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

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Summary: I thought I was a good manager until I read this book.
Review: This book is refreshing. The research is excellent. I have always thought of myself as a good manager. Many of the things I think are important are in this book. I wish I could say I followed all the advice. I can not argue with any of the advice in this book. I bought the CD version first, and then the hard cover. This book is one you will go through several times. If you buy this book, don't tell your peers. You will have a competitive advantage.

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Summary: Breaking the rules is not always a bad thing
Review: Some managers are born with these skills and they are one of the most successful in their field. Others, who experienced problems dealing with their employees are greatly encourage to read this book. "First, break all the rules", will help them, so they can better understand and deal with employees and automatically help their organization, and the bottom line is that everyone would benefit. Some of the traditional ideas as "treat all your employees equally" is the exact opposite of what the book suggests, and makes a valid point. For those of us who are not in the management field, the book is an interested reading, and it'll help you realize your manager's virtues and weaknesses. Also, it will help you improve understanding of your coworkers and adaptation to working in a group.

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Summary: Turning managers into leaders
Review: I read this book with no particular focus in mind. I can say that this book gives managers new ideas as to how they can properly utilise the human resources they have in their organisations. The point that, training is often wasted on employees who do not have special talents and the others with talents are ignored, causes me to review the way we train our employees. This book shows a vision for employee development which I had not previously seen. The paradigym change which this book evokes supports sensible and effective leadership.

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Summary: "A Must-have Manual for Every Manager"
Review: Frequently when I hear "you have to buy that book," I wonder if I'll be disappointed after the purchase as I start reading. Sometimes that's the case--but not with this book. To my delight, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman live up to the hype surrounding their unique findings and proposals.

My only regret is that First Break All the Rules wasn't around during the twenty-three years I spent in management. The authors would have saved me from more than a few serious blunders. More importantly, I would have been able to maximize the people assets around me, far more effectively than I did.

My favorite sentence: "It is better to work for a great manager in an old-fashioned company than for a terrible manager in a company offering an enlightened, employee-focused culture." Put another way, the manager a person works for personifies the company for that person.

This reinforces what I hear from numerous groups I work with, who say their preferred way of receiving information from "higher up" is to have their immediate supervisor tell them.

Some readers may be shocked because the authors don't take an egalitarian approach to management. Yet most super coaches don't do that, either. They identify the players who display extraordinary leadership potential and skills, and give them the bulk of their direction and support.

Unlike other books that emerge from research pursuits, this one is readable. Also, First Break All the Rules goes beyond theory, recommending practical action steps that will change organizations--and challenge their managers, as never before.

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Summary: Freedom at Last!! Wonderful book, great methods and advice
Review: WOW...my gut beliefs about how to manage employees have been articulated- written out in a very understandable and usable form!! This book explains, in a very orderly way, how to use the 'talents' of your employees to promote excellence in your company. As the owner of a successful small business, I have seen many of the scenarios listed, and have come to understand and believe the simple truths noted in this book. This is excellent and usable information for any level manager. The principles in this book are a great foundation to happy employees and a growing business.

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Summary: Each Person has a Right to be Heard
Review: The book has proverbial style of writing. The authors employee a comparative style of writing pairing conventional wisdom against revolutionary wisdom. The authors support their conclusions based on individual and group studies conducted over a large range of time, 80,000 managers, and 1 million employees. Institutions expect conventional wisdom to guide employee performance and the authors suggest revolutionary wisdom will be meet with resistence. What will cause change? The most penetrating idea for change was profit. Engaged employees produce increased profit. Engaged employees provide higher levels of customer satisification. The company's reward shareholders is increased profits. Profit is the compelling force to move managers to consider the proverbial axioms suggested in this book.

What is the proverbal model? A structural stable model is suggested: 1. Select for Talent 2. Define the right outcomes for your employees 3. Find the right casting fit for each employee 4. Focus on improvement, drawing out the strengths of each employee. In the center of the model is a great manager. Talented employees need great managers. Productivity, Profitability, Retention, and Customer Satisification result from excellent relationships between the manager and employee. Managers work to create an team environment where focus, trust, and individualization flourish. Individuals are hired on talent. Talent is valued higher than brain power, will power, and experience. Talent is defined by the authors as: recurring patterns of thought, feelings, or behavior that can be productively applied. Managers watch behavior over time to decide whether they've hired the right person. The most important value is to find the right talent for the right role. The wrong people need to be removed immediately. Micro-management is reduced as managers give greater responsibility and trust to their employees. Managers focus on the desired outcomes. The employees figure out how to achieve the desired outcome. They thrill in the prestige, recognition, and pressure. Each employee must strive towards customer satisification and produce value oriented benefits targeted for the customer. Manager need to favor the productive employees. Here's the point: focus people towards performance. Managers spend alot of time listening and learning from their best employees. Managers invest time and resources in their best talent.

Managers recognize the need to focus on employee strengths. Each person is different and has unique talents. Identify what the employee does very well is critical. In fact, determining what the employee does better than 10,000 other people is essential to gain magnitudes of performance increase. Employees need to be told why they are important to the organization and how they can help in future directions.

Managers must create the right fit for their employees. Recognizing where these individuals fit in the organization provides job satisification. The counter-part is also true, managers must remove employee's who don't fit in a role, quickly. All under performance must be confronted directly and quickly. However, maintaining a friendly and positive relationship with the employee is essential whether or not the individual is add or removed from a role. Removing the danger elements in role caused by weakness in individuals traits is the responsibility of the manager. Studying failure does not produce excellence. Roles can some-times be counter-productivity. The desire to accept a role may be motivated by prestige and money; however, the person may not be a good fit. Instead, heros need to be created at every level. Each level needs to have respect and prestige and detailed steps necessary to gain increased prestige and recognition. Over promotion can be self-defeating.

