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What the research says

The research behind running a better business.

70 studies and books on how owners decide, hiring, leadership, selling, teams, culture and purpose. Each is summarized in plain English with what it means for your business, and every source is named so you can read it yourself.

Topics

What do you want to get better at?

We label each source by the kind of evidence behind it. A peer-reviewed study tested an idea; a practitioner book reports what worked for experienced people. Both are useful. They are not the same.

How owners think and decideJudgment, bias, passion and persistence.2 sources → Running a small businessWorking on the business, not just in it.1 sources → Hiring wellFinding and choosing the right people.4 sources → Developing and keeping peopleGrowth, retention and people strategy.1 sources → Leading peopleWhat effective leaders do differently.10 sources → Coaching and mentoringHelping people improve through conversation.4 sources → Building strong teamsThe conditions that make teams perform.14 sources → Accountability and performanceClear expectations and follow-through.5 sources → Measuring performanceTracking what matters.2 sources → Company cultureHow people behave when no one is watching.2 sources → Purpose, values and performanceWhether purpose pays, and how.4 sources → Marketing, brand and customersHow customers choose, what a brand is for, what reviews and referrals do to sales, and what marketing spending returns.11 sources → Selling and sales managementWhat makes salespeople and sales teams effective.7 sources → Faith and values in businessHow owners' faith shapes the way they lead.3 sources →
How owners think and decide

What does research say about how entrepreneurs think?

Academic book

The Psychology of Entrepreneurship: New Perspectives

Michael M. Gielnik, Melissa S. Cardon and Michael Frese (editors) · 2021 · Routledge (SIOP Organizational Frontiers Series)

An edited volume in which leading researchers review what psychology has learned about entrepreneurs over the previous decade, covering thinking, emotion, personality, teams, training, failure and well-being. The copy on file holds the introduction and the chapters on thinking, emotion, clinical traits such as ADHD, and biology; the rest is listed in the contents only.

  • Passion and positive mood tend to raise effort, confidence and venture growth, but very high positive mood is linked to weaker sales growth because it dulls judgement.
  • People feel more passion for their venture when they sense they are in control and making progress by their own choice.
  • Owners report stress levels similar to or lower than comparable employees, partly because autonomy offsets heavy demands.
  • Traits such as impulsiveness that cause trouble in a job can help in the uncertain early stages of a business, where owners can shape their own work around them.
  • Research on whether planning helps small firms has moved from yes-or-no to asking when and under what conditions it helps.
For your business: Track visible progress on a few goals you chose yourself, since that sense of control sustains energy, and get an outside check when you are most excited about an idea.
Evidence: Expert reviews of many peer-reviewed studies; partial copy on file (chapters 1 to 5)
Academic book

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman · 2011 · Farrar, Straus and Giroux

A Nobel-winning psychologist sums up about forty years of experiments on how people judge and decide. He describes a fast, automatic mode of thinking that runs most of the time and a slow, effortful mode that checks it, and shows the predictable errors that follow when the fast mode goes unchecked.

  • People build confident stories from whatever facts are in front of them and rarely ask what is missing.
  • Plans for projects are routinely too optimistic; comparing with how similar past projects actually went gives better forecasts.
  • A loss feels roughly twice as strong as a gain of the same size, which makes people hold on to losing positions too long.
  • An arbitrary first number, such as an opening price, pulls later estimates towards it.
  • Expert gut feel is trustworthy only where the work is regular and gives quick, clear feedback.
For your business: Before a big decision such as a hire, a new location or a price change, look up how similar past cases turned out and ask the team to imagine the plan has failed and explain why.
Evidence: Summarises decades of controlled experiments; a few priming results in one chapter have since failed to replicate
Running a small business

Why do so many small businesses stall?

Practitioner book

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

Michael E. Gerber · 2007 · HarperCollins

A widely read small-business book (first published in 1995; this file is a 2007 e-book edition) arguing that most businesses are started by skilled tradespeople who then get trapped doing the technical work. Gerber teaches owners to build the business as if it were the prototype for a franchise, with documented systems that ordinary staff can run without the owner.

  • Knowing the technical work of a business is not the same as knowing how to run a business that does that work.
  • Every owner has to play three roles: the one who does the work, the one who organises it, and the one who plans the future; most neglect the last two.
  • Owners should spend time working on the business, designing how it runs, and not only in it.
  • Write down how each job is done so results are consistent no matter who does it.
  • Draw the organisation chart by positions and responsibilities, even if the owner fills most boxes at first.
For your business: Document how the three to five most important jobs in your business are done, and draw an organisation chart by role, so the work does not depend on you being there.
Evidence: Author's consulting experience with many small firms; not tested
Hiring well

How do I hire the right person?

Practitioner book

Hire with Your Head: Using Performance-Based Hiring to Build Outstanding Diverse Teams (4th edition)

Lou Adler · 2022 · John Wiley & Sons

A recruiter and trainer sets out his performance-based hiring method, now in its fourth edition. The core idea is to define a job by the results the person must deliver in the first year, rather than by a list of skills and years of experience, and then to interview and recruit against those results.

  • Write a performance profile for each role: the handful of outcomes that success in the job looks like after 6 to 12 months.
  • Judge candidates by comparable things they have already achieved, not by how well they present in an interview.
  • Strong interviewees are often not the best hires; people who start strong and fade within 90 days are a common mistake.
  • Reduce bias by using organized panel interviews, scripting questions, and waiting before making a yes-or-no call.
  • Use personality tests to confirm a view late in the process, not to screen people out early.
For your business: Before posting your next job, write down the four or five results the new hire must produce in their first year and interview every candidate against that list.
Evidence: Author's long consulting experience; method not independently tested in published studies
Practitioner book

How to Hire Superior Sales DNA (3rd edition)

Danita Bye and Gordon Bye · 2015 · SGS, Inc.

Two former sales managers lay out a six-step process for hiring salespeople, from defining the ideal hire to onboarding. They argue that résumés and interviews alone mislead, and that owners should define what success looks like in their own sales setting first.

  • Profile your own sales conditions, such as deal size, cycle length and customer type, before describing the person you need.
  • Write the job description around key accountabilities, not generic sales traits.
  • Screen and shortlist against that profile, then interview and assess the top candidates.
  • Re-interview finalists to surface surprises before making an offer.
  • Plan onboarding so a new salesperson reaches productivity faster.
For your business: Before hiring a salesperson, write down how your customers buy and what your best salesperson actually does day to day.
Evidence: Authors' experience as sales managers; not tested
Practitioner book

Hire Slow, Fire Fast: A Lawyer's Guide to Building a High Performance Team

Mark Powers and Shawn McNalis · 2013 · Atticus

Two coaches to small law firms walk through hiring and managing support staff, from defining the role to dealing with problem employees. Their title sums up the argument: most small firms hire the first acceptable person in a rush and then put off dealing with poor performers.

  • Before advertising, decide the skill level and personality the role needs.
  • Check references, read résumés critically and use interview scenarios rather than relying on first impressions.
  • Test claimed skills during hiring so you do not discover gaps after months of training.
  • Poor orientation is a common reason new staff leave in the first weeks.
  • When someone clearly is not working out, act quickly instead of hoping it will resolve itself.
For your business: Slow down the next hire with a skills test and reference calls, and set a date to decide whether a struggling employee stays.
Evidence: Authors' coaching experience with law firms; not tested
Practitioner book

Who: The A Method for Hiring

Geoff Smart and Randy Street · 2008 · Ballantine Books (Random House)

Two consultants from the firm ghSMART set out a four-step hiring method drawn from thousands of executive hiring decisions. They argue that choosing people matters more than choosing strategy, and that most managers still hire by gut feel.

  • Start with a scorecard: the mission of the role, the measurable outcomes expected, and the behaviours that fit the company.
  • Build a steady flow of candidates before you need them, mainly through referrals from your own network and staff.
  • Use a structured sequence of interviews, including a detailed walk through the candidate's career and reference calls the candidate helps arrange.
  • Treat selling the job to the candidate as a separate step; good people turn offers down.
  • In a study the authors ran with University of Chicago economists on 313 private-equity CEOs, drive and follow-through predicted success better than likeability alone.
For your business: Replace your job description with a one-page scorecard of outcomes and ask every interviewer to rate candidates against it.
Evidence: Consultants' client experience plus one study of 313 CEOs they co-ran; the book's cost-of-mis-hire figures come from the firm's own clients
Developing and keeping people

How do I develop and keep good people?

Handbook

The Talent Management Handbook (3rd edition)

Lance A. Berger and Dorothy R. Berger (editors) · 2018 · McGraw-Hill Education

A large collection of chapters by consultants and academics on how organizations find, assess, develop, pay and keep people. The editors' opening chapter argues that high-performing organizations tie all of these programs to a stated set of values and treat their workforce as a portfolio in which people are invested in differently.

