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- [00:00]
Phil Agnew
Business books are everywhere. You'll find them in the smart thinking sections of bookstores, prominently displayed at airport gates and shared daily by people like me on LinkedIn. It is easier than ever to write a business book. 2.3 million self published books were published in 2021 alone. Titles like Rebel, Talent, Outliers, Presence, Grit, Built to Last and Start with why are often name dropped in meetings to win arguments or support ideas. But there's a problem. Business books aren't infallible. Many have serious flaws. In fact, the books I just mentioned include serious issues like fabricated data, flawed conclusions and even harmful advice. And yet they are bestsellers, widely read, quoted and recommended by fellow professionals. Today we'll unpack the problems with many popular business books. I'll share some of the worst offenders and my guest will offer tips on what to watch out for. All of that coming up do you remember when marketing was actually fun? When you had the time to get creative and genuinely connect with your customers, to make content that really resonated and to create campaigns that really performed well. Well, let me be honest. I'm not sure I ever found marketing actually fun. But I certainly enjoyed it much, much more when I wasn't bogged down in data sets, in platforms, in bureaucracy and red tape. And that is where HubSpot can help. You can turn one piece of content into everything you need. You can know exactly when your prospects are ready to buy and you can see all of your campaign results in one place. They take away the need for platforms, datasetsearch, bureaucracy, and they make things easy to use. It is simple to use with the average HubSpot customer doubling their leads in just 12 months. So if you sign up to HubSpot, you'll get more leads, less hassle and more time to actually enjoy marketing again. Get started for free@HubSpot.com My guest today is an author himself. His book Grow the Pie was featured in the Financial Times best books of 2020. He has also published in leading academic journals and is recognised for his TED talk, what to Trust in a Post Truth World, which has garnered over 2 million views.
- [02:20]
Alex Edmonds
My name's Alex Edmonds. I'm a Professor of Finance at London Business School, a non executive Director and author of a book may contain Lies about bias and misinform.
- [02:30]
Phil Agnew
In our previous episode, Alex shared why we believe misinformation. He explained confirmation bias, sharing that the bias leads us to believe ideas that match our values, even if they're wrong. But that is just one of the biases that leads to misjudgment There is another bias that's just as bad and one that I'm yet to share or nudge. It is called black and white thinking, certainly.
- [02:53]
Alex Edmonds
So there's two biases that I use throughout the book and I believe that this leads to nearly all the misinformation we see out there. So what I mentioned was confirmation bias and that the idea that if I have a view of the world, I look for evidence that confirms it. And you might think, well, there's many topics where I have no view of the world. Yes, there might be pre existing views on climate change or immigration or gun control, but there's certain things where people have no pre existing view and if there's nothing to confirm, then confirmation bias doesn't exist. But the idea of black and white thinking is that even if I have no preconceived view, I might have a tendency to view something as always good or always bad.
- [03:35]
Phil Agnew
Alex writes how life for our hunter gatherer ancestors was short and harsh. It required quick decisions to hunt, gather and survive constant threats, a necessity that shaped our instinct for snap judgements. Black and white thinking allowed our hunter gatherer ancestors to act decisively when speed was at the essence. But this bias remains within us despite living in a very different world today.
- [04:00]
Alex Edmonds
So let's give a concrete example. So let's think about diet. So most people have a view about fat. They think it's bad. It's called fat because it makes you fat. Most people have a view about protein. Protein is good, it builds a muscle, it strengthens you. But most people are quite neutral on carbs. It's not clear whether it's good or it's bad. But if you suffer from black and white thinking, you're much more likely to to latch onto any study which suggests it's at one extreme or the other. And one such study, or one such piece of advice was the Atkins diet. So the Atkins diet demonized carbs and says they are all bad. All types of carbs are bad. Not just refined sugar, but complex carbs and at all levels. So he didn't say, well, make sure carbs are no more than 30% of your daily calories. He said, just have as few carbs as possible. And so why did that diet become so successful? Because it was so black and white, it was so binary, it was so simplistic, it was easy to implement. So you don't need to understand whether carbs are simple or complex or refined. You just look at the carbs label on a box of food and this tells you whether you should be eating it. And also, you don't need to track your daily carb intake and see am I yet at 30%. You just avoid anything with carbs. But notice had his advice been completely the opposite. Eat as many carbs as possible and not protein and fat. That could have equally been just as successful. Why? Because it's easy to implement. So to write a bestseller, Atkins didn't need to be right, he just needed to be extreme.
