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The original book by Gallup on employee engagement and management styles launched the StrengthFinders book series and product.
What might be obvious to most people is not so obvious to others – no two employees are the same. Thus, treating employees the same will fail to get the highest level of engagement and performance from them. That’s the main rule to be broken – treating everyone the same.
End of the day – managers matter. Probably more than any other perk, benefit or development program. Great managers attract, retain and grow great people. People tend to quit managers, not jobs.
What We Like About this Book
The book starts off by looking at the 12 questions for employee engagement. We often come back to them again and again when it seems things aren’t going well with employees, or when we’re trying to take someone to the next level.
- Do I know what’s expected of me at work?
- Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
- At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
- In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
- Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
- Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
- At work, do my opinions seem to count?
- Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job is important?
- Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?
- Do I have a best friend at work?
- In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
- This last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?
Then the book goes into more rule breaking, like spending the most time with your best people versus equally. Or not making everyone follow the same progression and steppingstones.
Any criticisms?
Hard to criticize this one. The chapters break up well, the examples are great and it’s clearly well researched.
Is it best to be really nice to employees? When does pushing people go too far? Kim Scott takes a look at finding the balance between being pushy and being kind. Drawing her two axes for Caring Personally and Challenging Directly, she gives a review of techniques for striking the optimal balance as a manager.
What We Love About this Book
Lots of examples. Lots of techniques. Covers everything from employee meetings to career conversations. From annual reviews to decision making. If there’s a situation you might face at work, there’s likely a great example here of common pitfalls of being too nice or too aggressive and how to land in between the two extremes.
Kim Scott makes a great argument that being too nice is really doing a disservice to your team. She also shows how important it is to actively demonstrate that you care about the person as a person and not as an employee. Striking the balance allows for happy and engaged employees working in a high performing organization.
Any criticisms?
It’s geared mostly to work environments where employees are professional and have a certain level of education. The concepts do apply anywhere, but Kim Scott worked at Google and Apple, so a manager on a shop floor or in a restaurant might not find the same benefit as someone managing a professional office team.
How do you handle employees at each stage of their career development? How do you handle employees who are very experienced in some areas and then are taking on an assignment in an area much more unknown to them. Dr. Paul Hershey’s framework from 1984 is still taught in employee development programs for Fortune 500 size companies across the world. Finding an actual paper copy of this one can be a little tough, but if you can it’s a quick read loaded with great techniques.
What We Love About this Book
It really systemizes employee supervision based on the employee’s level of confidence and their skill level in what they’re doing. The framework allows directors and VPs to more easily break down employee issues with their managers and guide them through how to handle situations. Conversations like “Are they are R3 or an R4” become common and the management techniques in each situation start to flow naturally.
In addition, the book is only 125 pages with big print and diagrams. Ken Blanchard took this framework and wrote the “One Minute Manager” series, so if you’ve read those books this will look familiar.
Any criticisms?
It is a 40-year-old theory. Although we certainly still need to be more directive with very confident people that lack the skills to complete tasks, the book wasn’t written to address how to do that skillfully with today’s Gen Z and Millennials that might not receive that sort of direction well.
Why do some people seem to attract talent wherever they go, and grow talent from the oddest places? Why are other leaders constantly churning through staff who go on to do better things elsewhere?
Liz Wiseman’s heavily researched look at Multipliers vs Diminishers takes a good hard look at why some people make the best of everything and others never seem to figure it out. Along the way, there are often surprising findings about what makes great leaders great.
Why we love this book
The examples, although mostly anonymous, seem to hit home as relevant again and again. Wiseman also illustrates the flywheels of Multipliers and Diminishers extremely well – why what they do well or terrible makes things happen again and again. She also looks at different versions of awesome, describing Multiplier types such as The Talent Magnet, The Challenger and the Debate Maker as well as their Diminisher opposites like The Empire Builder, The Know-It-All and The Decision Maker. She doesn’t pigeon hole one style as great, but draws great parallels between the successful styles.
Any criticisms
Hard to think of any on this one. I couldn’t put it down the first time I read it. I guess it would be nice to know who all the anonymous examples are.
Written in 1984, The Goal is a management classic. Written in a unique fictional narrative form, it mixes principles critical to any manufacturing or distribution business with the personal life story of the main character, Alex Rogo. Alex handles serious marital issues while he seeks to save his company’s plant from closing in his hometown. Along the way, Alex enlists the help his friend and mentor Jonah to change the way he looks at his business.
Why we love this book
Anyone who focuses in the weeds on increasing percentage margin deal by deal, or focusing too much on the efficiency of every machine or business unit in their facility will benefit from reading this. The core of the book is about identifying and planning around bottlenecks, which is more professionally called “The Theory of Constraints”. Along the way this creates a shift in mentality from what financial statement oriented cost accountants call cost of goods sold to a different way of looking at growing a business.
As the book lays out, what’s most important is increasing overall throughput (producing and selling the most product) in the form of incremental contribution margin dollars while reducing costs and reducing inventory spend. It’s a great reset away from getting lost in the weeds of percentages. At the end of the day we take dollars to the bank, not percentages.
Any criticisms
At this point the book is 40 years old, and the way they get the numbers to solve their problems has changed significantly. Also, while the personal life part of the book may be charming for some, it also roughly doubles the length of the book and may frustrate others. However, the business principles are as relevant today as they were 40 years ago.
David Epstein explores the other side of specialist vs generalist in sports then applies that to business. Recognized as one of the best business books of the year in 2019, Epstein argues that broad specialization in the early stages of one’s career is a critical foundation to growth later on when one eventually specializes.
Why we love this book
The stories and the flow of the book are extremely engaging. Especially in small and lower middle market businesses, being able to wear multiple hats, or at least to have an understanding of multiple areas, is critical to success. In larger organizations, too much specialization early on can also lead to executives that don’t understand the big picture and how all the pieces of an organization fit together. Epstein makes very compelling arguments not so much against Malcolm Gladwell’s often quoted 10,000 hour rule, but about the timing of when that deep dive should happen in a career.
Any criticisms
Sports analogies hit the mark with some but not with everyone. Epstein is a sports writer originally, so it’s natural he would draw some parallels. The concepts flow pretty well, but some may not buy into the sports analogies. Also, when the specialist vs the generalist is warranted is explored but the conclusions are a bit fuzzy at times.
Key to developing engaged employees that are bonded to your organization is developing a belief that the organization serves a greater purpose than just putting dollars and cents in the owners’ and employees’ pockets. If you want a great teaser on this book and it’s primary concepts, Simon Sinek’s 18 minute TED talk is an excellent primer.
Why we love this book
The book itself is like a motivational shot of adrenaline. The breakdown of Why-How-What that’s laid out is an excellent framework to keep in mind when developing mission and strategy to be developed by leadership and communicated to employees. Along the way, key concepts like tipping points, adoption curves and culture building are laid out well in easy to understand terms.
Any criticisms
Start With Why starts with Apple. Yes, we get it. Nobody has done company culture and brand building better than Apple in the past 20 years. If you’re an Apple fanboy/fangirl this will instantly connect you to the concepts. If you haven’t drank the Apple brand punch, it might not connect as well. Also, although they give fair warning, it’s easy to read this book and want to change the way everyone at your organization feels about the company in the next week. It takes time and is truly a bottom up endeavor.