  • Write down the values and mutual expectations that guide the business, then build them into hiring criteria, reviews and pay.
  • Sort people by current and expected contribution and invest most in the small group who far exceed expectations.
  • Name the positions that would hurt most if vacated and make sure each has a ready backup.
  • Spread training, rewards, stretch assignments and development according to contribution, not evenly.
  • Later chapters cover competencies, performance reviews, succession, coaching, onboarding and pay, each by a different author.
For your business: List the three or four roles your business could least afford to lose and decide who would step in tomorrow for each.
Evidence: Edited practitioner collection; chapters vary from research-informed to opinion
Leading people

What makes a leader effective?

Meta-analysis or review

When and How Team Leaders Matter

J. Richard Hackman and Ruth Wageman · 2005 · Research in Organizational Behavior, 26

Two leading team researchers review the evidence on how much team leaders really shape results. They conclude that people overrate the leader's day-to-day behaviour and underrate the leader's decisions about how the team is set up in the first place.

  • Both observers and team members tend to credit or blame the leader's personality for results more than the evidence supports.
  • The biggest lever is design: a real team with stable membership, a clear and challenging direction, the right structure and organizational support.
  • In a field study of service teams, team design explained far more of performance than the quality of the leader's coaching.
  • Coaching helps most at natural moments: at launch, around the midpoint of the work, and at the end when reviewing lessons.
  • Well-timed coaching cannot rescue a badly designed team.
For your business: Before coaching a struggling team, check whether its goal, membership and resources are clear and adequate.
Evidence: Review of research by leading scholars, including field evidence
Peer-reviewed study

Linking Team Condition and Team Performance: A Transformational Leadership Approach

Amin Akhavan Tabassi, Kamand M. Roufechaei, Abu Hassan Abu Bakar and Nor'Aini Yusof · 2017 · Project Management Journal, 48(2)

The study looked at 94 construction project teams in Malaysia, with members rating their leader, leaders rating team conditions and supervisors rating performance. Better team conditions were linked to better performance, both directly and through the leader's inspiring and supportive style.

  • Six team conditions mattered: contribution, communication, accountability, experimentation, handling of conflict, and working relationships.
  • How well conflict and competition were handled was the strongest of the six.
  • Team conditions and leadership style together accounted for just over half the variation in team performance.
  • Leaders who set a vision, encourage new thinking and attend to individuals carried part of the effect of good conditions into results.
For your business: Look at how disagreements are handled on your teams, since it was the condition most closely tied to performance here.
Evidence: Survey of 94 teams with ratings from three separate sources; one industry in one country
Peer-reviewed study

The Effect of Team-Leadership Modes on Team Performance: A Preliminary Study

Peter Markulis, Avan R. Jassawalla, Hemant Sashittal, Daniel R. Strang and Paul Scipione · 2006 · Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning, 33

Student project teams were led in one of three ways: an assigned leader, a rotating leader, or a leader who emerged naturally. The researchers found no meaningful difference in project grades across the three approaches.

  • Eighteen teams of five or six students (77 students) completed the same semester-long project.
  • Assigned, rotating and emerging leadership produced similar project grades.
  • About 80% of students felt everyone should get a chance to lead a group.
For your business: How the leader is chosen may matter less than you think; focus instead on clear goals and support for the team.
Evidence: Small classroom experiment with 18 student teams; results may not carry over to workplaces
Practitioner book

The Champion Leader: Harnessing the Power of Emotional Intelligence to Build High-Performing Teams

Christopher D. Connors · 2024 · John Wiley & Sons

An executive coach argues that today's employees stay with leaders who know them personally, show empathy and communicate openly. The book applies emotional intelligence to everyday leadership tasks such as setting priorities, building a team-first culture, handling change and giving feedback, with reflection exercises in each chapter.

  • Staff often say in feedback that they wish their leader knew them better and shared more about themselves.
  • Self-awareness comes first; leaders need to understand their own reactions before they can manage others well.
  • Pay and flexibility matter, but care and connection are what build trust and keep good people.
  • Leaders should adapt and take responsibility when plans change, rather than look for someone to blame.
  • Good time management means deciding what is important, not just what is urgent.
For your business: Schedule regular one-on-ones that include some personal conversation, and ask each person what they need from you.
Evidence: Author's coaching experience with citations to surveys and popular research; not tested
Practitioner book

Servant Leadership in Action: How You Can Achieve Great Relationships and Results

Ken Blanchard and Renee Broadwell (editors) · 2018 · Berrett-Koehler Publishers

A collection of short essays by more than forty business leaders, writers, pastors and researchers on the idea that leaders should serve their people. Contributors describe what servant leadership means, how it has worked in companies, and why they believe it produces both better results and more satisfied staff. Several essays are written from a Christian perspective.

  • Servant leadership has two parts: setting a clear direction, then serving people so they can reach it.
  • Leaders who admit mistakes and show some vulnerability tend to earn more trust.
  • Company examples in the book link caring, inclusive cultures with lower turnover and stronger growth.
  • Serving people does not mean pleasing them; it includes holding them to high standards.
For your business: Keep setting the direction yourself, then ask each employee what is getting in the way of their work and remove it.
Evidence: Essays and case stories; a few contributors cite survey research, most is opinion
Practitioner book

The Best Team Wins: The New Science of High Performance

Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton · 2018 · Simon & Schuster

Two consultants on workplace motivation describe five habits they see in managers of the best teams, drawing on their own large employee surveys and interviews with team leaders. The book ends with a long list of small practical ideas for managers.

  • Understand what motivates each generation; the authors' data suggest younger workers value recognition more and autonomy less than older colleagues.
  • Manage each person individually, with career development as a low-cost way to keep people.
  • Help new hires and new teams get up to speed quickly.
  • Encourage healthy disagreement to generate new ideas.
  • Keep the whole team focused on serving customers.
For your business: Talk with each employee about where they want to grow, since the authors find lack of development is a leading reason people leave.
Evidence: Authors' surveys of more than 850,000 people and interviews; analysis not peer-reviewed
Practitioner book

Leadership and the One Minute Manager (updated edition)

Ken Blanchard, Patricia Zigarmi and Drea Zigarmi · 2013 · William Morrow

A short parable in which an overworked entrepreneur learns to stop doing everything herself by adjusting how she leads each person. It presents Situational Leadership II, the idea that a manager should give more direction or more support depending on how skilled and how motivated a person is at a particular task.

  • There is no single best leadership style; the right amount of direction and support depends on the person and the task.
  • The same employee can be expert at one job and a beginner at another, so leadership style should change task by task.
  • Managers need three skills: set clear goals, judge where the person is on that goal, and match their style to it.
  • Setting goals and then leaving people alone until something goes wrong is a common and costly mistake.
  • Talk openly with each person about the style you are using and why, so it does not feel inconsistent.
For your business: Before delegating a task, ask how skilled and how confident the person is at that specific job, and decide how much instruction and check-in they need.
Evidence: Widely taught model based on the authors' consulting and in-house research; independent studies give it mixed support
Practitioner book

Leading at a Higher Level: Blanchard on Leadership and Creating High Performing Organizations (Revised and Expanded Edition)

Ken Blanchard and the Founding Associates and Consulting Partners of The Ken Blanchard Companies · 2010 · FT Press (Pearson Education)

A collected statement of the Blanchard firm's thinking on leadership, from vision and customer service to leading individuals, teams and whole organizations through change. It argues that lasting success comes from aiming at three things at once: customers who choose you, staff who want to work for you, and sound financial results, led by people who put service ahead of self-interest.

  • A clear vision covers purpose, a picture of the future and ranked values, so people know what to do when values conflict.
  • The firm's own research on high-performing organizations points to shared information, a compelling vision, ongoing learning, focus on results, energizing systems and shared power.
  • Leadership happens at four levels: leading yourself, one person, a team and the whole organization.
  • Change efforts fail most often because people's concerns are not heard and addressed early.
  • Every leader should be able to explain their own leadership point of view to their team.
For your business: Write down your business's purpose and three to five ranked values, share them with staff, and use them to settle trade-offs.
Evidence: Draws on the firm's own studies and decades of consulting; not independently tested
Practitioner book

90 Days to a High-Performance Team: A Complete Problem-Solving Strategy to Help Your Team Thrive in Any Environment

Chris DeVany · 2010 · McGraw-Hill

A step-by-step guide for managers taking over or fixing a team, organized around common problems. Each chapter lays out what to do before starting, on day one, in the first week, the first month and the first 90 days.