- [05:47]
Phil Agnew
The book Dr. Atkins Diet revolutions contained no references, footnotes or even a bibliography. It offered just one rule, avoid all carbs. The rule was simple and that simplicity made it so appealing. A more balanced approach to diet where individuals consider moderation of different nutrient types would have just been a bit too complex to catch on. The Atkins book became the best selling weight loss book of all time, not because it was the smartest advice, but because it was the easiest advice to follow. A study in the Lancet Public Health found that a low carb diet of under 30% intake reduces life expectancy by four years compared to moderate intake of 50 to 55%. The Atkins diet is a near 0% carb approach and that approach is very risky. Research has linked the diet to kidney problems, heart disease, and this is due to the high protein and saturated fat intake. Atkins himself suffered a heart attack and posthumous reports suggested heart disease possibly linked to his diet. Alex Wright. That demonizing carbs as entirely bad or anything as entirely good ignores the importance of balance. It's a classic example of black and white thinking simplifying a complex topic to the point where your simplification does more harm than good.
- [07:11]
Alex Edmonds
Yes. So we like to see something as having only benefits and no costs, or only costs and no benefits. And this was something that happened around the Brexit referendum. And again, let me point the finger at myself. So I was a strong remainer. I thought that Brexit supporters were racist or xenophobic, or they just didn't understand basic economics. And then when I went to a Brexit talk, I was shocked by how logical I found the arguments. Even though I didn't agree with the conclusions. I could see there was a lot of logic behind what people were saying. But because I'd had such a black and white view on something like Brexit, I thought that this was just only in one direction. And so after my view was moderated, it meant that even though I was disappointed with the referendum result, I certainly wasn't one of the people claiming, we need another vote. This result was completely wrong. Because even though I personally didn't agree with it, I could at least see reasons for why people would have supported Brexit. And we can think about this with other debates which are topical issues right now. So let's take the link between diversity and company performance. So I, as an ethnic minority, would love to believe that diversity is always good. And certainly there are benefits of diversity. Diversity, right. Diversity leads to a greater range of opinions and we are able to just have different types of expertise. But this doesn't mean that we want to have maximum diversity. Because if people speak different languages, at least figuratively, it's hard for people to actually communicate with each other if their backgrounds are so different. Sometimes we actually just like to hang out with people who are similar to us, who we have common interests. So, yes, there can be benefits of diversity, but does that mean we want to have maximally diverse organizations? Companies should force every team to have a broad mix of demographics. Not necessarily. Because sometimes it could be that for some cases you would want to prefer to have people similar to you. It means that you don't need to run every decision by committee and run it, have consensus. Sometimes that could just lead to a lot of delay in making decisions. Sometimes we do want alignment. We want people be able to make a decision quickly.
- [09:21]
Phil Agnew
And this links back nicely to business books, because most business books oversimplify the problems businesses face and they oversimplify the potential solutions. Alex says there's an easy way to spot this erroneous reasoning.
- [09:35]
Alex Edmonds
If X clearly led to success, if X were diversity or sustainability or whatever. Well, if it was that simple, then any company which was not doing this would be out of business. And that's not the case. So it could be that these things work in some settings, not others. It could be this works up to a point, and after that point, then you actually have too much of this. And we see this black and white thinking in again, so many other areas. Why I use lots of health examples in the book is this relates to us as an individual. So I've talked about health in terms of carbs, but carbs are seen as a bad thing. Let's think about a good thing. Water. So when you run a marathon, and I've done this a couple of times, they tell you to hydrate as much as possible, drink little and often. Every time there's a water station, drink from it. And there are some people who've died because of water intoxication. They've drunk so much water that they dilute essential minerals to fatally low levels. So Even if something is clearly good, such as water, when running a marathon, there's still some point at which it might have negative benefits. But if you're black and white in terms of your mindset, you think that something never have negatives, it only has upsides.
