First, Break All The Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do… (vuoden 2016 painos)

The findings in this book would surprise many of us, who do self-development or others-development everyday. It would give you an effective framework in recruiting the right ones, setting the right goals, focusing on the strengths, and assigning the right roles to the subordinates. That'll help to bring the best out of them. What would surprise you is that you'll find many myths that you used to think it is right, but it is not from the findings of Gallup. ( )

I picked up this book because it was mentioned in some Forbes article I saw on things great managers do. On reading it, I saw that a lot of the stuff is things one would think are common sense. A lot of managers like to make like what they do is some mysterious, mystical thing or just something certain gifted people can do. It is not. It is dealing with people, and having the talent to deal with them well. So much of the advice in the book may seem common sense if you have such talent (or if you have been exposed to so many bad bosses and managers you just know they should be doing the stuff in the book instead). I did take a few notes, and I may write something a bit longer in my blog later. But in the end, the very simple gist of the book is this: hire the best people for their talent (not skills or knowledge. Those are important, but talent is the thing you need to look for since you can't teach talent), then do the best to make sure those folk can show you what they can do and let those talents flourish. Sure, set expectations and motivate, but if you select the wrong people, the rest will not fall into place. There is more, but there is the gist. ( )

"Foreword by Jim Harter".

Where the book makes its bones is in understanding and measuring talent. The authors offer creative ideas on incentive-based pay and advise that companies tailor incentive plans to the individual. ( )

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. The authors 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. ( )