It is a the responsibility of the manager to provide a growth ladder for their employees. Creative and unique policies maximum the employees perspective of where their going in their carreer. More job demands will be expected as increased stability is recognized in their community.

In conclusion, the book is not a theory of work management. It does not outline detailed methodologies for control behavior, but rather outlines proverbial like insights of great managers and what they believe. Great managers know that people won't change much, unless they want to, so they don't try to improve weaknesses; but instead forcus on increasing productivity through their strenghs. They help the person become more of what he is. Managers realize the beaucratic policies of individual performance are time-consuming. Great managers focus more on what they will say to the employee. The result is a very fluid and dynamic environment for the manager. The end goals is increased productivity, growth, and profits. The stuff that enables companies to survive.

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Summary: Very Useful Book - Strongly recommended!
Review: The authors, both management consultants for the Gallup Organization, use the company's study of 80,000 managers in 400 companies to reach the conclusion that a company that lacks great frontline managers will bleed talent, no matter how attractive the compensation packages and training opportunities. With this in mind, they sought the answers to the follow-up questions: "How do great managers find, focus and keep talented employees." Using case studies, diagrams, and excerpts from interviews, Buckingham and Coffman guide us through their findings that discipline, focus, trust, and, most important, willingness to treat each employee as an individual are the overall secrets for turning talent into lasting performance. The book concludes with suggestions on how to become a great manager, including ideas for interviewing for talent, how to develop a performance management routine, and how to get the best performance from talented employees. Although this is clearly an infomercial for the Gallup Organization, it nevertheless offers thoughtful advice on the essential task of developing excellent managers

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Summary: Very Useful Book - Strongly recommended
Review: This book deals with people management. It adopts a generally accepted concept: "The most important resource for a company is its HR capital". Gallup organisation tried to experimentally :
1. Check the validity of the Assumption Above
2. Understand, which are the factors that make a business a place where high talented people will work.
The research has been massive, involving thousands of people. A clear relation between a company's HR capital and its performance could be identified.

The research results for the second question are VALUABLE TO THE READER, SINCE, MANY TIMES ARE COUNTERINTUITIVE AND THEY DON'T AGREE WITH COMMON SENSE. HOWEVER, THEY HAVE BEEN VALIDATED BY RESEARCH. FURTHERMORE, AFTER TRYING TO USE SOME OF THE CONCEPTS OF THE BOOK, I WAS EXTREMELY SURPRISED TO SEE THAT THEY WORK IN PRACTICE (WITHIN 6 MONTHS THEY HELPED ME WITH AT LEAST 2 PEOPLE OF MY TEAM).
The basic concepts follow:
1. Usually the manager is more important for the performance of his people than a company itself. 12 fundamental questions to check this are provided.
2. People are greatly defined genetically and in their childhood. It is a mistake to try change them. "Learn-able" skills and knowledge are different from genetically defined talents.
3. People should be used in positions that are in agreement with their genetic pre-disposition.
4. People should focus on strengths and work around weaknesses (instead of the usual effort to improve weaknesses).
5. Excellence is a result of people working with their strengths to positions that match their talents.
HOWEVER THE ABOVE COMPRISE A VERY SHORT BRIEF OF THE BOOK. I STRONGLY SUGGEST IT FOR ANYBODY DEALING WITH MANAGEMENT. IT WILL HELP BOTH THE MANAGEMENT OF HIS TEAM AND ALSO THE MANAGEMENT OF HIS OWN CAREER.

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Summary: Smart Managers Know How to Break the Rules
Review: The trouble with writing a management book is the pressure to say something new.

There is nothing new to be found in "First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently."

Old wosdom sometimes is good wisdom. Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman are not pretending to be breaking new ground here. They are breaking out the mold of convential wisdom, however, and this is what defines this book from its best-selling peers.

The core message involves getting the job done. That's why they're in business. No baloney about maximizing potential, training through weaknesses. The trick is to hire the right person, beyond whatever criteria the "how to hire the people" sorts of books pontificate. Hire the right person, and the job gets done well. Hire enough of the right people, and you've got yourself a pretty good company.

They explain how and why. Great experience is valued less than great talent. Buckingham and Coffman assert you'll get what you pay for, and you'll get what you expect.

They keep it simple and ariculate it in lists, as you'd expect from a business book.

They've based this on a ridiculous amount of research. Don't think that that makes the ideas fool-proof. It only means 80,000 people have offered their thoughts, and, when combined with the authors' own experiences, this is the result. You need to apply these ideas, and not be held back by another's success.

It boils down to profit, but this is based on quality productivity from skilled employees under smart managers. If being a smart manager is your goal, a quick read through "First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently" is what I recommend.

Anthony Trendl

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Summary: Outside the Box
Review: Buckingham contributes mightily to the field of management and leadership with this work. The folks at Gallup are conistently ahead of the curve with their research and practices on leadership. The interesting thing about this book is it shows how people managed by being leaders, and not just managers. Also, it shows how you can manage better if you do not put one standard on every employee, and that you must cater to different personality types to achieve maximum performance from your employees. This is a great book for novice managers, or seasoned pros. I would highly recommend taking the time to read it.