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100 Things You Need to Know: Best People Practices for Managers & HR
100 Things You Need to Know : Best Practices for Managers and HR
574 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
29 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 30, 2022
This book was gifted to me by a colleague. The best part of this book the research behind each best practice is backed by research. Jamie in his review has described the structure followed by the authors for each topic. It is a useful reference book for me. I even bought their second book '50 more things you need to know...' published in 2007, as useful as the first book.
I prefer to make a statement, or decision, based on some evidence. For e.g., if I am writing on executive coaching, I prefer to visit the topic in 50 more things..."What is the impact of executive coaching?" I get to know there that "there is hard evidence of increases in self-awareness, skills, and performance." The authors discuss the topic and the research they did. I come to know "how sure are we at this time?" on a 5-point scale starting from Hint to solid, hint being the lowest and solid being the highest.
The downside is that I have not been able to know if the authors continued the research. There is a 2016 edition of 100 Things... being sold but I don't know if it is a result of continued or new research. Blindly buying the 2016 edition, I fear that I might end up having the second copy of the same book with me!
I prefer to make a statement, or decision, based on some evidence. For e.g., if I am writing on executive coaching, I prefer to visit the topic in 50 more things..."What is the impact of executive coaching?" I get to know there that "there is hard evidence of increases in self-awareness, skills, and performance." The authors discuss the topic and the research they did. I come to know "how sure are we at this time?" on a 5-point scale starting from Hint to solid, hint being the lowest and solid being the highest.
The downside is that I have not been able to know if the authors continued the research. There is a 2016 edition of 100 Things... being sold but I don't know if it is a result of continued or new research. Blindly buying the 2016 edition, I fear that I might end up having the second copy of the same book with me!
September 22, 2008
These books, 100 Things Your Need to Know: Best People Practices for Managers & HR and 50 More Things You Need to Know: The Science Behind Best People Practices for Manager & HR Professionals (whew!), are curious and different from most books that I've seen on similar topics. As you might guess from the titles, they contain 150 chapters between them, covering sup-toics like selection, Human Resources law, leadership, HR metrics, corporate culture, training, recruiting, HR technology systems, compensation, benefits, motivation, organizational development, job design, teams, performance management, surveys, and more.
Each of these 150 chapters is dedicated to a single "fact," which is framed as a multiple-choice question at the beginning of the section. For example: Do applicants have preferences among various selection techniques? Is there still a bias against African Americans in the workplace? Do people differ in how they learn from experience? How many points should your survey question scales have on them? How skilled are managers, typically, at being good coaches? You're supposed to try and answer the question without peeking, and there's even places to keep track of your answers so that you can get "scores" for the books that reflects your knowledge of these 100 and 50 things. Me, I always just peeked.
After the opening question in each chapter, the correct answer is given, along with a 1-5 ranking of how solid the current state of the research is on this answer --suggestive to absolutely sure. Then there's a discussion of the factoid, then citations of research that back up the claim, then a discussion of what it means to HR practitioners, then a bibliography for further research. This all happens in the space of 3-5 pages each, so it's nice and breezy. I would typically read a chapter or two over lunch at work or when I needed to take a little break (but still wanted to feel like I was doing something work related).
What I like about these books is that they are very research oriented, with each of the 150 assertions backed up by scientific research, usually taken from refereed journals in various branches of psychology and management. It's not, in short, arm chair punditry or bland platitudes. And while I found myself disagreeing with their reading of the current literature on some topics --such as the importance of emotional intelligence for job performance or the nature of employee engagement as a construct distinct from other constructs-- they were mostly spot on from what I could tell.
My only substantial complaint about the books are that I wish the authors had organized all the similar chapters together. I would have liked, for example, to have read through a chunk of chapters all dealing with leadership development all at once, rather than having those same chapters sprinkled randomly throughout the book. Still, with the use of a good index and some skimming, these are going to make pretty good reference books, especially with the bibliographies in each section serving as jumping off points for more in-depth reading.
Each of these 150 chapters is dedicated to a single "fact," which is framed as a multiple-choice question at the beginning of the section. For example: Do applicants have preferences among various selection techniques? Is there still a bias against African Americans in the workplace? Do people differ in how they learn from experience? How many points should your survey question scales have on them? How skilled are managers, typically, at being good coaches? You're supposed to try and answer the question without peeking, and there's even places to keep track of your answers so that you can get "scores" for the books that reflects your knowledge of these 100 and 50 things. Me, I always just peeked.
After the opening question in each chapter, the correct answer is given, along with a 1-5 ranking of how solid the current state of the research is on this answer --suggestive to absolutely sure. Then there's a discussion of the factoid, then citations of research that back up the claim, then a discussion of what it means to HR practitioners, then a bibliography for further research. This all happens in the space of 3-5 pages each, so it's nice and breezy. I would typically read a chapter or two over lunch at work or when I needed to take a little break (but still wanted to feel like I was doing something work related).
What I like about these books is that they are very research oriented, with each of the 150 assertions backed up by scientific research, usually taken from refereed journals in various branches of psychology and management. It's not, in short, arm chair punditry or bland platitudes. And while I found myself disagreeing with their reading of the current literature on some topics --such as the importance of emotional intelligence for job performance or the nature of employee engagement as a construct distinct from other constructs-- they were mostly spot on from what I could tell.
My only substantial complaint about the books are that I wish the authors had organized all the similar chapters together. I would have liked, for example, to have read through a chunk of chapters all dealing with leadership development all at once, rather than having those same chapters sprinkled randomly throughout the book. Still, with the use of a good index and some skimming, these are going to make pretty good reference books, especially with the bibliographies in each section serving as jumping off points for more in-depth reading.
December 31, 2016
Pro: cites many research papers and provides a list of recommended readings for each topic.
Contra: highly self-referential, noticeably dated.
Easy to read but provides food for thought. I'd have loved color-coding of topics so that all "facts" could be read together while still being spread out.
Contra: highly self-referential, noticeably dated.
Easy to read but provides food for thought. I'd have loved color-coding of topics so that all "facts" could be read together while still being spread out.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews