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First, Break All The Rules
What The World's Greatest Managers Do Differently
by Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman
reviewed by Regine P. Azurin and Yvette Pantilla
Based on a mammoth research study conducted by the Gallup Organization involving
80,000 managers across different industries, this book explores the challenge
of many companies - attaining, keeping and measuring employee satisfaction.
Discover how great managers attract, hire, focus, and keep their most talented
employees!
Key Ideas:
- The best managers reject conventional wisdom.
- The best managers treat every employee as an individual.
- The best managers never try to fix weaknesses; instead they focus on
strengths and talent.
- The best managers know they are on stage everyday. They know their people
are watching every move they make.
- Measuring employee satisfaction is vital information for your investors.
- People leave their immediate managers, not the companies they work for.
- The best managers are those that build a work environment where the
employees answer positively to these 12 Questions:
- Do I know what is expected of me at work?
- Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
- At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best everyday?
- In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing
good work?
- Does my supervisor or someone at work seem to care about me as a person?
- Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
- At work, do my opinions seem to count?
- Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job is important?
- Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?
- Do I have a best friend at work?
- In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
- This last year, have I had the opportunity at work to learn and grow?
The Gallup study showed that those companies that reflected positive responses
to the 12 questions profited more, were more productive as business units,
retained more employees per year, and satisfied more customers.
Without satisfying an employee's basic needs first, a manager can never
expect the employee to give stellar performance. The basic needs are: knowing
what is expected of the employee at work, giving her the equipment and support
to do her work right, and answering her basic questions of self-worth and
self-esteem by giving praise for good work and caring about her development
as a person.
The great manager mantra is don't try to put in what was left out; instead
draw out what was left in. You must hire for talent, and hone that talent
into outstanding performance.
More wisdom in a nutshell from First, Break All the Rules:
- Know what can be taught, and what requires a natural talent.
- Set the right outcomes, not steps. Standardize the end but not the means.
As long as the means are within the company's legal boundaries and industry
standards, let the employee use his own style to deliver the result or outcome
you want.
- Motivate by focusing on strengths, not weaknesses.
- Casting is important, if an employee is not performing at excellence,
maybe she is not cast in the right role.
- Every role is noble, respect it enough to hire for talent to match.
- A manager must excel in the art of the interview. See if the candidate's
recurring patterns of behavior match the role he is to fulfill. Ask open-ended
questions and let him talk. Listen for specifics.
- Find ways to measure, count, and reward outcomes.
- Spend time with your best people. Give constant feedback. If you can't
spend an hour every quarter talking to an employee, then you shouldn't be
a manager.
- There are many ways of alleviating a problem or non-talent. Devise a
support system, find a complementary partner for him, or an alternative
role.
- Do not promote someone until he reaches his level of incompetence; simply
offer bigger rewards within the same range of his work. It is better to
have an excellent highly paid waitress or bartender on your team than promote
him or her to a poor starting-level bar manager.
- Some homework to do: Study the best managers in the company and revise
training to incorporate what they know. Send your talented people to learn
new skills or knowledge. Change recruiting practices to hire for talent,
revise employee job descriptions and qualifications.
Contact Regine P. Azurin and Yvette Pantilla at http://www.bizsum.com
- "A Lot Of Great Books .... Too Little Time To Read." Free Book Summaries
of Latest Bestsellers and More! Mailto: freearticle@bizsum.com
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First,
Break All The Rules
What The World's Greatest Managers Do Differently
by Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman
Simon & Schuster
May 1999 |
Many
more book reviews and features in Refresher Reviews
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