Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
Logical fallacies abound in the business and self-help literature. Perhaps it is the way we humans are biologically programmed that makes us fall for voodoo, pseudo-science and other quackery, but I still find it amazing how supposedly smart people (even those with Ph.D after their names) still make these basic yet fundamental mistakes. One of the most common logical fallacies is asserting the consequent. This is an argument with the form
If P then Q Q Therefore P This is a logical fallacy because the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises - there could be many reasons for Q that don't involve P. Despite this fallacy being well known since Aristotle's day, there is no end of management theorists out there writing case studies on successful firms or people by examining what they did and assuming this to be the cause of their success. Good to Great by Jim Collins is a classic example of asserting the consequent. To paraphrase 9 chapters:
We surveyed the market and identified 11 great performing companies. Those 11 companies all showed 7 key characteristics. Therefore those 7 characteristics are what made them great. Right. Ah, what about all the other companies with those characteristics that didn't succeed? With millions of copies sold, I guess this is more proof that lack of a sound argument is no impediment to publishing success in the business/management genre. Given that Fanny Mae and Circuit City were out of business within 7 years of the book being published, Collins' definition of 'great' may have a pretty short half life. Another favourite fallacious example of mine Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. Here, he distills the characteristics of successful people as to such gems as be proactive, think win/win and synergize. All good things to do but are they really what separates the successful from the non-successful. Are there 'failures' that exhibited these habits and are there successes that didn't. In order to develop a more accurate list of the habits that truly separate the successful from the failures, the haves and the have nots, I propose a the New Seven Habits of Highly Successful People:
- Skiing
- Driving sports cars
- Polo
- Wearing diamonds
- Yachting
- Shopping
- Buying art
