First, Break All the Rules

by Marcus Buckingham

Camp 1? Camp 3? The summit?

  Ask yourself those twelve questions. Your answers can give you a read on where you are on the mountain. Perhaps your company is going through times of change and you find yourself languishing down at Base Camp. Change can do that to a person — you genuinely want to commit, but the uncertainty keeps pushing you down and down. (“Quit telling me how great the future is going to be. Just tell me what is expected of me today.”)

  Perhaps you have just been promoted — you felt as though you were at the summit in your previous role, but now you find yourself right back down at Camp 1, with new expectations and a new manager. (“I wonder what he thinks of me. I wonder how he will define success.”) Yes, even when good things happen you can quickly find yourself at the base of a new mountain, with a long climb ahead.

  Of course, the climb toward the summit is more complicated than this picture. Not only will people trade one stage off against another, but each individual will also place a slightly different value on each stage of the climb. For example, you might have taken your current role simply because it offered you the chance to learn and grow — in a sense, you flew straight in to Camp 3. And if these higher-level needs are being met, then you will probably be a little more patient in waiting for your manager to make his expectations crystal clear ( Base Camp). Similarly, if you feel very connected to your team members ( Camp 2), then you may be prepared to stick this out for a while longer, even though you feel that your role on the team doesn’t allow you to use your true talents ( Camp 1).

  However, these kinds of individual trade-offs don’t deny the basic truth of the mountain — regardless of how positively you answer the questions at Camp 2 or Camp 3, the longer your lower-level needs remain unmet, the more likely it is that you will burn out, become unproductive, and leave.

  In fact, if you do find yourself answering positively to Camps 2 and 3, but negatively to the questions lower down, be very careful. You are in an extremely precarious position. On the surface everything seems fine — you like your team members ( Camp 2), you are learning and growing ( Camp 3) — but deep down you are disengaged. Not only are you less productive than you could be, but you would jump ship at the first good offer.

  We can give this condition a name: mountain sickness.

  In the physical world, mountain sickness is brought on by the lack of oxygen at high altitudes. Starved of oxygen, your heart starts pounding. You feel breathless and disoriented. If you don’t climb down to lower altitudes, your lungs will fill with fluid and you will die. There is no way to cheat mountain sickness. There is no vaccine, no antidote. The only way to beat it is to climb down and give your body time to acclimatize.

  Inexperienced climbers might suggest that if you have lots of money and not much time, you could helicopter in to Camp 3 and race to the summit. Experienced guides know that you would never make it. Mountain sickness would sap your energy and slow your progress to a crawl. These guides will tell you that to reach the summit you have to pay your dues. During your ascent you have to spend a great deal of time between Base Camp and Camp 1. The more time you spend at these lower reaches, the more stamina you will have in the thin air near the summit.

  In the psychological world, their advice still applies. Base Camp and Camp 1 are the foundation. Spend time focusing on these needs, find a manager who can meet these needs, and you will have the strength necessary for the long climb ahead. Ignore these needs and you are much more likely to psychologically disengage.

  AN EPIDEMIC OF MOUNTAIN SICKNESS

  Now put your manager’s hat back on.

  This metaphorical mountain reveals that the key to building a strong, vibrant workplace lies in meeting employees’ needs at Base Camp and Camp 1. This is where you should focus your time and energy. If your employees’ lower-level needs remain unaddressed, then everything you do for them further along the journey is almost irrelevant. But if you can meet these needs successfully, then the rest — the team building and the innovating — is so much easier.

  It almost sounds obvious. But over the last fifteen years most managers have been encouraged to focus much higher up the mountain. Mission statements, diversity training, self-directed work teams — all try to help employees feel they belong (Camp 2). Total quality management, reengineering, continuous improvement, learning organizations — all address the need for employees to innovate, to challenge cozy assumptions and rebuild them afresh, every day (Camp 3).

  All of these initiatives were very well-conceived. Many of them were well-executed. But almost all of them have withered. Five years ago the Baldrige Award for Quality was the most coveted business award in America — today only a few companies bother to enter. Diversity experts now bicker over the proper definition of “diversity.” Process reengineering gurus try to squeeze people back into process. And many of us snort at mission statements.

  When you think about it, it is rather sad. An important kernel of truth lay at the heart of all of these initiatives, but none of them lasted.

  Why? An epidemic of mountain sickness. They aimed too high, too fast.

  Managers were encouraged to focus on complex initiatives like reengineering or learning organizations, without spending time on the basics. The stages on the mountain reveal that if the employee doesn’t know what is expected of him as an individual (Base Camp), then you shouldn’t ask him to get excited about playing on a team (Camp 2). If he feels as though he is in the wrong role (Camp 1), don’t pander to him by telling him how important his innovative ideas are to the company’s reengineering efforts (Camp 3). If he doesn’t know what his manager thinks of him as an individual (Camp 1), don’t confuse him by challenging him to become part of the new “learning organization” (Camp 3).

