Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall open by examining common workplace management assumptions — regarding planning, goal-setting, feedback, hierarchy — that, despite widespread acceptance, often lack genuine supporting research evidence when carefully examined.

Why challenging these common assumptions matters:

• Many management practices are widely accepted and implemented based on intuitive plausibility rather than genuine rigorous supporting evidence, and the authors' extensive organizational research directly challenges several of these common assumptions
• This evidence-challenging approach provides more rigorous grounding for management practice than continuing to rely on unexamined conventional assumptions
• This opening establishes the book's foundational evidence-challenging premise, motivating its subsequent detailed examination of specific challenged assumptions

This opening establishes the book's foundational premise, challenging common workplace management assumptions that, despite widespread acceptance, often lack genuine rigorous supporting evidence.