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Ellen Isaacs | |
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First, Break All the Rules summarizes some of the lessons learned by Gallup in 25 years of interviewing employees. It does give mostly good management advice, and some people might find a few good pointers. But the book has a tendency to inflate itself into more than it is, and it comes on a bit strong on selling Gallup. The first part of the book was more annoying than the rest. They set up false "rules" to break, rules that few people believe. For example, they talk about "common wisdom" that you should treat everyone the same. I doubt many people believe that means you should literally treat every employee exactly the same, never varying your approach to match the needs and style of each employee. If there's any such "rule," it is just that you should treat everyone fairly, not exactly the same. Another rule is the Golden Rule to treat others as you would like them to treat you, a rule that is used in grade school to teach kids about politeness and respect. I don't think many managers really think they should handle their employees by assuming everyone reacts to all situations the way they do. The first part of the book is also when they give most of their commercial for Gallup. Yes, the company has done lots and lots of interviews over the years, but that's as much a warning sign to me as a virtue. It's critical when dealing with large amounts of qualitative data to be very systematic in your analysis, or else it's just too easy to find evidence for whatever theories you want to confirm. Rather then repeatedly reminding us how many interviews they've done, the authors should have told us a little more about how they waded through that much information to hone in on the principles they promote. Instead, they refer us to the appendix, which explains how they analyzed their quantitative (survey-based) data, not how they identified "great managers" vs ordinary ones or how they analyzed the huge quantities of interview comments. (That appendix was a little more jargon-heavy than necessary, as well.) Nonetheless, the book does advocate many good good management practices. For example, don't try to force all your employees to be "well-rounded," which is just another way of focusing on people's weaknesses, and instead try to play to their strengths. They point out that it's very difficult for people to change, so it's better to understand your employees and try to set up situations where they can succeed, rather than asking them to become different people. It suggests that you focus your attention on your strong performers so they can perform at their best, rather than spending most of your time trying to "fix" your weaker employees. All good practices. The book also has some useful suggestions on how to "manage around a weakness," since it acknowledges that you can't simply ignore all weaknesses. I very much like their point that companies should be more tolerant of people forming a partnership in a role so that they can complement each other in their strengths, rather than expecting one person to be good at everything a job requires. And I thought they had a useful 4-stage model of customer satisfaction. They say that people assume the first two levels (accuracy and availability), and are pleased by the next two (partnership and advice). They give some advice about interviewing job candidates, providing a basic summary of behavioral interviewing: Ask people about what they really did in specific situations, instead of what they would do or tend to do in general situations. This is good advice too, though they are too harsh when they say you shouldn't probe if someone can't come up with an example. Human memory is not organized in terms of "times when X happened," so it may take someone a little work to find a good example. Just because they can't come up with one immediately doesn't mean they're hedging or hiding something. The book was a quick read, so there are probably enough good ideas in it to justify the time to read it, but on the other hand, you could spend your time reading a better book in that same time.
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