Great Managers

Extracts from First Break all the

Rules

Copyright Buckingham & Coffman

Additional material - Copyright Deming, Kaplan & Norton, Maslow,
De Bono, Kano, Handy, Covey

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Gallup Surveys

• Over a million employees

• 80,000 managers in 400 organizations

• All sectors

• Rigorous survey methods

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Overall Findings

• Complete paradigm change

• Great managers break the rules

• They don’t follow conventional wisdom

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Conventional Wisdom

• Employees possess unlimited potential

• Best way to help is to tackle weaknesses
• Do unto others as you would be done unto
• Treat everyone the same
• Don’t have favorites

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Great Managers’ Wisdom

• People don’t change very much

• Don’t waste time trying to put in what was
left out
• Try to draw out what was left in
• That is hard enough

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Measurement Facts

• "The most important figures for management

are unknown and unknowable."
Dr Nelson.

• "What gets measured gets done.”

Anon.

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Better Measurement
Financial
Perspective
•Revenue growth/mix
•Cost reduction
•Asset utilization
Customer
Perspective
•Market share
•Customer acquisition & retention
•Customer satisfaction
•Customer profitability

Learning and Internal Business

Growth Perspective Perspective
•Employee capabilities •Innovation
•Information systems capabilities •Operations
•Motivation/empowerment & •Post sales services
alignment

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Measure Strength of Workplace
1. Do I know what is expected of me
at work?
2. Do I have the materials and
equipment I need to do my work
right?
3. At work, do I have the opportunity
to do what I do best every day?
4. In the last seven days, have I
received recognition or praise for
doing good work?
5. Does my supervisor, or someone
at work, seem to care about me
as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who
encourages my development?
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7. At work, do my opinions seem to
count?
8. Does the mission/purpose of my
company make me feel my job is
important?
9. Are my co-workers committed to
doing quality work?
10.Do I have a best friend at work?
11.In the last six months, has
someone at work talked to me
about my progress?
12.This last year, have I had
opportunities at work to learn and
grow?
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Yes to all Twelve Questions

• Higher levels of;

– Productivity
– Profit
– Retention
– Customer Satisfaction

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Its all about the Manager

• Immediate managers forged employee’s

opinions
• People leave managers not companies
• People are often miscast

• The manager/supervisor is key!

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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Self Actualization

Eg o
Ne
eds

So c
ia l
Ne
eds

Se c
urit
yN
e ed
s
Bo d
yN
e ed
s

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Level 1 – What do I get?

1. Do I know what is expected of me at

work?
2. Do I have the materials and equipment I
need to do my work right?

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Level 2 – What do I give?
3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what
I do best every day?
4. In the last seven days, have I received
recognition or praise for doing good work?
5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work,
seem to care about me as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages my
development?

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Level 3 – Do I belong here?

7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?

8. Does the mission/purpose of my
company make me feel my job is
important?
9. Are my co-workers committed to doing
quality work?
10.Do I have a best friend at work?

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Level 4 – How can we all grow?

11.In the last six months, has someone at

work talked to me about my progress?
12.This last year, have I had opportunities
at work to learn and grow?

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Why initiatives fail

• TQM
• Reengineering
• Six Sigma
• Learning Organizations, etc

• Fail because they go in at Level 3/4 when

most employees are at Level 1/2
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The Catalyst Role
1. Know exactly what talents you want
2. Select the person – select for talent
3. Set expectations – define the right
outcomes
4. Motivate the person
(remove the barriers to motivation) –
focus on strengths
5. Develop the person – find the right fit

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Manager versus Leader

Managers Leaders
look inward look outward

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Cognitive Filter

• The way you see the

world

• Your filter is unique

• It enables you to see

some things and miss
others

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Talent

• A recurring pattern of thought, feeling or

behavior that can be productively applied.

• The key to excellent performance is to find

the match between talents and role.

• Talents cannot be taught.

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A Fable – its in my nature

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Talent, Skills & Knowledge

SKILLS

KNOWLEDGE
Factual
Experential

TALENTS

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Neuroscience

• By the time a child is

thirteen she has half
the synaptic
connections as when
she was three.