  • A new manager should settle on three top priorities in the first week and report progress against them.
  • Communication breakdowns are handled by first understanding how the team sees the problem, then solving it together.
  • Involve the team early when change is coming, so resisters become contributors.
  • Deal with a persistent troublemaker through a private, documented, step-by-step process that is fair and legal.
  • Clashes with other teams ease when both managers agree on the current and desired state.
For your business: When you take on a team, pick three priorities for the first 90 days and review them weekly.
Evidence: Author's consulting experience; not tested
Practitioner book

Your Leadership Legacy: The Difference You Make in People's Lives

Marta Brooks, Julie Stark and Sarah Caverhill · 2004 · Berrett-Koehler Publishers

A fable about a young heir who must prove he can lead before taking over a family company. The authors spent five years asking people who had made a lasting mark on their lives and why, and turned the answers into three principles for leaving a positive legacy.

  • People remember leaders for how they behaved, not for their title or stated values.
  • Lasting influence comes from being genuine and approachable rather than hiding behind a position.
  • Taking time to build real relationships with people is part of the job, not a distraction from it.
  • Leaders also need to keep people focused on a shared goal and push to reach it.
For your business: Ask yourself what staff will say about working for you in ten years, and check whether your daily behaviour supports that answer.
Evidence: Based on the authors' informal interviews; not a formal study
Coaching and mentoring

How do I coach my people?

Handbook

Professional Coaching: Principles and Practice

Susan English, Janice Manzi Sabatine and Philip Brownell (editors) · 2019 · Springer Publishing Company

A large edited reference with 35 chapters by coaching scholars and practitioners, covering the profession, ethics, the coach-client relationship, psychological theories behind coaching, and coaching in leadership, health, careers, teams and education. It includes a critical review of coaching research by Cotterill and Passmore.

  • The research review finds coaching generally helps people change, but effect sizes in several meta-analyses are modest and may be inflated by selective publishing.
  • Some studies show coaching effects lasting from six months to 18 months, though how to make gains last is not well understood.
  • The quality of the relationship between coach and client is one of the strongest drivers of results.
  • Chapters by established researchers, such as Ryan and Deci on self-determination theory, explain that people change more when they feel in control, capable and connected.
  • Team coaching is distinct from facilitation or individual coaching and focuses on how the team works as a whole.
For your business: Expect coaching to help but not to work miracles; choose a coach you trust, set clear goals and support the person's own choices.
Evidence: Academic reference; includes a critical review of published studies and meta-analyses
Practitioner book

Coaching in Organizations: Best Coaching Practices from The Ken Blanchard Companies

Madeleine Homan and Linda J. Miller · 2008 · John Wiley & Sons

A guide for managers and HR staff who want to bring coaching into an organization, written by two coaches with more than a decade of practice in over 100 companies. It covers how to set up and run coaching, how to measure what it delivers, and a simple four-step conversation process managers can use every day.

  • Training alone fades quickly; a few follow-up coaching sessions after a course make people far more likely to use what they learned.
  • Coaching results can only be measured if the goals are specific at the start, and the most useful measure is behaviour change that colleagues can see.
  • A good coaching conversation starts by connecting with the person, then spends real time agreeing on the one issue that matters most before moving to action and review.
  • People being coached commonly lose steam around the fourth to seventh session; this is normal and the coach should expect it and help them push through.
  • Coaching for performance is for capable people who want to improve, not a last step before letting someone go.
For your business: Book two or three short follow-up conversations after any training you pay for, and open each one-on-one by agreeing on the single most pressing issue before talking solutions.
Evidence: Authors' coaching practice and client case studies; cites some research but is not itself tested
Practitioner book

Executive Coaching: A Guide for the HR Professional

Anna Marie Valerio and Robert J. Lee · 2005 · Pfeiffer (John Wiley & Sons)

A practical guide for the person inside a company who arranges coaching for a leader. It explains when coaching is and is not the right answer, how to choose a coach, the steps of a coaching engagement, and what the employee, the boss, the HR person and the coach each need to do. It includes sample agreements, action plans and client stories.

  • Coaching works best when the employee, their boss, HR and the coach agree on goals at the start.
  • A coaching engagement follows a clear sequence: contract, set goals, assess, plan and act, then evaluate.
  • A boss can coach, but cannot replace an outside coach, because the boss also controls pay and discipline.
  • Coaching is a poor fit when the real problem is a bad job match or when the decision to let someone go has already been made.
  • Interview more than one coach and check their experience, method and fit before hiring.
For your business: If you hire a coach for a key manager, hold a three-way meeting first to agree on goals, confidentiality and how progress will be reported.
Evidence: Authors' HR and coaching experience with some cited outcome studies
Practitioner book

The Reflecting Glass: Professional Coaching for Leadership Development

Lucy West and Mike Milan · 2001 · Palgrave

Describes coaching aimed at developing leaders, as distinct from skills training or performance fixes, and presents it as a blend of business consulting and counselling skills. With chapters from guest contributors, it covers the coaching process, coach competencies, evaluation, ethics, the coaching market and case studies from organizations such as the BBC.

  • Development coaching gives leaders a private space to reflect on how they lead, which busy senior people rarely get.
  • A good development coach needs both business understanding and counselling-style listening skills.
  • Coaching engagements need clear contracting at the start and a planned way to report back to the sponsoring organization at the end.
  • Evaluating coaching is hard; outcome research at the time was thin and most evidence came from client reports.
  • Prospective clients should look for warning signs in a coach, such as pushing their own agenda or blurring confidentiality.
For your business: If you consider a coach for yourself, look for one who understands business and listens well, and agree in writing on goals and confidentiality.
Evidence: Authors' and contributors' coaching practice; notes the lack of outcome research
Building strong teams

What makes a team perform?

Meta-analysis or review

What Characterizes Effective Management Teams? A Research-Based Approach

Henning Bang and Thomas Nesset Midelfart · 2017 · Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 69(4)

The authors review about 35 years of research on management and decision-making teams and sort the factors linked to effectiveness into inputs, working processes, team climate and outcomes. They close with the four problem areas they see most often in their own consulting.

  • Management teams need a clear purpose and should spend their time on tasks that genuinely require the team.
  • Smaller is usually better; beyond six or seven members, discussion and decision quality tend to drop.
  • Good teams set goals for each meeting, keep discussion focused, and argue about ideas without it turning personal.
  • Psychological safety, where people can disagree and admit mistakes without penalty, supports learning and performance.
  • Common failings are unclear purpose, poor meetings, a group of individuals rather than a team, and relationship conflict.
For your business: Write down what your leadership team is for and give every meeting a stated goal.
Evidence: Narrative review of international research; practical points drawn partly from authors' consulting
Meta-analysis or review

Building Trust in High-Performing Teams

Mila Hakanen and Aki Soudunsaari · 2012 · Technology Innovation Management Review (June 2012)

The authors review research on trust in teams and add early findings from interviews with managers in a multi-company project. They conclude that trust underpins open communication and that it can be built deliberately, though slowly.

  • Without trust, people hold back opinions, questions and improvement ideas, and are less willing to help each other.
  • Trust rests on honesty, openness, consistency and respect; losing any one can break it.
  • Sharing facts alone does not build relationships; people also need personal contact and real listening.
  • Regular face-to-face contact, one-on-one meetings and shared experiences speed trust up.
  • Partners in the project would not fully commit without trust at both the personal and business level.
For your business: Hold regular one-on-one conversations with each team member, not just group meetings, to build trust faster.
Evidence: Literature review with preliminary interview findings from one project
Peer-reviewed study

Impact of Effective Teamwork on Employee Performance

Walid Al Salman and Zubair Hassan · 2016 · International Journal of Accounting & Business Management, 4(1)

A survey of 107 employees at one entertainment company in Kuala Lumpur tested which parts of teamwork relate to individual performance. Communication, trust, leadership and accountability showed clear positive links with performance.

  • Clear communication was positively linked to employee performance.
  • Trust among team members was positively linked to performance.
  • Leadership and accountability were also positively linked.
  • The abstract reports no significant effect for interpersonal skills or cohesiveness, though the conclusion describes them as positive; the paper is inconsistent on these two.
For your business: Make sure each person knows what they are accountable for and that information flows clearly across the team.
Evidence: Survey of 107 staff at a single company; self-reported measures
Peer-reviewed study

What Makes High-Performance Teams Excel?

Lisa J. Daniel and Charles R. Davis · 2009 · Research-Technology Management, 52(4)

An in-depth case study of an IBM research and development team of more than 50 engineers from several companies and countries that delivered a new chip process on a tight deadline. The authors found that the human side, a sense of community and personal commitment, mattered more than procedures.

