I attended a business conference in Scottsdale, Arizona — the type of corporate gathering any road warrior knows will invariably end with a motivational speech culminating in some over-thetop, life changing conclusion: “Everything you’ve been told is wrong!” “Diet and exercise don’t work!” “Micromanaging is good!” This time, however, the keynote speaker, a deeply respected professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business named Jeffrey Pfeffer, shocked 800 of America’s top financial pros with some news that was as revolutionary as it was (refreshingly) boring: That decades of real-world research had proven that everything they knew about good management practices — that, to get the best out of employees, you need to promote from within, invest in training,