- [10:48]
Phil Agnew
Alex gives an example of taking black and white thinking to the extreme. In his book, he shares the story of David Rogers, a 22 year old who trained diligently for the 2007 London Marathon, raising £1,200 for charity. The 2007 London Marathon turned out to be the hottest on record at 23.5 degrees Celsius. In the days leading up, there was widespread advice for runners to hydrate extensively. With fears of water shortages, the participants were urged to drink at every aid station, even if they weren't thirsty. This was to combat that unusual unseasonal heat. David followed the advice to overhydrate and after finishing in 3 hours 50 minutes, he tragically died from water intoxication caused by an over consumption of water. Moderation is necessary and yet moderation goes against our natural tendencies. We are biased towards black and white thinking and there's evidence to prove it's.
- [11:48]
Alex Edmonds
Yeah. So there was a study by some psychologists called Edward Deloche, Jerome busmeier and Mark McDaniels. And what they did is they took data on the effect of ingesting some substance on human arousal. So why the study was on human arousal rather than something more mundane is beyond me. But what they did is they took some subjects and they said, here's some data on how much you consume of this substance and how aroused you end up being. And so there were different conditions. Third of them got data which the relationship was always positive. The more you eat, the more aroused you are. Others got data where the relationship was always negative, where the more you eat, the less aroused you are. And then the third set of people got data which was in two ways. So up to a point, the more you eat, the more aroused you become. And then when you have too much, then the arousal falls down to zero. And so people in the first two conditions were much more able to predict the relationship than the people in the third condition. So we are wired to think in black and white ways. So even if the evidence is clear that it goes in both directions. So the third group saw data suggesting that eating 0 leads to no arousal, eating 100 leads to no arousal, they still had it in mind that the relationship had to be either always positive or always negative. And they had to figure out which of the two it could be when in fact the true relationship was it goes up and then after a point it goes down.
- [13:27]
Phil Agnew
This study proved how we struggle to predict when there is no black on white outcome. It's not the only evidence Psychologists Matthew Fisher and Frank Keel studied how people interpret mixed evidence. They presented 150 students with eyewitness testimonies. Some of them were clear cut. For example, one witness is 100% 100% confident the defendant did not commit the crime. Other testimonies were far more ambiguous. For example, one witness is 50% confident the defendant did not commit the crime. When asked to judge the defendant's guilt, participants based their decisions not on the strength of the argument, but on the number of pro or anti statements. They ignored the strength of the testimony. A 50% confidence statement influenced the participants as much as one with 100% certainty. The researchers concluded that people often treat nuanced evidence in an all or nothing manner. We lose sight of the grey areas when we adopt black and white thinking. Black and white thinking is a very problematic bias. It forces us to see the world in overly simplistic terms and fall for erroneous yet simple solutions to complex problems. But what about business books? Which popular bestsellers are particularly bad at selling black and white thinking? Well, we'll cover all of that after this quick break. The podcast I'd like to recommend today is Billion Dollar Moves, hosted by Sarah Chen Spellings and it is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. I love this podcast. I had a real great time chatting with Sarah at Inbound 2024 and learning about her wonderful podcast. If you listen, you'll hear SA ask the hard questions to business leaders. All of this will help you make your own billion dollar moves in venture, business and life. Listen to Billion Dollar Moves wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome back to Nudge with me, Phil Agnew. Now, I previously worked at a tech company called Hotjar as part of my onboarding. All of the new hires, including me, were encouraged to read Simon Sinek's book Start with why. It is a best seller. It is rated 4 point on Amazon and it explains how great leaders and organizations inspire action by focusing on their purpose, their why, and they should do that before thinking about their processes or their products. It's an easy to read book and I finished it feeling very inspired. But there is a problem with this book. There is a lack of evidence. Although the book made reasonable points that I was inclined to agree with, these points weren't based on any scientific rigor. And if I followed them closely, I could actually do harm to the company I worked at. Here's Alex to explain the problem with Simon Sinek's book. Start with why.