  • A short, specific mission with a deadline and milestones gave everyone a shared reference point when they disagreed.
  • Matching each person's tasks to their own skills and interests increased commitment.
  • Openly recognizing each member's unique contribution helped build a sense of community.
  • A flexible structure that allowed easy contact across groups supported frequent debate and problem solving.
  • Leadership roles were shared across partner companies rather than held by one group.
For your business: Give a project team a one-paragraph mission with a date, and assign work that plays to each person's strengths.
Evidence: Single case study of one successful team
Peer-reviewed study

Factors Affecting Successful Implementation of High Performance Teams

P. Castka, C.J. Bamber, J.M. Sharp and P. Belohoubek · 2001 · Team Performance Management: An International Journal, 7(7/8)

The authors built a model of what helps or blocks high-performance teams from the teamwork and quality management literature, then tried it in a UK engineering firm. They offer a plan-do-check-act approach for small and mid-sized firms that want to build or restart teamwork.

  • Seven factors mattered, grouped into organizational ones (support, clear focus, links to other groups, performance measures) and people ones (skills, individual needs, group culture).
  • Team members lost commitment when they could not see how team work improved quality, cost or delivery for customers.
  • The case firm had no clear team measures beyond finishing tasks, which weakened the effort.
  • Ideas the whole team backed were carried through; ideas pushed past objections usually failed.
  • Similar technical skills did not mean similar people skills; team training became essential.
For your business: Give each team one or two measures tied to what customers notice, so people can see their work paying off.
Evidence: Literature-based model tried in a single UK manufacturing case
Peer-reviewed study

The Complex Dynamics of High Performance Teams

Marcial Losada · 1999 · Mathematical and Computer Modelling, 30

Losada coded what was said in meetings of 60 business teams observed in a lab and compared the patterns with the teams' performance ratings. High-performing teams showed more back-and-forth among members, more positive than negative remarks, and a balance of asking and telling; he then fitted a mathematical model to these patterns.

  • Of 60 teams, 15 rated high, 26 medium and 19 low on profit, customer satisfaction and 360-degree reviews.
  • High performers had many more sustained exchanges among members than low performers.
  • High performers made more positive than negative remarks and balanced questions with advocacy.
  • Low performers slid early in meetings into defending positions and focusing on themselves.
For your business: In your own meetings, notice whether people ask questions and build on each other's ideas or just defend their own positions.
Evidence: Observation of 60 teams; the mathematical modelling was later strongly criticized by other researchers
Practitioner book

Build Better Teams: Creating Winning Teams in the Digital Age

George Karseras · 2022 · FIU Business Press (Mango Publishing Group)

A team psychologist condenses team research into a sequenced model that a team works through in order. Teams first agree on mission and plans, then build trust and a safe climate, then develop reliable, committed ways of working, which leads to results.

  • Teams should start by agreeing on mission, plans and working rules, which builds trust quickly.
  • Psychological safety comes next, so people can speak openly and learn.
  • Autonomy, commitment and reliability grow once the team feels safe.
  • The author reports that in his test on 23 teams, each stage predicted the next.
  • Virtual and digital work make these basics more important, not less.
For your business: Before worrying about morale, make sure your team has agreed on its mission, plan and ground rules.
Evidence: Built from published research; the author's own test covered 23 teams and is not independently reviewed
Practitioner book

Building a High-Performance Team: Proven Techniques for Effective Team Working

Sarah Cook · 2009 · IT Governance Publishing

A short guide for IT team leaders on building effective teams. It covers what high-performing teams look like, how teams develop, the roles people take, setting a vision, running meetings, handling conflict and working across departments.

  • High-performing teams share a clear purpose, trust and respect one another, and know their roles.
  • Such teams communicate a lot, put the team's interest first and have a leader who both supports and challenges.
  • Teams go through predictable stages, and leaders should adjust their approach at each stage.
  • Disagreement should be aired and managed rather than hidden.
  • Well-run meetings with clear purpose are a core team skill.
For your business: Check that everyone on your team can state its purpose and their own role in one sentence.
Evidence: Practitioner guide drawing on established models; not tested
Practitioner book

How to Form a Team: Five Keys to High Performance

Kim Kanaga and Michael E. Kossler (Center for Creative Leadership) · 2001 · Center for Creative Leadership

A short guidebook from a leadership research and training centre on setting a team up well from the start. It argues that most team problems can be headed off at formation.

  • Form a team only when the work truly needs people with different skills working together.
  • Set a clear direction that every member can state simply.
  • Secure support from the wider organization: resources, a sponsor, feedback and team-based rewards.
  • Design the team's structure, roles and skill mix deliberately.
  • Identify the key outside relationships and external factors the team must manage.
For your business: When you set up a new team or project, spend the first meeting agreeing its purpose, roles and who it depends on.
Evidence: Guidance based on the centre's training and client work; not a formal study
Practitioner book

The One Minute Manager Builds High Performing Teams (revised edition)

Ken Blanchard, Donald Carew and Eunice Parisi-Carew · 2000 · William Morrow

A short parable about a manager who learns why her team is struggling. It describes the traits of high-performing teams and the predictable stages teams pass through, and shows how a leader should change style as the team matures.

  • Strong teams share a clear purpose, empower members, communicate openly, adapt, deliver results, recognize contributions and keep morale up.
  • New teams move through stages: early enthusiasm, a dip in morale when reality sets in, growing cohesion, and then steady high output.
  • A team early on needs clear direction; in the dip it needs both direction and support; later the leader can step back.
  • The frustrated middle stage is normal and can be shortened if the leader names it and helps the team work through it.
For your business: When you form or reshape a team, expect a slump after the first few weeks and plan to give extra support and clarity then.
Evidence: Builds on group-development research and the authors' consulting; not tested in this form
Practitioner book

Building a Dynamic Team: A Practical Guide to Maximizing Team Performance

Richard Y. Chang · 1994 · Richard Chang Associates / Jossey-Bass Pfeiffer

A short workbook in a practical guidebook series that describes the elements of an effective team and four phases for building one. It includes worksheets and a team self-assessment.

  • Effective teams have a clearly stated mission and goals that members help to set.
  • They clarify roles, get organized early, focus on results and are willing to experiment.
  • Building a team moves from agreeing a mission and ground rules, to clarifying roles and removing roadblocks, to working well together, to sustaining peak performance.
  • Peer feedback, a way to resolve conflict and agreed decision methods are part of working well together.
For your business: Run a short session with your team to write its mission, goals and a few ground rules.
Evidence: Consultant's workbook; not tested
Practitioner book

Team Decision-Making Techniques: A Practical Guide to Successful Team Outcomes

P. Keith Kelly · 1994 · Richard Chang Associates, Publications Division

A workbook describing when a decision should be made by a team and several structured methods for doing it. Each method comes with steps and blank forms.

  • Not every decision needs the team; involve the team when its input or buy-in matters.
  • Brainstorming followed by filtering helps generate and then narrow options.
  • Methods such as the nominal group technique and the Delphi technique gather everyone's views while limiting domination by a few voices.
  • Paired comparisons and rating options against agreed criteria help a team choose among alternatives.
  • Consensus means everyone can support the decision, not that everyone ranks it first.
For your business: For your next team decision, agree on the criteria first, then score each option against them.
Evidence: Consultant's workbook of standard techniques; not tested
Practitioner book

Creating the High-Performance Team

Steve Buchholz and Thomas Roth (Wilson Learning Corporation) · 1987 · John Wiley & Sons

A training firm's guide for managers moving from managing individuals to leading a team. It describes the traits of high-performing teams identified in the firm's own work and walks through how to develop each.

  • Leaders of strong teams share authority and serve the team rather than direct every task.
  • Members feel as responsible for the unit's results as the manager does.
  • The team shares a clear purpose, communicates openly and sees change as opportunity.
  • Meetings stay focused on results.
  • Teams develop in phases, and the manager's role changes as they do.
For your business: Give team members real responsibility for results, not just tasks, and step back from directing every detail.
Evidence: Training firm's in-house research, not published in detail
Card deck / toolkit

Team Tactics

Dave Cunningham · 2022 · Pip Decks

A deck of illustrated cards, each giving step-by-step instructions for a team exercise. The cards are grouped by purpose, such as setting direction, supporting the team, checking team health, collaboration, communication and recognition, with a simple decision chart for picking one.

  • Includes exercises for building psychological safety, the sense that people will not be punished for mistakes or questions.
  • Offers structured formats for team retrospectives, root-cause analysis, goal setting with measurable results, and prioritizing urgent against important work.
  • Suggests short written guides in which each team member explains how they like to work.
  • Recommends regular team health checks so problems surface before they grow.
  • Cards can be chained into longer workshops or handed to a team to run on their own.
For your business: Pick one card that matches a current team problem and run it at your next staff meeting.
Evidence: Collection of established workshop techniques credited to their originators; the deck itself is not tested
Accountability and performance

How do I get people to own their results?

