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A review by qtpieash3
First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham
4.0
I'm not a manager, but this book felt especially relevant to me since my company just did an employee survey based on the 12 questions Gallup formulated through this study. It was interesting to compare my thoughts on the survey without knowing anything about it, to learning all the mechanics and data of 'why' behind it all.
I've also been thinking about my next steps at my current company, and this provided some guidance on really taking time to figure out what I'm good, what I enjoy, and not just blindly taking the next step 'up'. The authors really pushed "excellence at every level" and I couldn't agree more. It's frustrating to see some of the more menial jobs at my company treated so flippantly. I don't care what you do, you can do it and do a great job at it. Extra effort at ALL levels should be recognized and rewarded.
The authors also did a really nice job explaining an alternate view of having to terminate employees. While it's never pleasant, great managers truly approach it in a different fashion, and that was utterly fascinating to me to see a new side of that. A point that was continually stressed througout is that people don't leave companies, they leave managers. Another oft-repeated sentiment was that of excellence and failure being surprising similar. Average is the anomaly. You can't simply infer excellence my taking the inverse of failure. The difference between the two lies in how inherent talents are executed, and often those talents are surprisingly similar.
I also really enjoyed that the advice given by exceptional managers seems to fly in the face of convention but are backed up my massive quantities of data. I.e. spend more time with your top people, not your employees that are struggling - things don't have to be fair. Speaking of the data, I also really enjoyed that seemingly subjective, qualitative data was somehow quantified and measured just like quantitative data. It really lent a lot of credence the authors' claims.
A great read - I highly recommend this to anyone, manager or not. I have a feeling I'll picking this one up again in the future.
I've also been thinking about my next steps at my current company, and this provided some guidance on really taking time to figure out what I'm good, what I enjoy, and not just blindly taking the next step 'up'. The authors really pushed "excellence at every level" and I couldn't agree more. It's frustrating to see some of the more menial jobs at my company treated so flippantly. I don't care what you do, you can do it and do a great job at it. Extra effort at ALL levels should be recognized and rewarded.
The authors also did a really nice job explaining an alternate view of having to terminate employees. While it's never pleasant, great managers truly approach it in a different fashion, and that was utterly fascinating to me to see a new side of that. A point that was continually stressed througout is that people don't leave companies, they leave managers. Another oft-repeated sentiment was that of excellence and failure being surprising similar. Average is the anomaly. You can't simply infer excellence my taking the inverse of failure. The difference between the two lies in how inherent talents are executed, and often those talents are surprisingly similar.
I also really enjoyed that the advice given by exceptional managers seems to fly in the face of convention but are backed up my massive quantities of data. I.e. spend more time with your top people, not your employees that are struggling - things don't have to be fair. Speaking of the data, I also really enjoyed that seemingly subjective, qualitative data was somehow quantified and measured just like quantitative data. It really lent a lot of credence the authors' claims.
A great read - I highly recommend this to anyone, manager or not. I have a feeling I'll picking this one up again in the future.