management and leadership

It's extremely rare that I recommend a book, about once every decade, but I highly recommend this book.

I just read the comments of those who negatively rated this book because it's concepts are not new. That's true of every management/HR/sales/training/leadership/customer service.. book I've read. How many times have you read a business book and thought "yep, that's right, that's exactly what I've experienced" and then became frustrated because of the gap between what could/should be vs the daily reality of your work experiences? How many times have you wished there was some way you could prove that focusing on the individual employee resulted in creating a provable, positive impact on organizational performance, productivity and profits?

The value of this book is that it is the Gallup organization and they've got the numbers to back up what has previously been rejected as "touchy feely" management methods.

The next time you're told "that won't work, nobody does it that way" or "there's no proof organizational performance is increased by focusing on individual strengths, understanding different people are motivated by different methods, selecting people to fit the job, or that managers have no impact on employee retention", simply reference this book and give them 80,000 reasons why they're wrong.

Supposedly, businesses decisions are based on solid numbers. We all know that businesses decisions are really based on perceptions. This book is gives you the numbers to change the many incorrect perceptions about the process of managing people.

Management is one of those areas where theory and practice often clash. The problem is that there are usually 99 theories (often provided by academics with limited experience) for every good study of outstanding practices.

This book exhibits one of my favorite principles: Build around the people to get the right results. The results described in this book fit what I have observed works well in over 30 years as a management consultant. That is the reason why I often encourage new managers to get experience by coaching children's sports teams. In that environment, you soon learn that building around the talent is a critical step in making progress.

On the other hand, there are other best practices that this book does not explore. For example, even the best talent will perform better if presented with timely and relevant information, knowledge, and focus. Add lots of low-cost capital and an exciting purpose, and you will do even better.

Some people who read this book will conclude that people cannot be changed or improved: That is simply not true, nor is it what this book means to argue. Rather the outstanding manager or leader must learn to combine many types of best practices to get the right result. For example, if you combine the lessons of this book with the lessons of TOP GRADING (the best practices for recruiting the right people) and SIMPLICITY (making it easier to anyone to perform well), you will get better results than if you used just one of the book's lessons.

Combine several best practices that are often not combined and you can exceed anyone's performance, anywhere. That's the real lesson I hope you draw from this excellent book and other outstanding ones like it that build on careful measurement of how to get the best results. Management needs to become more like medicine where clinical tests run by practicing doctors provide most of the insight for improvement, rather a philosophical debating society run by hypothetical thinkers.

This book has become priceless to my business. I highly recommend it to any manager who is having trouble motivating and keeping key employees in today's business environment. Happy employees are productive employees and this book gave me ideas that I had never considered when it came down to placing and hiring the right employees . I also recommend Rat Race Relaxer: Your Potential & The Maze of Life by JoAnna Carey as a corporate gift to keep employees motivated throughout the year.