A Bias for Action

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Does your job seem like an endless "to do" list that never gets you – or your company – anywhere? You know what you’re supposed to focus on: cutting costs, improving efficiency, encouraging innovation. So why do critical goals consistently get eclipsed by fighting fires, answering e-mails, and other routine "busywork"? In this surprising and frame-changing book, management experts Heike Bruch and Sumantra Ghoshal argue that while the usual suspects – overwhelming workloads, tight budgets, and unsupportive bosses – play a role in managerial ineffectiveness, most of the blame lies in how managers approach their jobs. Based on a ten-year study of managerial behavior in industries from banking to software to airlines to consulting. A Bias for Action reveals that only 10 percent of managers work purposefully to get important work done. The other 90 percent squander their potential by procrastinating, detaching from their work or spinning their wheels in a flurry of "active nonaction". Bruch and Ghoshal show that the most effective managers succeed not because they possess unique characteristics or excel at motivating others – but because they harness personal willpower through a potent combination of energy and focus. This willpower is what help productive managers achieve their goals in spite of the inevitable barriers, setbacks, and distractions that are a mainstay of managerial life. Through striking real-life stories, A Bias for Action reveals a range of strategies for harnessing willpower to improve both individual and organizational performance, including how to: Define, visualize, and protect individual goals; Replace counterproductive behaviors; Manage negative emotions and stress; Overcome common obstacles such as conflicting demands and bureaucratic red tape; Move from simply motivating others to fostering willpower in others; Create a culture that enables positive, purposeful, organizational action. Upending conventional thinking about the requirements for effective leadership, this book will help CEOs and frontline managers alike to stop simply doing things – and start getting things done.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Heike Bruch

Heike Bruch is a Professor and Director at the Institute for Leadership and Human Resources Management at the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland). She is also research director of the Organizational Energy Consortium and academic director of the Universityâ€™s International Study Program. Between 1999 and 2001 she was visiting scholar and senior research fellow at London Business School. During 1996 to 1999 she was research director and assistant professor of the Institute for Leadership and Human Resources Management at the University of St. Gallen and, from 1991 to 1996, lecturer at the University of Hanover (Germany). She earned her Ph.D. in business administration at the University of Hanover (1996) and her masterâ€™s (1991) and bachelorâ€™s (1989) degrees in business administration at the Free University of Berlin. Bruchâ€™s research is strongly focused on leadership. She works in close cooperation with international universities both in research and teaching. The focal points of her more recent research work are managersâ€™ emotions, volition action, and leadership in change processes and organizational more than forty articles in journals and books.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sumantra Ghoshal

Sumantra Ghoshal (d. 2004) was a fellow of the Advanced Institute of Management Research (United Kingdom) and a professor of strategy and international management at London Business School. He was a member of the Committee of Overseers of Harvard Business School and served as the founding dean of the Indian School of Business.