Streamline Training & Documentation: Rob Briner's Evidence-Based Management Quiz

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Rob Briner's Evidence-Based Management Quiz

In several previous posts, I've cited work of management experts, notably Jeffrey Pfeffer, aimed at persuading business decision-makers to base their decisions on reliable evidence.

Rob Briner, a professor of organizational psychology at Birkbeck College, University of London, has developed a quiz (pdf) you can use to assess how you're doing in evidence-based management of employees. The quiz asks you to consider how well each of the following statements fits your organization:

We make decisions by looking at what other organizations and our competitors are doing.

Before any decision is taken we carefully and systematically evaluate internal data and evidence to better understand the nature of the problem.

Professional journals ... play a role in helping us identify solutions to our problems.

We sometimes introduce new practices or policies without having first identified a particular problem we are trying to solve.

We use consultants to help us make decisions about how to solve our problems.

It is easy to get hold of good quality internal data and evidence about people management issues in our organization.

Internal politics and power struggles influence the way we make decisions about introducing policies and practices.

When making a decision about how to solve a problem we examine research evidence published in academic journals.

We evaluate the effectiveness of the new policies and practices we introduce.

We use academics to help us make decisions about how to solve our problems.

We spend time identifying and exploring a wide range of possible solutions to the problems we face.

We use benchmarking and best practice to help us decide what we should be doing.

If we make mistakes in our decision-making we try to learn from them.

An answer key — brief commentary on each item — follows the quiz. You may very well disagree with some of Briner's advice, but in the process you will have clarified your own views concerning where your organization is doing well in practicing evidence-based management, and where there is room for improvement.

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Labels: Critical thinking, Decision-making

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