I wrote this for work, but given that great management skills are also applicable to raising kids, I thought I'd share.
Ok, ok...really I just want glory and fame.
At some point I'll realize book reviews on family blogs probably aren't the way to go. Until then, enjoy.
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How do you tell someone, politely, that they absolutely positively must read a given book? It's tough. People are dense, sometimes. They're thickheaded and miss the subtle signs you leave. Like when you say "you absolutely MUST READ THIS BOOK! It's AWESOME. It will CHANGE YOUR LIFE!!" People are so clueless.
I have intimate familiarity with the person described above. Because it's me. The person on the receiving end of the recommendation. 4 years later, I can now say I've read the book. And somehow wish the recommendation before had been delivered with a 2x4. It would have been worth it. And on balance perhaps even spared me some pain. Anyway.
"First Break all the Rules" (hereafter FBATR) is now firmly established in my pantheon of favorite books. Right up there with Peopleware, It's Your Ship, Getting Things Done, and Good To Great/Built to Last. It's a certifiable noggin-tweaker.
Here's the thing. You interview tens of thousands of companies across hundreds of industries. Hundreds of thousands of people. (Gallup really did this.) You figure out empirically who the absolute top performing managers are. (using solid business measures - store performance, warehouse volume, number of sales, what have you) You talk to both the absolute best of the best managers. Then you talk to the average managers. Sift through the responses to find what is significantly different between the two. And you take about 25 or so years to do this. But in the end you have data - hard data. This book is about that data.
But hold on - first off, does any of this matter? Ok, these are rockstar-awesome managers that their people would take a bullet for. So what? Loyalty is nice. Employee retention is a warm fuzzy. But what would make a shareholder, or a customer, give a rip? It's all well and good to say "happy employees make happy customers which make happy shareholders." but up until this point evidence was purely anecdotal.
To solve the problem Gallup refined a series of 12 questions that ran the gamut from "do I know what's expected of me at work" and "do I have the right tools to do my work right", to "does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person". They measured business unit performance against four key areas that related to business success : productivity, profitability, retention, and customer satisfaction. 105,000 people across 24 companies in 12 different industries took part. When the dust settled and the numbers were crunched, (I'll spare you the suspense) while the impact varied, there were significant, measurable differences. People who answered the questions better (by extension, were managed better) worked in business units that performed better.
So we've established that there is a very real, bottom line impact to business units run by the best managers. (well, we haven't - but the book does. Trust me. Read it.). So what is it these people, these “best managers” *do* that’s so special?
FBATR reflects that the world's best managers pretty much ignore much of the conventional wisdom and - while the specifics vary wildly - do have some key attitudes and behaviors in common. The book boils it down to: hire for talent, find the right outcomes, focus on strengths, and find the right fit.
I found the very first key - hire for talent - the most profound. The other keys were very, very good, but this one in particular did the most serious shifting in my mental model. That popping sound? Sorry, my paradigm just shifted without a clutch.
The authors define "talent" very precisely. By their definition it is "a pattern of recurring behavior." That is to say the kind of things you (and I) do over and over again. While that could be applied to neurosis, in this particular case we're talking about those things that you find yourself doing and returning to because..well, you just seem wired that way. They contend (and modern science supports) that the vast majority of your neural connectivity pathways are well established by age 3. Whether nature or nurture, the fact is that a great deal of "what you like to do" (mmm, build things!) and that which you will never excel at (Selling? Eww!) is pretty much set by age 3.
"What?!" I hear the protest, "Herasy! Anyone learn to be anything if they just want it enough!!" Not so, say the authors. At least, they won't be excellent. World class. Here's the thing - by age 3 you have some neural pathways that are veritable superhighways. Others are residential streets. Probably most are dirt tracks or barren wasteland. It takes a lot - a LOT - of effort to turn a stretch of barren waste into even a dirt track. Hence the difficulty in teaching someone who hates confrontation to excel as a cop. Similarly, one who may love verbal sparring may have little to no empathy for others and - while they can (and should) acquire a minimum proficiency, they will never be world class nurse.
To brutally simplify the advice: first figure out what kind of talents - that is, patterns of repeating behavior, are possessed by those who are the best - the top performers, for a given job. Then find people who exhibit that behavior and hire them. These are the folks who will have the highest likelyhood of excellence in that context. It's important to note that FBATR calls out a difference between skills and talent - skills can be taught. Talent cannot. Well, not yet. Unless the CIA really does have neural rewiring stations. But I digress. (it's a talent)
Blitzing through the other three keys. Number two: establish the right outcomes. This comes of knowing the business, and figuring out what kind of outcomes are the optimal fit for the company and the individual. (side note: excellent managers know that people are individuals and need to be motivated/directed/given objectives as individuals. Some like bronze recognition plaques in front of roaring crowds. Others prefer quieter kudos.)
Number three: focus on strengths. This jibberish about "being a well rounded individual for optimal employment" is just plain bull. It's the easy answer. As I thought about it, I realized it stands to reason.
Great managers realize that we only have 24 hours in a day. They realize that we really can't change people. So you can spend that time teasing out connections in the ill-connected deserts of your brain. Or they can put folks in a positions that let them roar down their mental autobahns at 180mph. Which of those two do *you* think results in higher performance and more rubber-meets-the-road business success?
What about those "areas for improvement"? Excellent managers manage around weaknesses (excellent examples in the book), put people in symbiotic relationships (where one's weakness is another's strength), set the users up a support system, or recast (find the person another - better - roll). They don't waste time trying to fix something that probably isn't fixable in the first place.
In the words of the immortal Robert Heinlein, "Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig".
The fourth key - find the right fit - is about keeping people where they want to be, where they're most effective, and avoiding the dreaded Peter Principle. (people are promoted to the level of their incompetence) Wide salary bands, making heros at all levels - lots of good info here about allowing people to be more of who they are (instead of forcing them up a career ladder in order to advance) and having the company benefit.
The final chapters deal with how to hire for talent. How to determine when someone isn't right for the role. (ie: how to fire someone without destroying the relationship - and how it can be the best thing for the person. Even though it still generally sucks rocks all around. ) Also covered is how to work within the system you're given as both a manager and as an individual contributor.
Overall, good stuff. EXCELLENT stuff. I have read a few management books in the last 5 years. One of the talents I lack is leadership. Unfortunately, as a dad, that doesn't fly. (no recasting, sorry!) In trying to build at least a few dirt roads, I've run across a lot of stuff. Some fluff. Some clueless. Some gems. This is one.
No magic bullets. No fairy dust. No step-by-step surefire-success formulas. Just deep wisdom backed up by hard data.
Three thumbs up.
