Fewer than 10% of management books are by practitioners – amazing.

I sure look forward, though, to seeing your list. Whoever makes it on there – whether consultant, academic, or practitioner – will undoubtedly be worth reading!

Thanks for stopping by with this, Wally – I’m sure a lot of us will be holding you to your promise about the reading list!

A week or so ago, I decided that once my current deadline push is done, I’d make a reading list of the best business books by practitioners. What I discovered was that there simply weren’t that many.

I’ve got a pretty good library, so I did a quick check of a couple of shelves. There are gurus of all kinds represented: academics and consultants and historians. But there are very few actual practitioners. My unscientific, eyeball estimate is less than 10 percent. A good number of those are by entrepreneurs like Michael Dell who are telling the story of their company.

It always seems to get down to this, doesn’t it? Either you accept that experts have not just knowledge, but the capability to understand and employ it that you lack either the resources or ability to attain, and then you submit to their prescriptions, or you stand on your own two feet.

Some people find it most convenient to submit, at least at first. The cost always and inevitably exceeds the presumed benefit, though.

Thanks for the link to the article – the use of education to make its point is brilliant – Thomas Sowell is terrific, I need to read more of his stuff.

Also a great point about Isaac Newton – most of what he did in his life was in fields other than physics and math – and some of it was more than a little way out there.

Thanks for the always thought-provoking contributions!

http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/08/20/amateurs_outdoing_professionals

Many “experts” have a tendency to overestimate their expertise — actually presume that narrow knowledge can be extrapolated into other arenas.

It’s just not so. Isaac Newton may have been a genius mathematician, but he was a pedestrian alchemist.