text: The Scientific Method applied to this book:
  
  1) Form a hypothesis:  Great managers do something differently than mediocre managers.
  2) Conduct an experiment:  Interview 80,000 managers.
  3) Analyze data: ???this step is missing???
  4) Draw conclusions: Write this Book.
  
  With the exception of the "12 questions", the authors make no attempt to back any their conclusions with the results of their study.  They make several insightful statements, such as "many managers say they would like to define the right outcomes."  However, they do not even attempt to tell the reader how the study led them to this statement.  Did 90% of the managers interviewed state this?  Did 60% of the great managers state this while only 10% of the mediocre managers did?  Does "many managers" mean 100 managers?  100 managers seems like "many managers" at first, but considering 80,000 were interviewed I 100 managers is a negligible amount.  The entire book consists of several rational statements that are not supported by their study.  
  
  It seems to me that after conducting a huge study to find out what great managers do differently, the authors found almost no common trends.  However, since they put a lot of money and effort into conducting the study, they needed something to show for it and wrote this book.  If Buckingham and Coffman didn't claim this book was a result of "the largest study of its kind," I would say it offers some decent advice;  however, since it does make this claim, I wish they would have back up their conclusions so the readers would be able to determine how valid they are.  
  