Does the average CEO read 4-5 books per month?
?? Jeremey Donovan
EVP, Revenue Operations (RevOps) and Strategy @ Insight Partners
I stumbled across an otherwise great blog post tonight that said, "Studies continue to find that most CEO’s read 4-5 books a month..." Finding that statistic a bit hard to believe, I dug deeper.
To start, I followed the source-attribution link in the blog post. Curiously, the actual URL on RefreshLeadership.com includes the words, ".../average-ceo-reads-45-books-month/" However, the content on the actual page, published Jan 16, 2013, reads, "Infographic: Which Business Book Should You Read Next?" The infographic itself has nothing to do with CEO reading habits; instead, there are lots of trackbacks/pingbacks on the page citing the 4-5 book per month statistic.
Following the trail, I pulled up the Internet Archive Wayback Machine for the offending page back from 2013. Indeed, its original title was, "The Average CEO Reads 4-5 Books Per Month." As proof, it had a source-attribution link to another Refresh Leadership blog post which talked about a book called The Energy Bus by Jon Gordon. (Beware of self-referential source attribution as well as source attribution of other less-than-sterling secondary sources.)
That led me to Google book search. You probably already know what I found - no mentions of CEO reading habits in that book.
Undeterred, I used Google search to go back in time to find other references to this statistic. There was nothing before January 2013 so the Refresh Leadership blog post is indeed the source of the urban legend. Over the years, the myth has added embellishments, like "...the fact that CEOs of Fortune 500 companies read an average of four to five books a month. Even more impressive is that some of the most successful leaders throughout history were known to read one book every single day." Oh, now it is Fortune 500 CEOs - well isn't that special.
Despite a lack of any actual study, could the CEO reading statistic still be true?
Picking up a new trail, I looked for statistics on reading by income. Fortunately, the Pew Research Center conducts and annual study of reading habits. In a study from 2015 with a sample size of 2,004, they found the following number of books read per year by household income:
- Below $30K: Median=2 / Average=7
- $30K-$49K: Median=5 / Average=14
- $50K-$74K: Median=5 / Average=15
- $75K+: Median=6 / Average=15
If you fell asleep in statistics class, then a couple things to note. If a sample follows a (symmetrical) normal distribution, then the median, the middle sample, equals the average. However, if the median is less than the average, then there are a handful of samples skewing the distribution to the right (people who read a lot). [Income in the US has the same property - the median income is $57,617 and the average is $72,641 because the average is pulled up by the smaller number of people who make a 'gazillion' dollars each year, i.e. those pesky 1%-ers.]
The other thing to notice is that once income rises above the poverty line in the US, $25K for a family of 4, both the median and the average max out between 0.5 and 1.25 books per month. So, let's err on the generous side and say a book a month.
Amazon used to have a text stats feature that showed the median book has 64,000 words. (Here, I'm hypocritically using an unreliable source, but it feels right since that works out to an average of 232 pages at 275 words/page which is actually on the lighter side if anything. Shorter children's books balance out epic novels.) To break this down further, consider that the average adult reads 250 words-per-minute. Hence, the average adult reads the average book in 4 hours and 15 minutes, or about an hour of reading a week. Feels reasonable.
OK, so back to the whole CEO thing. Sure, there are CEOs like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates who are voracious readers. But, I seriously doubt the average CEO, or even the average Fortune 500 CEO, reads 4-5 books per month. Maybe they read 4-5 book summaries per month.
Still, for the sake of argument, let's say they do. When people cite (even true) statistics like this, they want you to draw the implicit inference that more reading causes people to become a captain of industry.
However, this is, of course, a classic mix-up of correlation and causation. As we saw above, there is correlation between income and reading. But is there causation? Not necessarily.
What may really be happening? As others have commented, CEOs have more flexible schedules than average employees. Moreover, CEOs tend to spend a lot of time traveling in planes, private cars, etc. which affords them uninterrupted reading time. And, people with more education earn higher income; the thirst for education, independent of professional attainment, is more likely the cause of more reading.
I love to read. Reading is relaxing. Reading nourishes the soul. Reading makes you more knowledgeable and more empathetic. My quest to get to the truth about the CEO reading statistic is not a critique of reading; rather, it is a critique of sloppy source attribution that perpetuates urban myths. The bottom line: If you write something, trace statistics to their sources and assess the credibility of those sources. If you read something on a blog (or similar non-academic, non-Tier-1 source), including blogs like this one, and a statistic seems fishy, then do a little sleuthing before accepting nonsense.
Principal Sales Executive
2 年Great article, thank you for sharing!
Je forme des équipes d'exception
3 年I love this sort of investigation, thanks for the myth busting.
Better Faster Easier Decision Making
3 年Just found your post doing some research: thanks for doing the footwork and unearthing the 'lies'. I had a similar thing with a reference that stated that the level of learning that transferred into practice was 10%. It was quoted and requoted in academic papers and accepted as gospel referencing Georgenson and a paper called ‘The problem of Transfer Calls for Partnership which was published in Training and Development Journal in October 1982. David L Georgenson, was a manager of product development at Xerox Learning Systems, Stamford, Connecticut. Having tracked down his paper in the British Library his opening paragraph reads: "How many times have you heard training directors say: “I need to find a way to assure that what I teach in the classroom is effectively used on the job”? “ I would estimate that only 10 percent of content which is presented in the classroom is reflected in behavioural change on the job." This myth still hangs around and the real truth- no-one knows- no proper studies ever done to my knowledge. :-)
East Africa Brand And Marketing Manager | Commercial Leadership And Governance
4 年Interesting. I read the pew research and immediately began to question the stats often mentioned in blogs and even books. Thanks for taking the time to dig deeper and demystify the myth.
CPA leading a firm for creative consultancies, firms, agencies, service providers, and an expert at team scaling, team structuring, and restructuring.
4 年This is a great article ?? Jeremey Donovan. Thanks for breaking some of these myths down.