  Don’t helicopter in at seventeen thousand feet, because sooner or later you and your people will die on the mountain.

  THE FOCUS OF GREAT MANAGERS

  Great managers take aim at Base Camp and Camp 1. They know that the core of a strong and vibrant workplace can be found in the first six questions:

  Do I know what is expected of me at work?

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

  At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?

  In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?

  Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?

  Is there someone at work who encourages my development?

  Securing 5’s to these questions is one of your most important responsibilities. And as many managers discover, getting all 5’s from your employees is far from easy. For example, the manager who tries to curry favor with his people by telling them that they should all be promoted may receive 5’s on the question “Is there someone at work who encourages my development?” However, because all his employees now feel they are in the wrong role, he will get 1’s on the question “At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?”

  Similarly, the manager who tries to control his employees’ behavior by writing a thick policies and procedures manual will receive 5’s to the question “Do I know what is expected of me at work?” But because of his rigid, policing management style, he will probably receive 1’s to the question “Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me?”

  To secure 5’s to all of these questions you have to reconcile responsibilities that, at first sight, appear contradictory. You have to be able to set consistent expectations for all your people yet at the same time treat each person differently. You have to be able to make each person feel as though he is in a role that uses his talents, while simultaneously challenging him to grow. You have to care about each person, praise each person, and, if necessary, terminate a person you have cared about and praised.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald believed that “the test of a first-rate intellige
nce is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time, and still maintain the ability to function.” In this sense, great managers possess a unique intelligence. In the following chapters we will describe this intelligence. We will help you look through the eyes of the world’s great managers and see how they balance their conflicting responsibilities. We will show you how they find, focus, and develop so many talented employees, so effectively.

  CHAPTER 2: The Wisdom of Great Managers

  * * *

  Words From the Wise

  What Great Managers Know

  What Great Managers Do

  The Four Keys

  Words From the Wise

  “Whom did Gallup interview?”

  How do the best managers in the world lay the foundations of a strong workplace? The flood of answers is rising and threatens to swamp even the most level-headed managers. In 1975 two hundred books were published on the subject of managing and leading. By 1997 that number had more than tripled. In fact, over the last twenty years authors have offered up over nine thousand different systems, languages, principles, and paradigms to help explain the mysteries of management and leadership.

  This barrage of conflicting, impressionistic, and largely anecdotal advice is overwhelming, but it rarely enlightens. It lacks precision and simplicity. Something is missing, even from the most persuasive advice. There are volumes of case studies and “here’s how I did it” personal success stories, but very little quantitative research and virtually no standard of measurement. No one has ever interviewed the best managers in the world and then compared systematically their answers with the answers of average managers. No one has ever allowed great managers to define themselves. No one has tapped the source. So Gallup did.

  This second research effort was the inevitable companion to the first. In the previous chapter we described the link between engaged employees and business unit outcomes and revealed the critical role played by managers everywhere. In this chapter we seek to delve into the minds of the world’s great managers and find out how they engaged, so successfully, the hearts, minds, and talents of their people.

  Year after year we asked our clients to give us their great managers to interview. It was not always easy to identify who the best ones were, so we began by asking, “Which of your managers would you dearly love to clone?” In some organizations this was the only criterion available. However, in the great majority of organizations there were performance scores: scores measuring productivity and profit; scores for shrinkage, for absenteeism, for employee accidents; and, most important perhaps, scores reflecting the feedback of customers and of the employees themselves. We used these performance scores to sort out the great managers from the rest.

  We interviewed hotel supervisors, sales managers, general agents, senior account executives, manufacturing team leaders, professional sports coaches, pub managers, public school superintendents, captains, majors, and colonels in the military, even a selection of deacons, priests, and pastors. We interviewed over eighty thousand managers.

  Each great manager was interviewed for about an hour and a half, using open-ended questions. For example:

  “As a manager, which would you rather have: an independent, aggressive person who produced $1.2 million in sales or a congenial team player who produced about half as much? Please explain your choice.”

  “You have an extremely productive employee who consistently fouls up the paperwork. How would you work with this person to help him/her be more productive?”

  “You have two managers. One has the best talent for management you have ever seen. The other is mediocre. There are two openings available: the first is a high-performing territory, the second is a territory that is struggling. Neither territory has yet reached its potential. Where would you recommend the excellent manager be placed? Why?”

  (You can find out what great managers said to these questions in Appendix B.)

