First, Break All the Rules

Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman

Management in business is the subject of more books than we can guess. First, Break All the Rules is another one with a different viewpoint. The Gallup Organization conducted interviews throughout many known excellent organizations of best managers. The subtitle of the book is What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently.

According to Buckingham and Coffman, best managers do not follow traditional rules in guiding and keeping excellent employees. Traditional business convention says concentrate on the weaknesses an employee has. First, Break All the Rules says to concentrate on the employee's strong points and work around the weaknesses. This book maintains that by the time we're adults we have definite strengths and weaknesses that won't be changed. A person may be highly organized and detailed oriented. Best managers will guide that person to work with those strengths. But the best managers know they can't train someone to be organized and detail oriented if they aren't. The best managers instead move that person towards a position that fits her strengths instead.

First, Break All the Rules presents an interesting view of management. It makes sense. Many conventional business management practices are twisted into new ways of working. This book doesn't endorse any special type of organization or management system. Instead it focuses on managers' syles and how they work with their excellent employees.

It will take an innovative company and a group of brave managers to put these ideas to work. Most of the suggestions offered in this book need the freedom for the manager to go against traditional managerial theory. Instead of annual performance reviews, managers should meet with their employees at least quarterly, using these times to have a brief review of the past, then spend more time to set goals for the next quarter. Companies should look at compensation structures that reward employees to stay in positions that they are best suited rather than moving up the heirachry into positions that may not be their strengths but have more "prestige" and money attached.

Studying best practices has been done for years. First, Break All the Rules reminds us that once we've studied those best managers, we would do well to try their suggestions.