Practitioner book

Leadership Without Excuses: How to Create Accountability and High Performance (Instead of Just Talking About It)

Jeff Grimshaw and Gregg Baron · 2010 · McGraw-Hill

Argues that most employees will do the right thing only when their leader removes the usual excuses for not doing it. The book groups its advice under three conditions: clear and believable expectations, consequences that actually matter to people, and conversations based on facts rather than wishful thinking.

  • Most staff are neither always reliable nor hopeless; they perform well when conditions make it hard to make excuses.
  • People cannot read your mind; spending extra minutes making each role and priority explicit prevents many failures.
  • Explain the purpose behind an instruction so people can make sensible trade-offs when things do not go to plan.
  • Whatever you reward or tolerate, you will get more of; stop putting up with behaviour you do not want.
  • Treat mistakes as lessons to share, and give negative feedback in a way that keeps people from getting defensive.
For your business: For each key role, write down what success looks like, what happens when it is or is not met, and review progress against actual numbers rather than impressions.
Evidence: Authors' consulting experience, supported by citations to psychology research
Practitioner book

The On-Time, On-Target Manager: How a 'Last-Minute Manager' Conquered Procrastination

Ken Blanchard and Steve Gottry · 2004 · HarperCollins

A short fable about a talented manager whose habit of leaving things to the last minute puts his job at risk, and the CEO who coaches him out of it. It argues that chronic lateness comes from unclear priorities, weak commitment and saying yes to too much, and offers a simple personal discipline to fix it.

  • Sort tasks the way an emergency room sorts patients: handle what matters most first, not what arrived first.
  • Before acting, check that the task is the right thing, done for sound reasons, with the right people and at the right time.
  • Separate things you are interested in from things you are truly committed to, and only give a firm yes to the second group.
  • Saying no to low-priority requests is part of serving the business well, not a failure to help.
  • The book treats a poor performer's character and performance separately, so the conversation stays about the work.
For your business: Use it with a capable employee who keeps missing deadlines: agree on their top priorities together and give them permission to decline work that does not fit.
Evidence: Parable based on the authors' experience; not tested
Working paper

Worker Responses to Shirking Under Shared Capitalism

Richard Freeman, Douglas Kruse and Joseph Blasi · 2008 · National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 14227

A profit share or ownership plan only works if staff do not leave the effort to others. The authors asked workers in a US national survey, and at over 300 worksites in 14 companies with group incentive pay, whether they can see when a co-worker is slacking and what they do about it.

  • Most workers say they can tell when a co-worker is not pulling their weight; in the national survey, 49% gave the highest possible answer.
  • Workers paid through profit sharing, gain sharing, stock options or ownership were more likely to speak to the co-worker or report it, especially when they also took part in decisions or worked in teams.
  • The effect was largest where staff trusted management, had training and job security, were not closely supervised and were paid fixed wages at or above the market rate alongside the incentive.
  • Workers acted against slacking more in smaller firms, and most of all in small firms with shared pay.
  • At one company surveyed before and six months after it brought in a profit-sharing plan, the share very likely to talk to a slacking co-worker rose from 42% to 55%.
For your business: A profit-share pool works best in a small team where people can see each other's work and are also trained, trusted and paid fairly.
Evidence: Two large worker surveys showing links, not proof of cause; the before-and-after result is from one company; not peer-reviewed
Meta-analysis or review

A meta-analytic review of 60 years of role stressor research

Gargi Sawhney, Mallory A. McCord, Austin Cunningham, Peter Cook, Kwesi Adjei and Taylor Flinn · 2026 · Journal of Vocational Behavior, 167

Combines six decades of research on three sources of strain in a job: an unclear role, conflicting demands and too much work. It pools 515 studies covering 588 samples and 787,959 people, and compares how much each of the three matters.

  • The three are related but distinct, so they should be dealt with separately rather than lumped together as stress.
  • An unclear role was the most damaging of the three, accounting for the largest share of differences in many outcomes for staff and the business.
  • They share some causes, including how supported staff feel by the organization and how good their relationship with their manager is.
  • They also share some effects, including psychological distress and absence from work.
  • How much harm they do varies with the setting and with who the employees are.
For your business: Before adding rules or incentives, write down what each role owns and decides, since an unclear role does more harm than competing demands or a heavy load.
Evidence: Large peer-reviewed meta-analysis of mostly survey-based studies
Working paper

Does Size Really Matter? Empirical Evidence on Group Incentives

Christopher P. Adams · 2002 · Federal Trade Commission, Bureau of Economics Working Paper 252

Economists often argue that a company-wide bonus stops working as a firm grows, because each person's share of the reward shrinks while the effort is all their own. The author shows this depends on the kind of work, then tests it with Statistics Canada's 1999 Workplace and Employee Survey of manufacturing workers.

  • Where each person's effort adds to the result on its own, effort is expected to fall as the group grows.
  • Where effort is complementary, so each person's work is worth more when others work hard too, effort can rise as the group grows.
  • This may explain why earlier research found the problem in medical and legal practices, where people work independently, but less so in manufacturing.
  • In the Canadian data, larger workplaces were more likely to offer profit sharing or employee share ownership, at least among smaller firms.
  • Self-managed teams did not change that pattern, so the data did not support the idea that teams fix the problem by letting workers watch each other.
For your business: A shared bonus fits work people do together; where people work alone, tie part of it to each person's own results.
Evidence: Simple economic model plus one Canadian survey showing which firms use profit sharing, not whether it raised effort; not peer-reviewed
Measuring performance

How do I measure how we are doing?

Practitioner book

Team Analytics: The Future of High-Performance Teams and Project Success

Bentzy Goldman and Peter Taylor · 2023 · Routledge

A team-software founder and a project management author argue that leaders should collect regular data on how their teams are doing instead of relying on assumptions. The second half applies this to project teams, which they say fail too often for people reasons.

  • Leaders often misjudge why people leave; studies cited show employees stress feeling valued and belonging, where leaders assume pay.
  • Frequent, safe feedback from team members lets leaders act before problems reach an exit interview.
  • Psychological safety and clarity of roles and goals come up repeatedly as drivers of team performance.
  • The authors frame team data as an ongoing management habit, not a one-off survey.
For your business: Ask your team a few short questions about workload, clarity and support every few weeks and act on what you hear.
Evidence: Authors' experience and secondary sources; one author sells team-analytics software
Practitioner book

Measuring Team Performance: A Practical Guide to Tracking Team Success

Gloria E. Bader, Audrey E. Bloom and Richard Y. Chang · Kogan Page / Richard Chang Associates

A workbook on how teams can measure both their results and the teamwork behind them. It covers deciding what to measure, who should measure and when, and gives sample surveys, observation checklists and interview approaches.

  • Measure both the business results the team exists to deliver and the teamwork behaviours that lead to them.
  • Gather views from several directions: the team itself, internal customers and suppliers, outside customers and senior managers.
  • Combine numbers such as surveys and existing data with interviews and observation.
  • Measure often and keep it simple: a few short tools beat one elaborate one.
  • Share responsibility for measuring among team members.
For your business: Pick one result measure and one short teamwork survey for each team and review both monthly.
Evidence: Consultants' workbook; not tested
Company culture

How do I build the culture I want?

Company document

Netflix Culture: Freedom & Responsibility

Reed Hastings and Patty McCord (commonly credited) · 2009 · Netflix (internal culture presentation, later made public)

The slide deck Netflix used to explain its culture to staff and recruits. It argues that a company's real values show in who it hires, rewards and lets go, and that a firm can keep informal freedom as it grows by raising the share of strong performers rather than adding rules.

  • The values that count are the behaviours a firm rewards and promotes, not the words posted on the wall.
  • Managers are asked which staff they would fight to keep; adequate performers are let go with generous severance.
  • Rules are kept only to prevent disasters that cannot be undone and to deal with ethical and legal issues; mistakes that can be fixed are fixed quickly instead.
  • Managers are told to give context such as goals, priorities, stakes and measures of success, rather than controlling decisions.
  • Pay is set at the top of the market for each person and reviewed each year.
For your business: Write down the handful of behaviours you actually reward, remove approval steps that only guard against small fixable errors, and when someone gets it wrong ask what context you failed to give them.
Evidence: One large tech company's practices and beliefs; not tested, and some parts (such as cutting adequate performers) suit high-margin creative work more than most small firms
Practitioner book

The Carpenter: A Story About the Greatest Success Strategies of All

Jon Gordon (foreword by Ken Blanchard) · 2014 · John Wiley & Sons

A short leadership fable in which a struggling entrepreneur learns lessons about business from a carpenter he meets after collapsing. The book teaches that lasting success comes from loving the work, serving others and finding distinctive ways to show customers and staff that you care.