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Hard Wiring

• Our brains carve out

unique connections.

• There are unique

‘highways’

• There are barren Edward de Bono & sand analogy

wastelands

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The Kano Model
Delight

Customer Satisfaction

Delighters

Neutral
More is better

Must be

Disatisfaction
Absent Fulfilled

Degree of Achievement

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SERVQUAL
• Tangibles
– Appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel and
materials
• Reliability
– Ability to perform the promised service
• Responsiveness
– Willingness to help customers and provide prompt service
• Assurance
– Knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to
convey trust and confidence
• Empathy
– Caring, individualized attention

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Kinds of Talent

1. Striving

2. Thinking

3. Relating

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Handy’s Inverted Donut

• Set the outcomes and let

each person find their own
route except in cases of:
– Accuracy
– Safety
– Standards
– Useful steps but not dogma

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Outcomes - Empowerment
• Define the right outcomes

• But some of ‘the most important information for

management is unknown or unknowable.’

• Discover the ‘unknown’

• Use proxies for the ‘unknowable

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Barriers to Pride in Work

Barriers
To Pride in Work

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The Panaceas – The One Way

• Inefficient

• Demeaning

• Kills Learning

The Holy Grail

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The Right Outcomes

• What is right for the Customers

• What is right for the Company

• What is right for the Employees

• “Start with the end in mind”

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Avoid Generalizations
• Heaven
– The British are the Police
– The French are the Chefs
– The Germans are the
Engineers
– The Italians are the Lovers
– And the Swiss are the
Administrators
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• Hell
– The British are the Chefs
– The French are the
Engineers
– The Germans are the Police
– The Swiss are the Lovers
– And it is all administrated
by the Italians
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Deming & Gallup (1)

• The 14 Points
– 2 Western management must awaken to the
challenge
– 5 Improve constantly and forever all
processes
– 11 Eliminate work quotas
– 12 Remove barriers that rob people of pride in
work

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Deming & Gallup (1)

• Deadly Diseases
– Mobility of management – job hopping

• Miscellaneous
– Majority of root cause problems lie in the
processes e.g. recruitment, appraisal,
promotion, casting, etc.

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Invest in the best

• It is the fairest thing to do

• The best way to learn

• The only way to stay focused on

excellence
– Tell them why they are so good

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Learning

• You cannot learn very much from failure

• The opposite of failure is not excellence, it

is adequate

• There are many ways to do things wrong

but only a few to do them right
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A Weakness

• Is it a personal cause?
• Is it a mechanical cause?
• Then is it
– Trainable?
– Management not recognizing personal
triggers?
• If no then it is probably a talent issue!

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Non talent

• A non talent becomes a weakness when

you find yourself in a role where success
depends on your excelling in an area of
non-talent
– Devise a support system
– Find a complementary partner
– Find an alternative role

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Co-Leaders

• William Hewlett • David Packard

• Charles Rolls • Frederick Royce
• Ross Perot • Mitch Hart
• Bill Clinton • Al Gore

Build on talents cover weaknesses

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Peter Principle
• One is promoted to the level of ones
incompetence.

• Good teachers – bad principals

• Good sales people – bad managers
• Good engineers – lousy managers

• Keep people exploiting their talents

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Broad banding
Sales Assistant Sales Person District Manager Regional Manager Vice President
Income in $ per annum

Don’t make a great salesman a lousy manager!

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Alternate Tracks
Design Sales Consultant Management

D1 S1 C1 M1

D2 S2 C2 M2

D3 S3 C3 M3
Salary $

D4 S4 C4 M4

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Feedback

• Regular
• Adapted to individual’s requirements
• Future-based
• Private

• How can the individual find a good fit?

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Recruitment

• Make sure the talent interview stands

alone
• Ask a few open-ended questions then
listen
• Listen for specifics
• Look for clues to talent
• Know what to listen for
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Manager as Catalyst

Staff who Talented

Delighted Great
Profit deliver Staff in the
Customers Managers
excellence right roles

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