Logo

Authors Heike Bruch and Sumantra Ghoshal describe just such a process for making effective use of time as a resource in A Bias for Action: How Effective Mangers Harness Their Willpower, Achieve Results, and Stop Wasting Time. Without promising a five-minute solution for overcoming time-based challenges to productivity, the book does set out easy-to-follow principles. While an admission to wasting time might require more self-examination than most librarians would initially feel comfortable making, the authors’ systematic approach to identifying ways to become more efficient rests on a philosophical design that bears closer examination. The organizing principles of A Bias for Action center around two different spheres of action. The early chapters focus on the efforts individuals take to harness their own willpower to achieve results. The final chapters focus on an organization’s responsibility to develop purposeful leaders and on a leader’s responsibility to encourage others within his or her organization to act purposefully to shape organizational culture. Throughout the book, case studies based on actions taken by managers of European corporations illustrate the key principles. An appendix describes how Bruch, a professor of leadership at the Swiss University of St. Gallen, and Ghoshal, a professor of strategy and international Management at the London Business School who passed away in 2004, conducted the research that led to the creation of their theories.The book concludes with twenty pages of footnotes, an index, and an authors’ note. To set the stage for their theories, Bruch and Ghoshal define purposeful action as “determined, persistent, and relentless action-taking to achieve a purpose, against all odds.”They do not minimize the difficulty of acting purposefully. From their perspective, people who exhibit purposeful action possess two critical traits: energy and focus.Energy requires the investment of personal involvement and vigorous effort. Giving lip service without giving your heart won’t qualify as an energetic action under their criteria. Focused behavior requires the discipline to avoid distraction, overcome barriers, and resist the urge to be sidetracked when plans do not proceed as expected. Because of these stringent criteria, the authors maintain that only 10% of managers act purposefully.7 They draw clear lines to distinguish action from unfocused busyness. The underlying thesis of A Bias for Action is that every manager,regardless of the inclination to be a procrastinator, over-busy, or detached, possesses the capability to engage his or her willpower.