{"id":887,"date":"2014-09-21T22:23:56","date_gmt":"2014-09-21T21:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/?p=887"},"modified":"2014-09-21T22:23:56","modified_gmt":"2014-09-21T21:23:56","slug":"percentages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/2014\/percentages","title":{"rendered":"Percentages"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over on sursumcorda\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s blog, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a post about noticing the numbers we read<\/a>. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve recently noticed wrong numbers in two otherwise excellent books \u00e2\u20ac\u201c errors that I think are frequent enough that mentioning them here won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hurt.<\/p>\n

The first instance comes in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Switch<\/a>,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the Heath brothers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 fascinating examination of what helps and what hinders change both in personal and organizational practice. In their tenth chapter, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Rally the Herd,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d they discuss how apt reporting of peer behavior can be used to spread proper behavior. They tell the story of a review time turnaround at a peer-reviewed journal called MSOM:<\/p>\n

When Gerard Cachon took over MSOM, most peer reviews were taking from seven to eight months\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6Cachon announced that MSOM would review papers within sixty-five days \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that was 72 percent faster than its previous average!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, the 72 percent don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t appear out of nowhere: 65 days are roughly 28 percent of seven to eight months, so it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s correct (albeit oddly accurate) to say Cachon wanted to reduce the average review period by 72%. However, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153faster\u00e2\u20ac\u009d implies speed, not duration: and then the Heath brothers understate their case. The original review cycle ran at a speed of about 1.6 reviews per year; Cachon wanted to raise the speed to 5.6 reviews per year. The difference \u00e2\u20ac\u201c 4.0 reviews per year \u00e2\u20ac\u201c is a whopping 250%!<\/p>\n

The second instance comes in “Built to Last<\/a>,” the business book by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras which investigates what attributes determine the long-term fate of a company<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 In their eighth chapter, “Home-Grown Management,” they write:<\/p>\n

Of 113 chief executives for which we have data in the visionary companies, only 3.5 percent came directly from outside the company, versus 22.1 percent of 140 CEOs at the comparison companies.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, the visionary companies were six times more likely to promote insiders to chief executive than the comparison companies <\/em><\/strong>[emphasis theirs].<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While it is true that 22.1 is roughly six times 3.5, that factor represents the relative likelihood of hiring an outsider, not of promoting an insider.\u00c2\u00a0 For insider promoting, the factor is far less majestic: 96.5 percent is only 1.2 times more than 77.9 percent, making the visionary companies only a good fifth more visionary than their peers…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over on sursumcorda\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s blog, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a post about noticing the numbers we read. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve recently noticed wrong numbers in two otherwise excellent books \u00e2\u20ac\u201c errors that I think are frequent enough that mentioning them here won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hurt. The first instance comes in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Switch,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the Heath brothers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 fascinating examination of what helps and what hinders change both in personal and organizational practice. In their tenth chapter, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Rally the Herd,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d they discuss how apt reporting of peer behavior can be used to spread proper behavior. They tell the story of a review time turnaround at a peer-reviewed journal called MSOM: When Gerard Cachon took over MSOM, most peer reviews were taking from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4,26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=887"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":888,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887\/revisions\/888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}