First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently

First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently | Marcus Buckingham, Curt Coffman | Great for HR folks

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First, Break All t...

	First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently Marcus Buckingham, Curt Coffman Simon & Schuster, 1999 - 255 pages average customer review:based on 263 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Read Immediately

If your work involves employees, managers or ownership in a business of any size, get this book and read it immediately.

The book is based of the "largest study of its kind every undertaken." And the conclusions from this study are very important. It is difficult today for most business to have a competitive edge in products or services. The last great resource for distinguishing one business from another is human capital - the employees. But most businesses manage by conventional wisdom.

But as Marcus Buckingham points out so thoughtfully, conventional wisdom is often wrong. He does not advance theories based on what he thinks but on interviews with thousand of managers from hundreds of companies. And the data is convincing. There is a direct connection between outstanding managers and company performance. There are hundreds of specific examples of outstanding managers at work.

The book is well written and easy to read. However the book contains so much great information, it will be necessary to read it more than once. I completed it and immediately read it again. I will keep it handy to refer too often.

If you want to improve your company, you must make sure that you have the right talent in the right spots. Too often owners/managers think that anyone can be trained to do anything. A recurring theme of the book is that great managers reject this bit of conventional wisdom. Instead they understand that "good managers don't try to put in what was left out. They try to draw out what was left in." They find the talents unique to each individual employee and turn those talents into results. They do not try to fix an employees weaknesses, they concentrate on developing their strenghts.

A very important book that is a guide to getting the best out of your employees and by extension getting the best out of your company.

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Great for HR folks

This is my favorite series of books on identifying talent. I've made my recruiters read it. I quote it in training classes I provide to managers on interviewing skills. This is based on the Gallop Poll researcher ideas that resulted in the hiring system that Disney and other great companies use to select the right talented individuals. There is a link in the book to take the assessment yourself. Their website also contains useful articles.

The basic idea is that if you identify what your true strengths are, and then use them, you'll be more successful in all areas of your life. To identify talents in interviews we're lookinng for the first answer provided. If the candidate's first answer is a specific illustration he/she probably has that talent!

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First, Break all the Rules

Backed by the Gallup Organization's data, this book takes an empirical look at the composition of great managers. Even though managers and subordinates have different backgrounds and beliefs this book ties together the common theme on how great managers manage. For me, it brought to light a number of management myths. On myth is to focus on the non-talents of your personnel. The truth is talent cannot be trained. Capitalize and focus on the talents of your personnel and you will attain higher results with satisfied employees.

This book identifies twelve great questions that get to the root of assessing employee satisfaction. I have seen a couple of these questions in employee surveys. The questions are based on four themes. "What do I get?" "What do I give?" "Do I belong here?" "How can we all grow?"

Marcus and Curt established keys to be a great manager: "Select for Talent", "Define the Right Outcomes"; "Focus on Strengths"; and "Find the Right Fit". In addition, the book identifies how to create an atmosphere that will help great managers prosper. The information provide to me in this book will be valuable to me in the future when I acquire a management position. Every current or future manager should read this book.

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Great Managers Lead Down

Managing is hard work! Every week I coach managers in business, government and non-profits who are frustrated by how to get the work done by their direct reports so they can do their jobs and meet their boss' expectations. How-To-Manage books are a dime a dozen and frequently imprecise and unhelpful. So I was very pleased to find "First Break All the Rules," by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman to recommend and use with my clients. Based on extensive Gallop Organization research this book delivers value by laying out what great managers really do in an easy, concise manner.

According to the authors, through the well-intentioned efforts of training departments and consultants corporate America undertook a campaign to transform managers into leaders. This was done by promoting certain leadership skills in managers such as focusing on complex initiatives like re-engineering and removing other more basic functions such as staff development. They assert this shift has taken the most important functions of managers away resulting in a management void. In addition the shift ignored developing the most important leadership skills required so managers could succeed at leading down, such as recognizing individual skills and talents of their directs, resisting uniformity by capitalizing on differences and creating opportunities for each person on their team to become more of who s/he already is.

The authors succeed at designing skills assessment that can serve to support developing great managers and great downward leaders simultaneously by identifying the 4 keys of great managers and 12 questions to ask direct reports. The manager's goal is to receive "strongly agree" answers to the questions, in progressive ascending order from 1 through 12. This framework gives managers, HR departments, employees and organizations the information they need to attract, keep and develop the best managers.

This book comes in hard and paperback and in one of my favorite formats - audio CD, in this case unabridged. While it would be great to have a hard copy of the 12 questions there is not a lot that would be lost by listening to this book. So if you're busy and have multi-tasking time while you cook or exercise by all means get the CD. Of course, if you're like me you'll want to own the book so you can underline the concepts and make lots of notes in the columns. Either way this is a great resource for developing great managers!

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First, Break all the rules

Paradigm buster. After you finish this get the rest of the books related to this project: Now Discover your strengths; Strengthsfinder 2.0 and Go put your strengths to work.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

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