  • Put people ahead of the product; the relationships last longer than any single job.
  • Service always costs something, such as time or effort, and that cost is what earns loyalty.
  • Businesses stand out by finding one distinctive, habitual way to show they care, such as faster responses or a personal note.
  • Treat each piece of work as a craft and accept that success takes time and includes failures.
For your business: Pick one specific, repeatable way your business shows customers it cares, and make it a standard everyone follows.
Evidence: Author's advice told as a story; no research
Purpose, values and performance

Does having a purpose actually improve results?

Meta-analysis or review

Purpose in the For-Profit Firm: A Review and Framework for Management Research

Gerard George, Martine R. Haas, Anita M. McGahan, Simon J. D. Schillebeeckx and Paul Tracey · 2023 · Journal of Management

A review of the research that uses the idea of corporate purpose, which proposes a single definition and a framework for studying it. It argues that having a purpose statement must be kept separate from whether the purpose is actually carried out, so that good outcomes are not simply assumed.

  • Purpose is defined as the value a firm sets out to create for its stakeholders, giving a clear intent, something people can identify with, and practical paths to act on.
  • Values, often set by the founders, are building blocks of purpose but are not the purpose itself.
  • Purpose has to be written into mission and vision, built into practices and governance, and backed with money and time before it has effects.
  • Much popular evidence linking purpose to growth comes from consulting surveys; peer-reviewed evidence is thinner and definitions vary widely.
For your business: Treat purpose as something you budget for and build into hiring, decisions and reporting, not only as a statement on the website.
Evidence: Peer-reviewed review of the research literature; frames questions rather than testing them
Peer-reviewed study

Corporate Purpose and Financial Performance

Claudine Gartenberg, Andrea Prat and George Serafeim · 2019 · Organization Science

The authors measured purpose from about 456,000 employee survey responses across 429 US public companies over six years and compared it with later financial results. Purpose on its own did not predict performance, but firms where staff felt both a strong sense of purpose and clear direction from management did better on later profit and stock returns.

  • A general sense of purpose among staff was not, on its own, linked to better financial results.
  • High-purpose firms came in two types: ones marked by close relationships among co-workers, and ones marked by clear direction from management.
  • Only the purpose-plus-clarity type showed higher future profitability and stock returns.
  • The effect came from the beliefs of middle managers and professional staff, not senior executives or hourly workers.
For your business: Pair any statement of purpose with clear goals and priorities, and check whether your supervisors and senior staff, not only the leadership, believe in it and know how their work connects to it.
Evidence: Very large sample, 429 firms and about 456,000 employee responses; correlational but with strong controls
Working paper

Higher Purpose, Incentives and Economic Performance

Anjan V. Thakor and Robert E. Quinn · 2020 · European Corporate Governance Institute, Finance Working Paper No. 706/2020

Two business-school professors build an economic model of what happens when a firm commits to a purpose beyond profit that actually governs its decisions. The model predicts that an authentic purpose raises employee effort and lowers wage costs, but that profits rise only if employees believe the purpose is genuine.

  • A real higher purpose can raise effort and lower the pay needed to attract and keep staff.
  • If employees only care how much money goes to the cause, spending more on purpose lowers profit.
  • If employees care whether the purpose is authentic, a genuine commitment can raise profit.
  • Firms with an authentic purpose should see lower staff turnover, and an edge with customers who value that purpose.
  • Pressure from outside investors can crowd out spending on purpose.
For your business: Only state a purpose you will actually use to turn down work or spending that conflicts with it, because staff can tell the difference and the benefits depend on it.
Evidence: Mathematical model with case examples; not tested on data
Practitioner book

Aligning Profit and Purpose Through Business Model Innovation

Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur · 2010

A draft book chapter by the creators of the Business Model Canvas, arguing that firms no longer have to run profit and social good as separate activities. Using a sanitation start-up as the example, it shows how to design a business model where the profitable activity is itself the thing that creates the social or environmental benefit.

  • Running good causes through a separate foundation or social-responsibility arm tends to put them in conflict with the profit side.
  • A business model that builds the social benefit into what customers pay for removes that conflict.
  • Sketching the model visually, prototyping options and testing them with real customers helps find a model that works.
  • Test and adjust the model before building formal departments and scaling up.
For your business: If you care about a cause, look for ways to make it part of what customers buy rather than a side program funded from profit.
Evidence: Authors' framework and one case example; not tested (draft chapter dated August 2010)
Marketing, brand and customers

What does research say about marketing?

The evidence on how brands actually grow, why word of mouth and online reviews move sales more than advertising, how to position a business, which customers are worth keeping, and how to treat marketing as an investment with a return. Read beside the marketing, website and brand guides and the Business Development Plan.

Academic book

How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don't Know

Byron Sharp · 2010 · Oxford University Press (Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science)

A summary of decades of buying-behaviour data across many product categories and countries, which finds that the same patterns hold almost everywhere: brands grow mainly by being bought by more people, not by being bought more often by loyal fans, and most of any brand's buyers are occasional ones. Growth comes from being easy to think of and easy to buy.

  • Bigger brands have more buyers and, as a consequence, slightly more loyal ones; small brands suffer twice (fewer buyers who are also less loyal), a pattern called double jeopardy.
  • Most of a brand's sales come from light buyers who rarely think about it, so marketing aimed only at heavy or loyal customers reaches a minority of the sales.
  • Brands in a category share their customers with each other in proportion to size; a niche of exclusive customers is rare.
  • Growth follows mental availability (being thought of in buying situations) and physical availability (being easy to find and buy), built by consistent, distinctive, wide-reaching marketing rather than persuasion.
For your business: Reach every likely buyer in your area, not only the current customers; keep the name, look and message the same everywhere so you are recognized; and make the business easy to find and easy to buy from. Loyalty programmes rarely grow a business on their own.
Evidence: Empirical generalizations from large purchase panels, mostly consumer goods and large brands; the patterns are well replicated, though the leap to small service businesses is the reader's
Meta-analysis or review

The Long and the Short of It: Balancing Short and Long-Term Marketing Strategies

Les Binet and Peter Field · 2013 · Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), London

An analysis of about a thousand advertising case studies submitted to the IPA Effectiveness Awards, comparing campaigns that aimed at immediate sales with those that built the brand over years. Short-term activation produces quick, measurable but fading sales lifts; brand building produces slower, larger and longer-lasting effects, and the two work best together.

  • Sales activation (offers, direct response) shows results within weeks and fades; brand building (being known and preferred) takes six months or more to show and keeps working after the spending stops.
  • Across the cases, campaigns that split spending around 60% brand and 40% activation produced the largest long-term business effects; the balance shifts with the category.
  • Campaigns built on emotion and fame outperformed purely rational ones on long-term profit, while rational messages did better on immediate response.
  • Brands whose share of category advertising exceeded their share of the market tended to grow; the reverse tended to shrink.
For your business: Keep part of the budget on being remembered (the name, the vans, the signage, the reviews, the consistent look) even when the offers are what you can measure this month. Measuring only the immediate response undercounts what marketing does.
Evidence: Large case base but self-selected award entries from big advertisers; the 60/40 rule is an average, not a law, and small-budget businesses are underrepresented
Peer-reviewed study

Effects of Word-of-Mouth Versus Traditional Marketing: Findings from an Internet Social Networking Site

Michael Trusov, Randolph E. Bucklin and Koen Pauwels · 2009 · Journal of Marketing, 73(5)

Using daily data from a social networking site, the authors measured how new sign-ups responded to word-of-mouth referrals from existing members against the site's own marketing events and media coverage. Word of mouth had a far larger and much longer-lasting effect on new customers per unit than either traditional channel.

  • A referral's effect on new sign-ups lasted about three weeks, against three to seven days for events and media.
  • Per unit, word of mouth was roughly twenty times as effective as marketing events and thirty times as effective as media appearances at bringing in new members.
  • The value of a referral can be priced, which lets a business decide what a referral incentive is worth.
  • Traditional marketing still mattered, partly because it stimulated the word of mouth.
For your business: A referral is worth many times an advertising impression and keeps working for weeks. Put a system behind referrals (ask, make it easy, thank) and count them as a channel with a value, not as luck.
Evidence: Rigorous time-series study, but of one online service; the exact multiples will differ for a plumbing firm, though the direction is consistent with other studies
Peer-reviewed study

The Effect of Word of Mouth on Sales: Online Book Reviews

Judith A. Chevalier and Dina Mayzlin · 2006 · Journal of Marketing Research, 43(3)

By comparing the same books' reviews and sales ranks on two competing online retailers over time, the authors isolated the effect of customer reviews on sales. Better reviews raised relative sales, customers read the reviews rather than only counting stars, and a bad review hurt more than a good one helped.