- [16:21]
Alex Edmonds
So let me first stand in Simon Sinek's corner and present what he's arguing. He says that if a company has a why, it has a purpose, it has a mission, it has a vision, it becomes successful. So he gives examples of Apple, clearly successful, first company to be worth $1 trillion. He gives examples of nonprofits. So Wikipedia this beat the Encyclopedia Britannica as the world's fountain for knowledge. It had a why. He gives the example of Martin Luther King. He said, I have a dream, not I have a plan. And this is why. Having a why is so important. It connects with people. It's something which inspires hearts and minds. So he says, well, this is what's key to a company being successful. And so how does this play into our biases? Well, first there's the narrative fallacy. There could be tons of other reasons for why Apple was successful. It could be that Steve Jobs was adopted, according to Walter Isaacson. It could be that Steve Jobs was really great at design. It could be that he was extremely demanding. He'd come down on you like a ton of bricks if you made a mistake or did not share his passion for perfection in design. There could be tons of other answers. But why? He wanted to have the idea that they started with why. That's a nice narrative. And why is it? A nice narrative is it plays into the biases, confirmation bias. Again, we want to believe that you can achieve something that you want to as long as you have a passion and a why. And it also plays into black and white thinking. A why is what we need in all companies at all times. It applies to companies, it applies to nonprofits, it applies to people when this might not be the case. It might be that sometimes, well, the secret to success is just hard work. You don't need to think about a broader mission or vision, just get the details correct. But the idea that the why is a secret source of success, if he sells that, then everybody will buy his book, irrespective of whether you're running a company or a non profit or whether you're an individual.
- [18:32]
Phil Agnew
Simon Sinek argues that starting with why is the universal key to success, citing examples like Apple's dominance, the Wright Brothers first flight, and Wikipedia surpassing in Carta. However, this simplicity overlooks a lot of key flaws. One of the flaws is that Simon Sinek preselected his sample of companies. His sample didn't contain those who had a why who also failed. There's also no control group, so those without a why, who succeeded. And there's no consideration of alternative explanations. The Y companies, for example, may have many other things in common, like talented CEOs, favourable market conditions or innovative tech. Sinek's evidence isn't reliable because it's cherry picked. This black and white thinking can actually distract companies from the more pertinent things they need to work on. A one size fits all approach was used by Malcolm Gladwell too. He claimed that 10,000 hours was enough to become world class at anything. And yet the study he cited was only about violin players.
- [19:32]
Alex Edmonds
So Malcolm Gladwell quotes a study on violin playing and claims that it applies to any field that you're interested in. Why does he do this? He doesn't want to write a book about the secret to success in violin players that's not going to be bought by many people. Only a violin player would buy that book. But if he claims a universal secret to success, then everybody would buy his book. And indeed, having gone through the publication process myself, what do publishers look for? They look for books which are going to appeal to the widest possible audience. So you want to be as black and white and blanket as possible and claim that your book is generally applicable.
- [20:06]
Phil Agnew
Other books fall for the same bias, but in a slightly different way. Take the bestseller Grit by Angela Duckworth. The book claims that passion and perseverance will triumph over talent in achieving long term success.
