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Book Synopsis & Review

Buckingham, M. & Coffman, C. (1999). First, Break all the Rules: What
the worlds greatest managers do differently. New York: Simon &
Schuster.
By Raymond Lemay
February 2003, revised October 2009
This mammoth study carried out by the Gallup
Organization with interviews of over one million
employees, eighty thousand managers in four
hundred companies provides remarkable insight
into what makes a difference on the ground where
organizations realize excellence and good results.
Choosing the right people to do the right work
seems to be a no-brainer when it comes to being
competitive. However, this book adds another
very interesting wrinkle to the above by
suggesting that having the right managers with
sufficient authority is a necessary pre-condition to
ensuring excellence, profit, and good results.
Indeed, one of the research findings is that the
biggest difference between excellent corporations
that achieve great results as compared to other
organizations are the kind of managers they have
working for them. Moreover intra and interorganizational results vary in accordance to
managerial qualities. This study has allowed the
Gallup Organization to identify certain criteria for
determining who is a great manager and I will get
to this later in this review.

organizational variability in terms of quality,

effectiveness and results, this suggests that
managers make the difference rather than
company policy and procedures, the policy
manual, governance and organizational
structures or any other such organization wide
scheme. Thus, the managers closest to front-line
action have the biggest impact on quality,
excellence and results.
For the employee who is actually delivering a
service to a customer or producing a product it is
not so much the company that counts but the
manager he works for. For employees, there are
only managers: great ones, poor ones, and many
in between (p. 36). Indeed, the authors indicate
that good employees dont leave their companies
but rather they leave their managers. Thus,
strategies for improving pay, perks and training in
the end make no difference if the employee is
stuck with a bad manager or a manager he doesnt
like.
Managers are on stage

Whats of key interest is that there is more intraorganization (within an organization) variability
in terms of managerial quality than there is interorganizational (between organizations) quality.
Indeed, in any given organization, one will find
that some teams outperform others and the key
ingredient is who they have as a manager. Given
the fact that there is a great deal of intra-

The authors make great use of the theater

metaphor when speaking of the role of manager.
They suggest that the manager is always on stage
for his employees and must demonstrate certain
behaviors in order to garner their support and
performance. Managers are viewed as leaders in
this book which goes against the grain of much

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management literature which suggest that leaders
are different than managers; that leaders (CEOs)
have outward-futuristicvision versus managers
who should demonstrate inward present vision
in order to manage the day-to-day operations.
However, in this book, the leadership exercised
by managers is towards the employees that
directly report to them and managers are thus
viewed on stage as espousing and promoting
the values of their organization and modeling the
best way of doing and relating. Another theater
metaphor that is often used in the book relates to
casting mistakes where people are placed in the
wrong position; for instance people with no talent
for selling are placed in positions where they
must sell. Once again, casting is of great
importance particularly when selecting managers.
Not everyone has the leadership skills or the
people skills required to manage and just because
someone has paid his dues on the front-line and
might be even an excellent front-line worker
doesnt mean that they have the necessary skills
for managing.
Talent is everything
Indeed, one of the premises of this book is that
talent is everything. The authors have an
appropriately limited view of human development
that sees development and human potential within
certain pre-established limits, limits thus
established by our genotype and our lived
experiences up until then. Thus, for the authors,
talents are the hard wired parts of our brain that
we are for, good or ill, stuck with. The trick, of
course, for good managers, good companies, and
for every individual is to be involved in work that
fits their individual talents in order for them to
excel. There is nothing troubling with this
limited view of human development, quite the
opposite. Instead, they view it as a happy
confirmation that people are different. There is
no point wishing away their individuality. Its
better to nurture it. Its better to help someone

understand his filter and then channel it toward

productive behavior (p. 83). Indeed, we are told
that companies, managers, and so on should not
select people for their stated competencies, based
on their rsums, or how well they perform on
written tests or in interviews. There is a chapter
at the end of the book devoted to selecting
employees and what we are told is that what
managers must look for is potential and fitness
for the job at hand or indeed proper casting.
Each position and each job description requires at
different levels three great talents: the talent of
striving (the why of a person), the talent of
thinking (which explains the how of a person)
and the talent of relating (that explains the who
of a person).
These talents are further subdivided in appendix
C:
Striving Talents :
Achiever: A drive that is internal, constant, and
self-imposed
Kinesthetic: A need to expend physical energy
Stamina: Capacity for physical endurance
Competition: A need to gauge your success
comparatively
Desire: A need to claim significance through
independence, excellence, risk, and recognition
Competence: A need for expertise or mastery
Belief: A need to orient your life around certain
prevailing values
Mission: A drive to put your beliefs into action
Service: A drive to be of service to others
Ethics: A clear understanding of right and wrong
which guides your actions
Vision: A drive to paint value-based word
pictures about the future
Thinking Talents :
Focus: An ability to set goals and to use them
every day to guide actions