  • An improvement in a book's reviews on one site raised its relative sales there, controlling for everything the two sites shared.
  • One-star reviews had a larger effect on sales than five-star reviews did: negative word of mouth weighs more.
  • Sales responded to the content of reviews, not only the average rating, which suggests customers read them.
  • Most reviews were positive, so a single bad one stood out.
For your business: Reviews move sales, and a bad one moves them more than a good one. Ask every satisfied customer for a review so the average is built on many, and answer the bad ones promptly and well, because the next customer reads the reply.
Evidence: Careful natural experiment with a clean identification strategy; books, not local services, but the pattern has been replicated widely since
Working paper

Reviews, Reputation, and Revenue: The Case of Yelp.com

Michael Luca · 2016 (working paper first issued 2011) · Harvard Business School Working Paper 12-016

Matching Yelp reviews to restaurant revenue records in Seattle, the study estimated what a change in rating does to sales. A one-star increase in a restaurant's Yelp rating raised its revenue by roughly five to nine per cent, and the effect fell entirely on independent restaurants; chains, whose reputation is already known, were unaffected.

  • A one-star higher Yelp rating was associated with about 5% to 9% more revenue for an independent restaurant.
  • Chain restaurants showed no effect, consistent with reviews mattering most where the customer has no other way to judge.
  • Consumers responded more to ratings when the number of reviews was larger, and did not appear to adjust for reviewer quality.
  • Independent restaurants gained market share relative to chains as review sites grew.
For your business: For an independent business, the online rating is part of the revenue line. A half-star is worth measurable money; the flow of recent reviews and the replies to them deserve the same attention as the menu or the price list.
Evidence: Widely cited working paper using administrative revenue data; one city and one industry, and later revisions refined the estimate without changing the direction
Practitioner book

The One Number You Need to Grow

Frederick F. Reichheld · 2003 · Harvard Business Review, December 2003

The article that introduced the Net Promoter Score: asking customers how likely they are to recommend the business to a friend, and tracking the share of enthusiastic promoters against detractors. Across the industries studied, that single question tracked growth better than long satisfaction surveys, because a recommendation puts the customer's own reputation on the line.

  • The likelihood-to-recommend question correlated with company growth more strongly than other survey questions in most of the industries studied.
  • Promoters (9 or 10 out of 10) and detractors (0 to 6) behave differently; the passive middle contributes little to growth.
  • A short, regular question answered by many customers beats a long survey answered by few.
  • The score is a starting point for finding out why, not an end in itself.
For your business: One question after every job, tracked monthly, tells you whether the referral engine is filling or draining. It is cheap, and it is a number a buyer will ask for.
Evidence: Influential practitioner article based on Bain's consulting data; later academic work found the score no better than other satisfaction measures at predicting growth, though it remains a useful, simple habit
Practitioner book

Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers

Matthew Dixon, Karen Freeman and Nicholas Toman · 2010 · Harvard Business Review, July–August 2010

A study of tens of thousands of customers' service interactions found that going beyond expectations did little to build loyalty, while making it hard for a customer to get a problem solved reliably destroyed it. Reducing the customer's effort (repeat calls, transfers, switching channels, having to explain again) predicted loyalty far better than delight.

  • Exceeding expectations in a service interaction barely raised loyalty; meeting them was what mattered.
  • Customers who had to make a high effort to resolve an issue were far more likely to be disloyal and to say bad things about the company.
  • The biggest drivers of effort were repeat contacts, transfers between people and having to repeat information.
  • A Customer Effort Score, asked after an interaction, predicted repurchase and referral better than satisfaction.
For your business: Reliability beats wow. Make the ordinary interaction effortless: one call, one person, no repeating, a problem fixed the first time. That protects the referrals that most small businesses live on.
Evidence: Large survey dataset from the Corporate Executive Board's service practice; correlational and drawn from larger companies' call centres, but consistent with what small-business owners observe
Practitioner book

The Mismanagement of Customer Loyalty

Werner Reinartz and V. Kumar · 2002 · Harvard Business Review, July 2002

Drawing on customer data from four companies, the authors tested the belief that loyal customers are the most profitable. They found the link weak: some long-standing customers cost more to serve than they earn, some short-term customers are very profitable, and loyal customers do not reliably pay more or spread the word. The remedy is to measure profitability by customer, not only tenure.

  • The correlation between how long customers stayed and how much profit they generated was weak in all four companies studied.
  • Long-standing customers often demanded and received better prices and more service, eroding their profitability.
  • Loyal customers were not markedly more likely to recommend the company than others.
  • Sorting customers by both loyalty and profitability, and treating each group differently, outperformed loyalty programmes applied to everyone.
For your business: Know what each customer earns you after the cost of serving them. The oldest account is not automatically the best one, and the discounts that keep it may be what makes it unprofitable.
Evidence: Practitioner article grounded in the authors' academic work with company datasets; four firms, business-to-business and mail order, so the specifics vary
Peer-reviewed study

Return on Marketing: Using Customer Equity to Focus Marketing Strategy

Roland T. Rust, Katherine N. Lemon and Valarie A. Zeithaml · 2004 · Journal of Marketing, 68(1)

A framework for treating marketing spending as an investment: a marketing action changes how customers see the business, which changes what they buy and for how long, which changes the lifetime value of the customer base (customer equity). Comparing the change in customer equity with what the action cost gives a return on marketing that can be compared across projects.

  • Marketing spending can be evaluated like any other investment when its effect is traced through customer perceptions to customer lifetime value.
  • The drivers of customer equity (value, brand and the relationship) differ by industry, so the same dollar returns differently depending on where it is spent.
  • Small changes in retention or switching behaviour compound into large changes in customer equity.
  • The approach lets a business compare a price change, a service improvement and an advertising campaign on one basis.
For your business: The question a lender asks about a marketing loan, what comes back for each dollar in, is the one this framework answers. Trace every marketing dollar to customers won or kept, times what a customer is worth; the Business Development Plan does the arithmetic.
Evidence: Peer-reviewed framework with an airline application; a way of thinking more than a benchmark, and it needs the business's own numbers to work
Practitioner book

Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It

April Dunford · 2019 · Ambient Press

A step-by-step method for positioning, drawn from the author's work launching technology products: list the real alternatives a customer would choose instead, identify what you have that they do not, translate that into value the customer cares about, name the customers who care most, and choose the market category that makes the value obvious.

  • Positioning is context: the same product is judged differently depending on what the customer compares it with, so the choice of comparison is the first decision.
  • Start from the customers who love the product and work out what they have in common, rather than from what the founder thinks is special.
  • Features matter only as the value they produce for a defined customer; the value, not the feature, is what to say.
  • Positioning is a team decision that has to be written down and used consistently, or it drifts.
For your business: Do the exercise once, honestly: who would they hire instead, what do you have that they do not, and for whom does that matter most? The sentence that comes out of it belongs on the first screen of the website and in the mouth of everyone who sells.
Evidence: Author's consulting experience with many technology launches; a method, not a test, and the examples are software, though the logic applies to any business
Practitioner book

Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth

Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares · 2015 · Portfolio / Penguin

Built from interviews with founders and marketers, the book lists nineteen channels through which businesses find customers (search, referrals, advertising, partnerships, trade shows, sales, content and others) and a method for choosing among them: brainstorm every channel, test the three most promising cheaply and in parallel, measure the cost to win a customer in each, then put the effort into the one that works until it stops.

  • Most businesses find that one channel produces the majority of their growth at any given stage, and it is rarely the one the founders assumed.
  • Cheap, parallel tests with a decided-in-advance number beat committing to a channel on instinct.
  • Channels saturate: the one that works now will stop working, so the testing has to continue.
  • Half the effort in an early business should go to finding customers, not only to building the product or service.
For your business: A disciplined way to answer where the next customers come from: test three channels with a small budget and a cost per customer you will accept, decided beforehand, and fund the winner. It is the method behind the channel grid in the Business Development Plan.
Evidence: Founders' interviews and the authors' own experience; anecdotal rather than measured, and written for technology start-ups, but the channel list and the testing discipline transfer
Selling and sales management

What does research say about selling?

What the evidence says about selling: how salespeople are ranked and paid, what customers trust, why sales and marketing fight, and what analytics actually change. Read beside the Business Development Plan, which puts the numbers on your own sales engine.

Peer-reviewed study

Sales Performance Rankings: Examining the Impact of the Type of Information Displayed on Sales Force Outcomes

Molly Ahearne, Mohsen Pourmasoudi, Yashar Atefi and Son K. Lam · 2025 · Journal of Marketing

Using data on almost 28,000 salespeople in 178 firms over two years, the study compared sales teams that saw no rankings with teams that saw rankings shown anonymously, with names, or with names plus each person's quota. Rankings with names raised quota attainment the most, and adding each person's quota to the display hurt results.

