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Title: First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently
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Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
List Price: $30.00
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| First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently by Simon & Schuster 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. | | First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently by Simon & Schuster 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.
| | First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently by Simon & Schuster 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!
| | First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently by Simon & Schuster 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. | | First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently by Simon & Schuster 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! | | First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently by Simon & Schuster Product Description | | The greatest managers in the world seem to have little in common. They differ in sex, age, and race. They employ vastly different styles and focus on different goals. Yet despite their differences, great managers share one common trait: They do not hesitate to break virtually every rule held sacred by conventional wisdom. They do not believe that, with enough training, a person can achieve anything he sets his mind to. They do not try to help people overcome their weaknesses. They consistently disregard the golden rule. And, yes, they even play favorites. This amazing book explains why. Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman of the Gallup Organization present the remarkable findings of their massive in-depth study of great managers across a wide variety of situations. Some were in leadership positions. Others were front-line supervisors. Some were in Fortune 500 companies; others were key players in small, entrepreneurial companies. Whatever their situations, the managers who ultimately became the focus of Gallup's research were invariably those who excelled at turning each employee's talent into performance. In today's tight labor markets, companies compete to find and keep the best employees, using pay, benefits, promotions, and training. But these well-intentioned efforts often miss the mark. The front-line manager is the key to attracting and retaining talented employees. No matter how generous its pay or how renowned its training, the company that lacks great front-line managers will suffer. Buckingham and Coffman explain how the best managers select an employee for talent rather than for skills or experience; how they set expectations for him or her -- they define the right outcomes rather than the right steps; how they motivate people -- they build on each person's unique strengths rather than trying to fix his weaknesses; and, finally, how great managers develop people -- they find the right fit for each person, not the next rung on the ladder. And perhaps most important, this research -- which initially generated thousands of different survey questions on the subject of employee opinion -- finally produced the twelve simple questions that work to distinguish the strongest departments of a company from all the rest. This book is the first to present this essential measuring stick and to prove the link between employee opinions and productivity, profit, customer satisfaction, and the rate of turnover. There are vital performance and career lessons here for managers at every level, and, best of all, the book shows you how to apply them to your own situation. | | First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently by Simon & Schuster Amazon.com | | Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman expose the fallacies of standard management thinking in First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently. In seven chapters, the two consultants for the Gallup Organization debunk some dearly held notions about management, such as "treat people as you like to be treated"; "people are capable of almost anything"; and "a manager's role is diminishing in today's economy." "Great managers are revolutionaries," the authors write. "This book will take you inside the minds of these managers to explain why they have toppled conventional wisdom and reveal the new truths they have forged in its place." The authors have culled their observations from more than 80,000 interviews conducted by Gallup during the past 25 years. Quoting leaders such as basketball coach Phil Jackson, Buckingham and Coffman outline "four keys" to becoming an excellent manager: Finding the right fit for employees, focusing on strengths of employees, defining the right results, and selecting staff for talent--not just knowledge and skills. First, Break All the Rules offers specific techniques for helping people perform better on the job. For instance, the authors show ways to structure a trial period for a new worker and how to create a pay plan that rewards people for their expertise instead of how fast they climb the company ladder. "The point is to focus people toward performance," they write. "The manager is, and should be, totally responsible for this." Written in plain English and well organized, this book tells you exactly how to improve as a supervisor. --Dan Ring |
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