Spradlin, D. (2012). Are you solving the right problem?. Harvard Business Review, 90(9), 84-93.

“If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it,” Albert Einstein said.

Those were wise words, but from what I have observed, most organizations don’t heed them when tackling innovation projects. Indeed, when developing new products, processes, or even businesses, most companies aren’t sufficiently rigorous in defining the problems they’re attempting to solve and articulating why those issues are important. Without that rigor, organizations miss opportunities, waste resources, and end up pursuing innovation initiatives that aren’t aligned with their strategies. How many times have you seen a project go down one path only to realize in hindsight that it should have gone down another? How many times have you seen an innovation program deliver a seemingly breakthrough result only to find that it can’t be implemented or it addresses the wrong problem? Many organizations need to become better at asking the right questions so that they tackle the right problems.

Sinek, S. (2009). Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action. Penguin.

In 2009, Simon Sinek started a movement to help people become more inspired at work, and in turn inspire their colleagues and customers. Since then, millions have been touched by the power of his ideas, including more than 28 million who’ve watched his TED Talk based on START WITH WHY -- the third most popular TED video of all time.
 
Sinek starts with a fundamental question: Why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their success over and over? 
 
People like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers had little in common, but they all started with WHY. They realized that people won't truly buy into a product, service, movement, or idea until they understand the WHY behind it.  
 
START WITH WHY shows that the leaders who've had the greatest influence in the world all think, act, and communicate the same way -- and it's the opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.

Shah, S., Horne, A., & Capellá, J. (2012). Good data won’t guarantee good decisions. Harvard Business Review, 90(4), 23-25.

Global businesses have entered a new era of decision making. The ability to gather, store, access, and analyze data has grown exponentially over the past decade, and companies now spend tens of millions of dollars to manage the information streaming in from suppliers and customers. For all the breathless promises about the return on investment in Big Data, however, companies face a challenge. Investments in analytics can be useless, even harmful, unless employees can incorporate that data into complex decision making. Our research offers a succinct warning to managers. At this very moment, there’s an odds-on chance that someone in your organization is making a poor decision on the basis of information that was enormously expensive to collect.

Sargut, G., & McGrath, R. G. (2011). Learning to live with complexity. Harvard Business Review, 89(9), 68-76.

Managing a business today is fundamentally different than it was just 30 years ago. The most profound difference, we’ve come to believe, is the level of complexity people have to cope with. Complex systems have always existed, of course—and business life has always featured the unpredictable, the surprising, and the unexpected. But complexity has gone from something found mainly in large systems, such as cities, to something that affects almost everything we touch: the products we design, the jobs we do every day, and the organizations we oversee. Most of this increase has resulted from the information technology revolution of the past few decades. Systems that used to be separate are now interconnected and interdependent, which means that they are, by definition, more complex.

Rousseau, D. M. (2006). Is there such a thing as “evidence-based management?”. Academy Of Management Review, 31(2), 256-269.

I explore the promise organization research offers for improved management practice and how, at present, it falls short. Using evidence-based medicine as an exemplar, I identify ways of closing the prevailing “research-practice gap”—the failure of organizations and managers to base practices on best available evidence. I close with guidance for researchers, educators, and managers for translating the principles governing human behavior and organizational processes into more effective management practice.

Pfeffer, J., & Sutton, R. I. (2006). Hard facts, dangerous half-truths, and total nonsense: Profiting from evidence-based management. Harvard Business Press. [Book].

The best organizations have the best talent. Financial incentives drive company performance. Firms must change or die. Popular axioms like these drive business decisions every day. Yet, too much common management "wisdom" isn't wise at all--but, instead, flawed knowledge based on "best practices" that are actually poor, incomplete, or outright obsolete. Worse, legions of managers use this dubious knowledge to make decisions that are hazardous to organizational health. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton show how companies can bolster performance and trump the competition through evidence-based management, an approach to decision making and action that is driven by hard facts rather than half-truths or hype. This book guides managers in using this approach to dismantle six widely held--but ultimately flawed--management beliefs in core areas, including leadership, strategy, change, talent, financial incentives, and work-life balance. The authors show managers how to find and apply the best practices for their companies, rather than blindly copy what seems to have worked elsewhere. This practical and candid book challenges leaders to commit to evidence-based management as a way of organizational life--and shows how finally to turn common sense into common practice.

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Macmillan. [Book].

Thinking, Fast and Slow tells us that there are two routes people use to think. The idea of two systems of cognition* is known as a dual processing theory.* These two types of cognition are known as System 1, or the intuitive system, and System 2, or the deliberate system. These two routes, while conceptual, represent very different ways of processing information from the world around us. System 1 is always active and waiting to jump into operation. This is the system that tells us to run from danger, or gets an intuitive sense of someone’s personality within seconds of meeting them. System 1 is reliant on mental operations, such as heuristics* (mental shortcuts) and biases* (leanings towards or against something based on associative memory*). This is the fast thinking of the book’s title. System 2 is slow thinking. This system needs deliberate activation. It requires attention and effort and as such is not sustainable for long periods of time; it is susceptible to burnout. We use System 2 to calculate a complex equation or to answer an exam question.