  • Showing rankings with names attached lifted quota attainment the most, and anonymous rankings came second.
  • Adding each person's assigned quota to a named ranking did worse than either of the other ranking formats.
  • Named rankings were linked to lower staff turnover; anonymous rankings were linked to higher turnover.
For your business: If you post sales results, show names and results but leave out individual quotas, and watch turnover closely if you try anonymous boards.
Evidence: Very large field dataset, 27,883 salespeople in 178 firms; summary based on the journal's abstract
Peer-reviewed study

Right from the Start: The Association between Ethical Leadership, Trust Primacy, and Customer Loyalty

Craig Crossley, Shannon G. Taylor, Robert C. Liden, David Wo and Ronald F. Piccolo · 2024 · Journal of Business Ethics

An experiment and a six-month field study of 729 new sales hires tested whether ethical sales leaders affect customer buying. Salespeople who trusted their leader early copied the leader's ethical behaviour, and this sped up growth in weekly customer purchases.

  • New staff who trusted their leader from the start copied that leader's ethical conduct.
  • That early trust was linked to faster growth in customer purchases over six months.
  • Early signals from a leader carried through to longer-term results.
For your business: Model honest dealing visibly in a new salesperson's first weeks, because what they see early shapes how they treat customers.
Evidence: Controlled experiment plus field study of 729 new hires and 8,237 weekly records; summary based on the journal's abstract
Peer-reviewed study

Resource Gain or Resource Pain? How Managerial Social Support Resources Influence the Impact of Sales Anxiety on Burnout

Dayle R. N. Childs, Nick Lee, John W. Cadogan and Belinda Dewsnap · 2024 · Industrial Marketing Management

A study following 156 business-to-business salespeople over time looked at how anxiety about selling leads to burnout and what managers can do about it. Positive feedback from managers eased burnout, but leaving anxious salespeople to manage themselves made parts of it worse.

  • Anxiety about selling raised every part of burnout: exhaustion, detachment from customers and a sense of not achieving.
  • Positive feedback from a manager reduced the link between anxiety and burnout.
  • Giving anxious salespeople more autonomy made exhaustion and detachment worse.
For your business: Give anxious or newer salespeople regular positive feedback and more structure, and hold back full autonomy until they are confident.
Evidence: Longitudinal survey of 156 salespeople; summary based on the journal's abstract
Peer-reviewed study

Quiet Sellers: When Introversion Drives Salesperson Performance

Nawar N. Chaker, Johannes Habel, Nathaniel N. Hartmann, Felix Johannsen and Heinrich Rusche · 2024 · Journal of Retailing

Two studies, one in direct selling and one in retail stores, tested the common belief that good salespeople must be outgoing. Introverts performed well when they had strong relationships with co-workers, especially in larger teams.

  • Introversion was linked to better sales when the salesperson had strong ties with peers.
  • The benefit was greater in larger teams.
  • Being outgoing is not a requirement for sales success.
For your business: Do not screen out quieter candidates for sales roles; pair them with supportive colleagues instead.
Evidence: Two field studies in different sales settings; summary based on the journal's abstract
Peer-reviewed study

Group or Individual Sales Incentives? What Is Best for Brand-Managed Retail Sales Operations?

Wenshu Zhang, Jia Li and Subramanian Balachander · 2024 · Journal of Marketing

The authors built a model of when team-based or individual sales incentives work better and tested it with pay data from two retail sales operations. Group incentives were more useful for weaker brands than for strong ones.

  • Whether group or individual incentives work better depends on how strong the brand is.
  • Group incentives paid off more for weaker brands, where salespeople need to cooperate to win the sale.
  • For strong brands, the case for group incentives was weaker.
For your business: If your brand is not yet well known, consider a team bonus rather than purely individual commissions.
Evidence: Economic model tested on two firms' pay data; summary based on the journal's abstract
Peer-reviewed study

Effective Implementation of Predictive Sales Analytics

Johannes Habel, Sascha Alavi and Nicolas Heinitz · 2024 · Journal of Marketing Research

A field experiment with a building-supply wholesaler gave some salespeople a tool that predicted which customers were likely to leave, and tracked 9.7 million transactions. The tool's effect on revenue varied by customer and salesperson and grew more positive over time.

  • The benefit of the prediction tool depended on the customer's size and history and on the salesperson's ability.
  • Gains grew over time as salespeople learned to use it.
  • Salespeople tended to offer deeper discounts to customers flagged as likely to leave.
For your business: When you introduce a new sales tool or CRM feature, give staff time to learn it, start with the people and accounts most likely to benefit, and watch for discounting.
Evidence: Large field experiment, 9.7 million transactions, plus lab follow-ups; summary based on the journal's abstract
Peer-reviewed study

Managing the Interfunctional War: Mitigating the Negative Effects of Conflict between Sales and Marketing

Victor V. Chernetsky, Douglas E. Hughes, Doug Walker, Edward L. Nowlin and Wyatt A. Schrock · 2024 · Industrial Marketing Management

A survey of 252 sales and marketing managers at large US firms looked at where conflict between the two groups comes from and how it affects results. Competing for resources and identifying strongly with one's own team fed conflict over tasks, which hurt firm performance unless managers stepped in flexibly to resolve it.

  • Competition for budget and people, and loyalty to one's own group, increased conflict over tasks.
  • Task conflict between sales and marketing lowered firm performance.
  • Flexible intervention by managers to resolve disputes reduced the damage.
For your business: Where sales and marketing are separate people, share budgets and goals openly and step in early when they disagree over priorities.
Evidence: Survey of 252 managers at large US firms; summary based on the journal's abstract
Faith and values in business

How does faith shape the way owners run a business?

Peer-reviewed study

Family Social Capital in Family Business: A Faith-Based Values Theory

Ritch L. Sorenson and Jackie M. Milbrandt · 2023 · Journal of Business Ethics

Beginning with round-table talks among family business owners and advisers, the authors studied four Christian business-owning families in depth to learn how families build trust and goodwill that carry into the business. They found that shared faith practices sustained shared values, and those values supported trust, succession, business results and community support.

  • Regular shared practices, such as worship and discussing beliefs together, kept the family's beliefs and values alive across generations.
  • Those shared values underpinned trust, goodwill and cooperation among family owners and employees.
  • That trust was linked, in the families' accounts, to smoother succession, business performance and community giving.
  • The families relied on respectful dialogue, rather than top-down orders, to reach agreement with family, staff and partners.
For your business: Whatever the source of your values, family owners can protect trust and succession by making values explicit and discussing them regularly across generations.
Evidence: Peer-reviewed, but only four US Christian families studied in depth; builds a theory rather than proving it
Handbook

Handbook of Faith and Spirituality in the Workplace: Emerging Research and Practice

Judi Neal (editor) · 2013 · Springer

A 44-chapter collection by 55 academics and practitioners on how faith and spirituality show up at work, covering several religious and Indigenous traditions, emerging research, measurement tools, company case studies and reflective essays. It mixes survey studies with case descriptions and personal reflection.

  • A national survey of over 1,000 US working Christians found congregations do more to encourage linking faith and work than to model enterprising behaviour.
  • Several validated questionnaires exist for measuring spirituality and faith at work.
  • Contributors argue that meaningful work matters to staff and that leaders who ignore it risk losing commitment.
  • Chapters on US employment law set out how employers can accommodate religious expression while avoiding discrimination.
  • Company case studies describe programs to build a values-based culture, though these are descriptive rather than tested.
For your business: Use it as a reference for respecting employees' faith and sense of meaning at work, while checking the Canadian and BC human rights rules that apply to you.
Evidence: Mixed: some survey research, much case description and opinion; US-focused
Handbook

Lead Like Jesus: Group Leader's Guide

Ken Blanchard, Phil Hodges, Lee Ross and Avery Willis (with Karen McGuire and Jesse Palmer) · 2003 · J. Countryman (Thomas Nelson)

A facilitator's guide for a Christian small-group study that presents Jesus as a model for servant leadership. Sessions work through a leader's inner motives, beliefs, actions and daily spiritual habits, with discussion prompts and video segments.

  • Defines leadership broadly as any attempt to influence another person's thinking or actions toward a goal, so it applies at home and at work.
  • Argues that leadership problems usually start with the leader's pride or fear rather than lack of skill.
  • Treats the leader as a servant of the people led, measured by how those people grow.
  • Recommends daily habits such as solitude, prayer and having others hold the leader accountable.
  • Advises keeping study groups to about eight to ten people so everyone can take part.
For your business: Useful for owners who want to connect their Christian faith with how they lead; others may prefer the secular servant-leadership material.
Evidence: Faith-based teaching and author experience; not research

Read the originals.

The summaries on this page are our own, written to be useful to owners. They leave out most of the detail and nuance in each work. If one speaks to a problem you have, buy or borrow the original; most are in the Vancouver Public Library and other BC library systems.

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