Book Review - First, Break All The Rules

First, Break All The Rules: What The Worlds Greatest Managers Do DifferentlyFirst, Break All The Rules: What The Worlds Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A group of managers from our company read this as a book club. Lots of discussion ensued as we devoted up to 90 minutes per chapter.

There was a lot of great material to make you think.

Buckingham does a hierarchy of employee needs based on 12 questions. I'll paraphrase some "Do you know what is expected of you? "Do you have the tools to do your job right?" "Have you been praised for your performance in that past 7 days?" Like Maslow's hierarchy, basic needs have to be satisfied before satisfying higher needs positively affects performance. For example, if an employee doesn't know what's expected of them, giving them rewards won't increase their job satisfaction.

What also touched me (because I've been doing a lot of this lately) was the message about hiring for talent, not necessarily skills. And, to consider that different jobs require different talents.

It was all around a solid management book. Our group is looking to apply some of it to future training of our managers so we all get some value from it.

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