  The answers to these, and hundreds of similar questions, were tape-recorded, transcribed, read, and reread. Using the same questions, we then interviewed their rather less successful colleagues. These managers were neither failing nor excelling. They were “average managers.” Their answers were tape-recorded, transcribed, read, and reread.

  Then we compared. We listened to 120,000 hours of tape. We combed through 5 million pages of transcript. We searched for patterns. What, if anything, did the best have in common? And what, if anything, distinguished them from their less successful colleagues?

  It turns out that great managers share less than you might think. If you were to line them all up against a wall, you would see different sexes, races, ages, and physiques. If you were to work for them, you would feel different styles of motivation, of direction, and of relationship building. The truth is they don’t have much in common at all.

  However, deep within all these variations, there was one insight, one shared wisdom, to which all of these great managers kept returning.

  What Great Managers Know

  “What is the revolutionary insight shared by all great managers?”

  An old parable will serve to introduce the insight they shared.

  There once lived a scorpion and a frog.

  The scorpion wanted to cross the pond, but, being a scorpion, he couldn’t swim. So he scuttled up to the frog and asked: “Please, Mr. Frog, can you carry me across the pond on your back?”

  “I would,” replied the frog, “but, under the circumstances, I must refuse. You might sting me as I swim across.”

  “But why would I do that?” asked the scorpion. “It is not in my interests to sting you, because you will die and then I will drown.”

  Although the frog knew how lethal scorpions were, the logic proved quite persuasive. Perhaps, felt the frog, in this one instance the scorpion would keep his tail in check. So the frog agreed. The scorpion climbed onto his back, and together they set off across the pond. Just as they reached the middle of the pond, the scorpion twitched his tail and stung the frog. Mortally wounded, the frog cried out: “Why did you sting me? It is not in your interests to sting me, because now I will die and you will drown.”

  “I know,” replied the scorpion as he sank into the pond. “But I am a scorpion. I have to sting you. It’s in my nature.”

  Conventional wisdom encourages you to think like the frog. People’s natures do change, it whispers. Anyone can be anything they want to be if they just try hard enough. Indeed, as a manager it is your duty to direct those changes. Devise rules and policies to control your employees’ unruly inclinations. Teach them skills and competencies to fill in the traits they lack. All of your best efforts as a manager should focus on either muzzling or correcting what nature saw fit to provide.

  Great managers reject this out of hand. They remember what the frog forgot: that each individual, like the scorpion, is true to his unique nature. They recognize that each person is motivated differently, that each person has his own way of thinking and his own style of relating to others. They know that there is a limit to how much remolding they can do to someone. But they don’t bemoan these differences and try to grind them down. Instead they capitalize on them. They try to help each person become more and more of who he already is.

  Simply put, this is the one insight we heard echoed by tens of thousands of great managers:

  People don’t change that 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.

  This insight is the source of their wisdom. It explains everything they do with and for their people. It is the foundation of their success as managers.

  This insight is revolutionary. It explains why great managers do not believe that everyone has unlimited potential; why they do not help people fix their weaknesses; why they insist on breaking the “Golden Rule” with e
very single employee; and why they play favorites. It explains why great managers break all the rules of conventional wisdom.

  Simple though it may sound, this is a complex and subtle insight. If you applied it without sophistication, you could quickly find yourself suggesting that managers should ignore people’s weaknesses and that all training is a complete waste of time. Neither is true. Like all revolutionary messages, this particular insight requires explanation: How do great managers apply it? What does it ask of employees? What does it mean for companies?

  Over the next chapters we will answer these questions, but before we do, we have to agree on what a manager, any manager, actually does. What is their unique function in a company? What role do they play?

  What Great Managers Do

  “What are the four basic roles of a great manager?”

  Tony F., a senior executive in a large entertainment conglomerate, has a familiar complaint: “Smart individual performers keep getting moved into manager positions without the slightest idea of what the manager role is, let alone the ability to play it. We send them off to one of these leadership development courses, but they come back more impressed with their miniexecutive status than with the day-to-day challenges of being a good manager. No one knows what being a good manager is anymore.”

  Maybe Tony is right. No one knows what being a good manager is anymore. And on top of that, nobody cares. Conventional wisdom tells us that the manager role is no longer very important. Apparently managers are now an impediment to speed, flexibility, and agility. Today’s agile companies can no longer afford to employ armies of managers to shuffle papers, sign approvals, and monitor performance. They need self-reliant, self-motivated, self-directed work teams. No wonder managers were first against the wall when the reengineering revolution came.

  Besides, continues conventional wisdom, every “manager” should be a “leader.” He must seize opportunity, using his smarts and impatience to exert his will over a fickle world. In this world, the staid little manager is a misfit. It is too quick for him, too exciting, too dangerous. He had better stay out of the way. He might get hurt.