A Bias for Action

A Bias for Action

By Heike Bruch and Sumantra Ghoshal, Harvard Business School Press, 2004 209 pages, List price: $29.95,ISBN: 1-59139-408-2

Avenerable statesman coined the term "busy idleness"--the purposeless activity that pretends to be action but isn't--and it describes well the wheel-spinning many employees and managers do. The fact that the expert was Seneca, the Roman philosopher who lived about 2,000 years ago, doesn't alter the fact that busy idleness remains a problem.

A Bias for Action confronts pointless busyness in the business world. The book is about willpower--how to develop it in your individual work life and how to push your organization to develop collective willpower so that action, not complacency, is the standard. The authors write for managers, but the book could be used by any employee who seeks to improve effectiveness.

Willpower is what keeps you going even when you're not inspired or when other opportunities tempt you, write authors Heike Bruch, a professor of leadership at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, and the late Sumantra Ghoshal, an international management professor at London Business School. And willpower isn't only an innate quality possessed by a fortunate few, they add. Any manager can learn to harness willpower and take "purposeful action."

Bruch and Ghoshal differentiate between real action and the busy idleness Seneca observed so long ago. They separate people into types:

* Procrastinators have low energy and low focus. They put things off or just coast, believing that whatever they do would be useless because of organizational roadblocks.

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* Detached employees can focus well but lack any "emotional link" with the job. They react rather than act and tend to be defensive.

* Frenzied employees have high energy but low focus, hopping from priority to priority and doing anything just to be doing something, even if the results are negative.

* Purposeful employees, the ones the authors want readers to become, choose goals (and battles) with care, act decisively but don't overreact, and readily take on responsibility and challenges.

The book shows how to select goals with which you identify personally. Bruch and Ghoshal also focus on how purposeful employees manage their emotions by letting off steam to trusted listeners and having lives outside work. The authors provide ideas for helping you focus, visualize goals and make personal commitments to work.

The book's second half focuses on creating a company that values willpower, a place where managers don't merely motivate employees but actually facilitate their ability to take independent actions.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Society for Human Resource Management
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group