Antoinette Weibel, Direktorin und Ordinaria für Personalmanagement am Institut für Führung und Personalmanagement (IFPM-HSG), erklärt mit dem SUMIT-Prinzip, welche Eigenschaften ein evidenzbasiert arbeitender Manager braucht – und mit welchen Angewohnheiten er diese fördert:
Strike new paths for the root-causes of problems. Most of the time, Business School education applies the ’think in solutions, not in problems’ dogma. Evidence-based managers, however, should better follow the dictum of Henri Kaiser ‘Problems are only opportunities in work clothes’. By the way, a good technique to get at the root-cause of problems is Toyotas’ “5-Why-Method”, which encourages employees to ask ‘why does X lead to Y’ at least five times.
Update yourself on management science. Keep updated about management sciences! I admit that most scientific journals appear swotty and make the read tedious. But make it a habit to read at least the “Academy of Management Annals” – a yearbook that provides a systematic overview on the state-of-the-art knowledge about relevant managerial topics. Additionally, read one of the below journals regularly: Academy of Management Perspectives, California Management Review, Sloan Management Review or Long Range Planning. As a rule of thumb: Articles or books that do not provide details on the data and analysis used and/or do not cite the work they rely on cannot be considered as evidence-based.
Manage your reading habits. Be a reading manager! Forget about airport business literature! Better spend your time with books, which help you sharpen your analytical skills. For instance, prefer one philosophic book per year (e.g. Josef Pieper’s ‘Leisure the basis of Culture) over six ‘how-to-whatever’ books, which promise quick-wins. Again, the ‘5-Why-Method’ reminds us how flawed quick wins may be.
Invest in experimentation. Allow your employees to make mistakes! There is no shame in making a mistake – it’s only a disgrace to make the same mistake twice. Treat your organization as a prototype. Experiment with new instruments and practices and track the impact carefully. For instance, before your role out a new compensation system, check it out in one unit and carefully compare before/after results in comparison with a unit where things are left unchanged.
Top of stats. Be on top of stats. It is amazing what insights can be gained from data, regardless whether it is BIG data or the traditional employment survey. Make sure you understand the basics of stats. Use new software tools to facilitate your analysis and offer students to re-check your analysis as part of their degree theses. Just to let you know: University professors love such data access and be sure, you’ll get much more out of your data, than you might dream of. A win-win situation for all parties.
Übrigens: Am 12.11. startet in St. Gallen ein Seminar zum Thema. Es richtet sich an Führungskräfte mit mehrjähriger Erfahrung, die sich mit Personalfragen auf strategischer Ebene beschäftigen. Als erweiterter Teilnehmerkreis werden auch Fachkräfte in der Rolle des Strategic und Business Partners, des Change Agents, im Bereich HR Analytics und Gesundheitsmanagement angesprochen.
Mehr über das aus vier Modulen bestehende Seminar findet sich hier.