May 1, 2023
In this book, Goodall, a professor of leadership at London's Bayes Business School, questions the nature of management. Based upon 15 years of research on the managers of the most successful businesses and other organizations, the author has concluded that these workforces are predominantly comprised of "expert leaders," which is what she calls the people who have deep industry expertise along with the requisite management and leadership skills. The success of the expert leader might strike readers as unsurprising, and the author herself calls it common sense. Yet management orthodoxy in the United States and the UK, dating as far back as the 1980s, promotes a culture on generalized management practices, Goodall writes. She argues that expert leaders, on the other hand, understand the specifics of their industries and roles and can thus apply their skills and leadership practices appropriately and effectively. This book presents many enlightening instances of the successes of companies with expert leaders and the failures of companies with generalist managers who had little or no knowledge of, nor experience with, their company's core business. VERDICT A convincing argument that a company's success requires leaders to have specific industry expertise.--Shmuel Ben-Gad
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May 8, 2023
Experts with technical background and experience make the best leaders, according to this cogent treatise. Goodall (Socrates in the Boardroom), a leadership professor at London’s Bayes Business School, laments the rise of “itinerant CEOs” and “all-purpose managers” who jump from company to company, suggesting that their ignorance of the industries they work in has disastrous consequences. According to the author, the core qualifications of an expert are industry experience and the ability to excel at the duties of those who report directly to them; when these are met, employees are happier and more productive. Case studies illustrate the failures of corporate “generalists,” as when Goodall tells the story of Andrew Hornby, who had no background in finance when he left his position running a supermarket chain to become the CEO of the British bank HBOS and pushed it to make risky investments that contributed to its demise in 2008. Contending that experts are just as important in government, Goodall shows that Canada’s decision in 2019 to replace epidemiologists with cheaper “generalist civil servants” in its pandemic readiness system impeded the government’s response to Covid-19. The stories of corporate and political folly enrage, and the case for how organizations can promote and reward expertise by fostering “informed dissent” and granting line managers “freedom and responsibility” is well made. This spirited defense of specialists convinces.
May 15, 2023
The benefits of an expert-led world. Drawing on more than 15 years of empirical research, Goodall, a professor of leadership at London's Bayes Business School, makes her book debut with a persuasive argument about the need for expertise in leaders. "When non-experts are put in charge of organizations," she writes, "disaster often strikes." She attributes the devaluing of expertise to a growing distrust of authority, a populist bent toward "majority decision-making," and a belief "that everyone's views are of equal validity." While in the past, leaders emerged from those who rose through the ranks of an organization, leadership ability has come to be assessed "in terms of verbal skills" and an individual's "personal characteristics or, more simply, their charisma." Business schools, she asserts, have contributed to an "unfortunate shift towards generic management," creating "business and management" as a separate academic field. Citing many examples in areas such as health care, manufacturing, sports, and technology, Goodall has found that expert leadership leads to success. Top universities are led by scholars, not outsiders recruited from business, and the best performing hospitals are led by clinicians. Basketball teams, too, "won more games if they were led by coaches who were former all-star players or had long playing careers in the NBA." Expert leaders convey a clear sense of purpose, take a long view, create a productive work environment, perform to high standards, and signal excellence. They share their organization's culture and values. Once experts are found, though, they often need to be persuaded to lead. Financial remuneration may help, as does their capacity "to identify psychologically as leaders." They also need to know "that they will be developed and supported in the transition from expert to leader while being assured that they will be able to make tangible differences for the benefit of their teams, organizations, and stakeholders." Well-grounded arguments for effective leadership.
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