MANAGERS ROUNDTABLE
9/25/2013
“FIRST, BREAK ALL THE RULES”
WHAT THE WORLD’S GREATEST MANAGERS DO
DIFFERENTLY
MARCUS BUCKINGHAM
CURT COFFMAN
KEY CONCEPTS
• The ability to find and keep talented employees is
vital to sustained organizational success
• The only way to generate enduring profits is to
begin by building the kind of work environment
that attracts, focuses and keeps talented
employees
• Most managers realize that their competitiveness
and their success is dependent upon finding and
keeping top talent in every role
KEY CONCEPTS
• How do organizations determine whether or not
they are effective at doing this?
• How do you measure something that is so
critically important?
• How do you develop a measuring stick that is
simple and accurate and can tell us how our
managers are doing in terms of finding and
keeping talented people?
• How do you build highly engaged, productive
teams?
KEY CONCEPTS
Reviewing more than a million employee surveys,
Gallup identified a few questions that when
answered positively by employees served as a
predictor of outstanding performance and financial
results.
KEY CONCEPTS
• Interviewed over a million employees
• Took mountains of data and searched for
patterns
• Pried apart strong workplaces to reveal the core
• Searched for those special questions where the
most engaged employees – loyal and productive
– answered positively, and everyone else
answered neutrally or negatively
KEY CONCEPTS
• Discovered “The Big 12”
– Don’t measure everything you may want to know
about your workplace
– Do measure the strength of a workplace
– Do measure the core elements needed to attract,
focus and keep the most talented employees
KEY CONCEPTS
“Talented employees need great managers.”
THE BIG 12
Measure the Strength of your Company and its Managers
The Big 12
1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2. Do I have the right 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?
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?
PUTTING THE 12 TO TEST
• Gallup worked to establish the link between
employee satisfaction and business performance
(1998)
• 24 companies representing over 2500 business
units provided data regarding productivity,
profitability, employee retention, and customer
satisfaction
• Correlating this data with employee responses to
the 12 questions, the Gallup team made several
observations
PUTTING THE 12 TO TEST
• Employees who responded positively to the 12
questions worked in business units with higher
levels of productivity, profit, employee retention,
and customer satisfaction.
• An employee’s immediate manager (not the pay,
benefits, perks, or a charismatic corporate leader)
plays the critical role in building a strong workplace.
• People join companies, but leave managers – and
no HR gimmick will overcome the negative impact
of an ineffective manager. In that sense, managers
trump companies.
MOUNTAIN CLIMBING
Great managers take aim at the first 6 questions –
these form the foundation of an extraordinary work
environment…
MOUNTAIN CLIMBING
Great managers take aim at the first 6 questions –
these form the foundation of an extraordinary work
environment…
…the psychological climb.
MOUNTAIN CLIMBING
Base Camp: “What do I get?”
1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2. Do I have the right 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?
…meeting basic needs.
MOUNTAIN CLIMBING
Camp 1: “What do I give?”
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?
…self esteem and self worth.
MOUNTAIN CLIMBING
Camp 2: “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?
…am I part of a meaningful social system?
MOUNTAIN CLIMBING
Camp 3: “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?
…do I have the opportunity to develop?
MOUNTAIN CLIMBING
Reaching the Summit
•
•
•
•
Positive answers to all 12 questions
Have achieved clear focus
Recurring sense of achievement
Shared purpose
FOUR OUTCOMES
Four Business Outcomes Correlate to
the Big 12
1. Productivity
2. Profitability
3. Employee retention
4. Customer satisfaction