Our foundation
Evidence-based management
We work with insights from evidence-based management. AgilityVisual is built on years of research in the social sciences, paired with practitioners' experience and peer input.
The case
Why evidence-based management?
High-quality decision-making matters in personal and professional life. In some situations, making the right or the wrong decision has a direct impact on your opportunities, your standing, your outlook and your future.
In the late 1990s, the first guidelines for making decisions on the best available evidence emerged in healthcare. Evidence-based approaches spread quickly from there.
At AgilityVisual we believe that management tools which really make a difference have to rely on the best available evidence.
Where the evidence-based idea travelled
The definition
What is evidence-based management?
An approach that provides guidance on how to make better decisions. Being evidence-based means focusing on practices that have been tested in real-world situations and shown to work against pre-defined quality standards.
This counts as evidence
- Tested in real-world situations, not only in theory
- Shown to work against pre-defined quality standards
- Appraised for reliability and validity before use
- Drawn from four independent sources, not one
This does not, on its own
- Untested anecdotal experience
- Beliefs and habit — “how we have always done it”
- Business books and blogs
- Trainings whose effect was never measured
None of this is worthless — it is simply not a sufficient basis for a high-stakes decision
In practice
How AgilityVisual relies on evidence-based management
We summarise the state of the literature
Our Dossiers are in-depth articles that summarise the scientific literature on the challenges that arise in management, for individuals and organisations alike. Each one ends with key take-aways and practices you can act on.
We built the evidence into a product
Evidence-based management is much more than aggregating scientific literature. That is why we developed AgilityVisual, a business performance management platform that addresses the most pressing leadership and management challenges from an evidence-based point of view.
Situational Awareness
Knowing what is actually going on in your organisation before you act on it.
Goal Setting
One of the most replicated findings in organisational psychology, applied to real targets.
Team Mental Models
Shared understanding inside a team — the difference between coordination and confusion.
Scientifically proven tools and concepts the platform is built on
Read on — the method
The evidence-based approach
Three building blocks carry the approach. Remove one and the other two stop working: sources without appraisal let weak evidence through, and appraisal without a process never reaches a decision.
Four sources of evidence
Where the input comes from, and why one source is never enough.
A structured decision process
Six steps, close to the plan–do–check–act cycle.
Evidence-quality criteria
How to tell solid evidence from a well-packaged management fad.
Building block 01
Four sources of evidence
Four different sources help you decide on a sound evidence base. Together they cover a 360-degree spectrum.
Considering this full spectrum avoids missing important insights that are not yet on your radar, and stops you deciding on an incomplete picture. It makes sure that both contextual knowledge — specific to your organisation — and meta-knowledge — specific to the problem — are on the table.
Not all four sources are of the same quality. You still have to select the best available evidence — which is what the third building block is for.
Building block 02
A structured decision-making process
Six steps, closely related to the plan–do–check–act cycle. The first three are preparation; the last two are what keeps the decision honest.
The cycle repeats — step 06 feeds back into step 01
We and our surroundings are embedded in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment. There is no 100% guarantee that a decision is sufficient to reach the desired future state — which is exactly why steps five and six carry as much weight as the first four.
Building block 03
Critical appraisal: evidence-quality criteria
Management knowledge is not immune to the fake-news and alternative-facts problem. How do you tell solid evidence from another management fad designed to make you feel good? There are no foolproof criteria — but there are three tools worth knowing.
Evidence hierarchies
Evidence hierarchies have been around for many years and give a good appraisal of how solid a piece of evidence really is. At the top you will usually find meta-analyses and systematic reviews of randomised controlled trials (RCTs), which represent the “gold standard” in quantitative research design.
In management, though, we deal with real-life settings, which sometimes makes lab-trial results hard to apply. And surveys — usually conducted at a single point in time — sit surprisingly low in the hierarchy.
Reliability and validity
Does it measure consistently?
Consistency and reproducibility of results when measuring the same thing — making sure an instrument measures what it claims to measure not once, but repeatedly.
Does it measure the right thing?
Whether results accurately represent what they claim to represent. Two of the most important quality criteria in quantitative research, and a must-know for evidence-based practitioners.
Solidity rating
A concept we developed to rate the state of the literature on a specific business challenge. It runs from 0 to 5 and is assigned to every Dossier we publish, giving practitioners an immediate indication of how solid the underlying evidence is.
Solidity rating — shown on every Dossier
The payoff
What an evidence-based approach gives you
Better decisions
Decision quality improves first; increased organisational performance adds up over time.
A more critical eye
Knowing that knowledge varies in quality — and that there is no silver bullet — makes you a sharper consumer of management literature.
Insight into what makes work work
The human and organisational factors behind a good place to work and a high-performance organisation.
Steadier leadership
It helps you manoeuvre your organisation through challenging times, when leadership is needed more than ever.
In fairness
Where the approach falls short
Evidence-based management comes with real shortcomings. Here are four worth bearing in mind — and what to do about each.
Evidence is never complete
The body of evidence on a business challenge is always an incomplete snapshot at any given point in time. As knowledge production progresses, new insights change the picture.
Keep an eye on the latest developments in the evidence relevant to the challenges that matter most to you, rather than treating a body of literature as settled.
It leans heavily on scientific method
Evidence-based management relies strongly on scientific methods for knowledge production and research design. Many academic studies are dense with statistics and data sets, which makes it slow for practitioners to reach the practical application of the findings.
Work from summaries that have already done the appraisal — which is exactly what our Dossiers are for.
Quantitative findings can be abstract
The approach is rooted in a natural-science paradigm which assumes it is possible to derive generalisable conclusions about which management interventions work. As a consequence, quantitative findings tend to be abstract and hard to apply in practice.
Depending on the challenge, combine quantitative with qualitative findings — far more context-sensitive, though less generalisable.
It takes time
For busy practitioners, going through a structured decision-making process and screening four sources of evidence is a considerable time commitment.
Practice makes the structured process the norm rather than the exception. And AgilityVisual builds evidence-based insights into the platform, so you do not run the full cycle for every decision you take.
Questions about evidence-based management
An approach that provides guidance on how to make better decisions, by focusing on practices that have been tested in real-world situations and shown to work against pre-defined quality standards.
Organisational data, professional expertise, stakeholder values and concerns, and insights from scientific research. Using all four keeps both contextual and problem-specific knowledge in view.
Data-driven management draws mainly on organisational data — one of the four sources. Evidence-based management adds professional expertise, stakeholder concerns and scientific research, and appraises the quality of each before use.
From healthcare in the late 1990s, where the first guidelines for deciding on the best available evidence were formulated. The idea spread to law enforcement, public administration and many areas of management.
A rating we developed, from 0 to 5, that indicates how solid the state of the literature is on a specific business challenge. Every Dossier we publish carries one.
See evidence-based management at work
AgilityVisual turns these principles into a business performance management platform — situational awareness, goal setting and team mental models, built in.