If managers find themselves having success—getting projects completed on schedule and under budget—does that success stem from their own skills, the skills of their subordinates, temporary good luck, interventions of higher-level administrators, a blend of these factors, or some other causes altogether? There is no easy way to tell. We can learn the wrong lessons from experience. Each time we compile a story about an experience, we run the risk of getting it wrong and stamping in the wrong strategy.
I think Getting The Most Out of People book suggests making similar interventions in different situations at different times to get some degree of confidence in asessing the outcomes. Taking an experimental approach can be helpful in general but can also be prone to confirmation bias.
