future; likewise, people show more concern with the future than with repaying past kindnesses.

we are predisposed to trust and have an evolutionary need to do so. Therefore, people are motivated to overlook a violation of trust

For instance, even though entrepreneurs in technology often know the statistics that about 80 percent of founders are forced out of their companies by their venture capital investors, I have never heard anyone tell me that this would happen to them. In