- [20:20]
Alex Edmonds
But Angela Duckworth here, what's interesting is the black and white nature of it is on a slightly different dimension. So let me explain what the book is about. So it claims that to be successful you need not raw talent, but you need grit, which is passion and perseverance. And you might think, well, this sounds a little bit like Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours, but it's slightly different in the following way. So what she does is she backs it up by evidence and she is a great scientist. I respect her work. It's more the challenge of this popular book rather than her science. Her most famous study took men and women who'd got into West Point, that's the United States Military Academy. And after you get into West Point, you're not automatically let into the army. You have to complete a difficult six week course called Beast Barracks. And so this is a really hard physical challenge. She wanted to look at what predicts success in Beast Barracks. Well, what do you think predicts success well, you might think it's physical fitness, but she finds it's not. She found that something which was even more important than physical fitness was your grit, which is your passion and perseverance, which he measured with a survey. Now that sounds really compelling. And if indeed grit is more powerful than fitness for a physically demanding challenge like Beast barracks, then grit must be what everybody should develop. And how do you develop it? You buy her book. However, what she suffered from was a problem known as restriction of range. So this is not a problem of misapplying something from. From the army to a different context. Even if your only goal was to be in the army, you should be concerned of this range issue. So what do I mean by this range issue? The people who'd already got into West Point were already extremely fit. So if there's diminishing returns to fitness, then indeed fitness won't matter, because everybody is already fit to begin with. And that's why other things, like grit, seem to be more important. But if you were to take the average person who wants to join the military, then he or she might be better off working on their fitness than their grit. So what is true among a small set of people who have already gotten to West Point is not true for the population in general. So this is why I call it restriction of range. What's true for a range of very fit people isn't true for the population in general, which has a big deviance in terms of how fit they are.
- [22:56]
Phil Agnew
Imagine if I wanted to create a podcast episode on what makes Google's executives so successful. If I interviewed the executives, I might learn that they will have unparalleled levels of empathy compared to executives at other companies. I may therefore conclude that empathy equals success. But this is a restriction of range issue, because I'm only interviewing the executives, not other employees, who have failed to reach those levels. Because of that, I'm missing vital information. I might learn that all employees at Google have empathy, but the ones who reach the senior positions are much better at persuading, for example.
- [23:34]
Alex Edmonds
Absolutely. And this is really important because we love to learn from success stories, and there's so many books out there, biographies about success stories. You want to learn the secrets to success, but actually, if you focus only on successful people, then you might actually be ignoring the big driver that led them to be successful to begin with, because there's no difference in that characteristic among that small cohort. So everybody already within Google has a computer science degree or equivalent, and so empathy, or I think it's psychological safety is what they pointed to in the project Aristotle. That seemed to be key. But out of the general population, what really matters is getting into Google to begin with rather than being in the top versus bottom half of Google. And what matters might be more boring things like a computer science degree and.
- [24:24]
Phil Agnew
Work unfortunately, many business books aren't useful. Too many share success stories out of context. They claim to reveal the keys to Apple's success without citing a control a why Purpose can't be the sole reason behind Apple's success. If it was, every company would have copied it by now. Other books share ideas that fall to black and white thinking, like Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule or the Atkins Diet Revolutions. They tell us that one thing is good, others are bad, but this oversimplifies the complexity of life and leads us to draw irrelevant conclusions. And other books like Grit suffer from a restriction of range. Traits like fitness or grit matter only up to a point. While grit was key for the already fit West Point cadets, an average aspiring teenager might benefit far more from just improving their fitness before working on their grit. The real problem with many business books is that they package incomplete or oversimplified ideas as universal truths. To truly understand success, we need nuance, evidence based insights, and a little bit of humility. Growing a business is exceptionally hard. Some business books might help a bit, but any book that claims to have one simple trick that can transform your business well, well, that's bound to fall short. That is all for this week's episode of Nudge. Thank you so much for listening today. We've covered a lot of business books that aren't worth reading, but I didn't want to leave you thinking that there is nothing worth reading. So I have put together a 2025 reading list. It is packed with 25 incredible business books that you should read this year and it also contains five that I would recommend you would avoid. And they are not just the books I've spoken about today, there's some other ones there as well. There's no BS business books in my list, only books with reliable evidence backed advice. And the list includes a bit of a mix of big name classics and hidden gems that you might not have come across yet. If you're looking for some fresh inspiration this year about what to read, just go check out the Reading list. It's a great place to start. You can grab the full list for free at www.nudge.kit.com readinglist that's nudge.kit.com readinglist or just click the link in the Show Notes. You'll find it there. One of the best books I included in the reading list is May Contain Lies by this week's guest, Alex Edmonds. It is easily one of the best books I read last year. I've dropped a link to his book in the show Notes, and I highly, highly, highly recommend you give it a read. Okay, that is all for today. I'll be back on Friday with more nudge. Thank you so much for listening. Bye.