First, Break All the Rules

The key message in this book: Each person has a unique set of talents which make him or her the right fit for a certain job. Successful management encourages and helps employees to develop these innate talents and to become even better at what – thanks to their natural inclinations – they’re already good at. 

Actionable advice from the book: Select for talent

When recruiting, one of the most important things to remember is to “select for talent.” The unique talents of candidates and the job they’re applying for must make a good fit. So, during the job interview, ask open-ended questions and listen to specifics to discover the candidate’s talents.

The Right Stuff: Perhaps nothing better illustrates the need to place talent over experience, determination or intelligence than the Mercury Space Program. Faced with the race for space, seven men were carefully selected for the program after passing rigorous physical and psychological tests. All seven were trained on space travel. Eventually, they would fly six missions. In all, there were two textbook flights, two heroic ones and two mediocre ones. Two men, Allen Shepard and Wally Schirra, experienced the textbook flights with no drama and no surprises. Two others had heroic flights. Both John Glenn and Gordon Cooper experienced unanticipated mechanical problems and both handled them brilliantly. Cooper even managed the most accurate splashdown of the program despite a loss of his reentry guidance system. But two did considerably less well. Gus Grisson panicked when his craft splashed down and opened his hatch too soon in an effort to get out. He was rescued but the craft was lost. Scott Cooper appeared to be so excited about his flight that he foolishly used up most of his fuel flying this way and that. He was almost lost in space forever. Why did six well-trained, smart and experienced astronauts perform so differently? The answer lies in talent. Exposed to the same stimuli, all six reacted differently, filtering what was happening. They each had a unique way of responding to what was happening. One panicked when claustrophobia set in, another was unable to control his desire to play, while others reacted to emergencies calmly and saved the day.

Manage by Exception: Every worker should be treated as an exception, as a unique individual. Some want you to leave them alone. Others want to check in with you regularly. Some crave recognition by you, the “boss.” Others are only happy with peer praise. Some want publicity, while others want a private, quiet thanks for a job well done. The best managers break the Golden Rule every day. Instead of doing unto others as they would want done onto them, they do unto others as others would have done unto themselves. But how do you know how your employees want to be treated? Ask! In particular, get to know their goals for the future and how they prefer to be praised. It makes no sense, for example, to force a shy worker to accept an award at a gala banquet. Above all else, don’t believe that fairness requires you to treat everyone alike. Act as if each worker is unique and give each what he or she needs to succeed. Spend the Most Time With Your Best People Great managers play favorites. Great managers spend the most time with the most productive members of their staff. Remember that “no news” kills behavior. Your stars may think you are ignoring them if you spend most of your time with the strugglers, and will eventually stop being your top performers. You must tell them often that they are your top people. Ironically, spending a lot of time with your strugglers isn’t very productive. Oh, to be sure, you begin to understand what failure looks like. But don’t assume that you will learn what works. That you can only learn from your top performers. It is also crucial that you get away from looking at everything through averages. In business, far too much is measured in terms of average. Don’t make the mistake of using averages to calculate performance. Do not measure a struggler’s performance against the average; measure it against excellent performance. 

Average is Irrelevant: Consider what happens when performance is measured against “excellent” performers rather than the average. For data entry work, the national average is 380,000 keypunches per month. But a wise manager doesn’t measure performance against that. Here’s what happened when one manager used a top performer, who “averaged” 560,000 punches per month, as the standard. Within six months of receiving feedback and recognition, she was over the 3 million mark! Her manager designed a performance pay plan around her. Today, the department “average” is over 1 million strokes.