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Discipline: A need to impose structure onto life
and work
Arranger: An ability to orchestrate
Work Orientation: A need to mentally rehearse
and review
Gestalt: A need to see order and accuracy
Responsibility: A need to assume personal
accountability for your work
Concept: An ability to develop a framework by
which to make sense of things
Performance Orientation: A need to be objective
and to measure performance
Strategic Thinking: An ability to play out
alternative scenarios in the future
Business Thinking: The financial application of
the strategic thinking talent
Problem Solving: An ability to think things
through with incomplete data
Formulation: An ability to find coherent patterns
within incoherent data sets
Numerical: An affinity for numbers
Creativity: An ability to break existing
configuration in favor of more effective/appealing
ones
Relating Talents
Woo: A need to gain the approval of others
Empathy: An ability to identify the feelings and
perspectives of others
Relator: A need to build bonds that last
Mutirelator: An ability to build an extensive
network of acquaintances
Interpersonal: An ability to purposely capitalize
upon relationships
Individualized Perception: An awareness of and
attentiveness to individual differences
Developer: A need to invest in others and to
derive satisfaction in so doing
Stimulator: An ability to create enthusiasm and
drama
Team: A need to build feelings of mutual support
Positivity: A need to look on the bright side
Persuasion: An ability to persuade others

logically
Command: An ability to take charge
Activator: An impatience to move others to action
Courage: An ability to use emotion to overcome
resistance
(pp. 251-252).
Thus academic qualifications are no indication of
whether a person has the necessary talents to do a
given job. What managers must do in their
interviews is determine what makes people hum
along. The authors provide the following
definition of a talent: that it is a recurring pattern
of thought, feeling, or behavior that can be
productively applied (p. 71) and the key for the
manager is to fit the talents the employee has to
the roles that are available. Every role,
performed at excellence, requires talent, because
every role, performed at excellence, requires
certain recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or
behavior (p. 71). Talents are potential, the right
stuff that people need for a given role. Thus, the
authors tell us that it isnt experience, it isnt
brainpower, nor is it willpower, that will make
the difference. Indeed, the most highly qualified
person might not necessarily fit the job that one
has for that person if the person doesnt have the
required talents. Talent cannot be taught, quite the
opposite indeed, its having the God-given talent
that makes teaching particular skills to a person
possible.
Since talents are innate, they tend to be viewed by
the person as their strengths and people like
working from their strengths, which makes them
vitally interested in what they are doing. We are
told that one of the most important jobs of the
manager is to refrain from remediating weakness
but rather to take advantage of people strengths
and marshaling those strengths to get the best
performance possible of the person given, of
course, the fact that those strengths might in some
way be relevant to the job at hand. This part of
the book seems totally consistent with Seligmans

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(2002) signature strengths concept in his positive
psychology project on the one hand and resilience
theory on the other. Its interesting how
management literature seems to be converging
with some of the most interesting research going
on right now in psychology. However, referring
to Seligmans work and Collins (2001) highlights
how concepts such as talent engender quite a bit
of definitional confusion. Indeed Seligman
proposes interesting differences between
strengths and talents on a number of fronts (pp
134-161), that Buckingham & Coffman conflate
in their broader definition of talent. Collins on
the other hand speaks of getting the right people
on the bus as one of the first signs of a successful
CEO: the right people seem to be the talented
people described Buckingham and Coffman, and
those with Seligmans appropriate signature
strengths.
All of the above also intersects with some of the
psychology we have been studying concerning
subjectivity, perceptual filters, and the way the
world is viewed. What the authors suggest is that
a persons strengths and talents are in a sense the
filters with which they view the world. They tend
to react to the world in terms of their strengths
and it is their view on their talents and strengths
that tells them whether or not they will be
successful in dealing with the world and which
approach and actions they will take to deal with
whatever challenge is ahead of them.
You have a filter, a characteristic way of
responding to the world around you. We
all do. Your filter tells you which stimuli
to notice and which to ignore; which to
love and which to hate. It creates your
innate motivationsare you competitive,
altruistic, or ego driven? It defines how
you thinkare you disciplined or laissezfaire, practical or strategic? It forges your
prevailing attitudesare you optimistic or
cynical, calm or anxious, empathetic or

cold? It creates in you all of your distinct

patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior.
In effect, your filter is the source of your
talents (p. 76).
All of this of great importance in dealing with
clients who have important life problems.
Intervenants (social workers) and ducateurs
(CYCs) who have the talent will be able to do the
job differently and better, but more importantly
will assess the level of difficulty in ways
fundamentally different from employees who are
not in a role that suits them: the talented
Intervenant or ducateur will search for
strengths and solutions, rather than problems and
conflicts.
The authors go on to suggest that talents are very
democratically distributed across all people at all
times. Talent thus is not rare or special but rather
very commonplace. The problem, of course, is
we tend to use the word talent to describe
exceptional individuals such as Wayne Gretsky or
Michael Jordan. The best way to help an
employee cultivate his talents is to find him a role
that plays to those talents. Employees who find
such roles are special. These people are naturally
able to do what someone is prepared to pay them
to do. We rightly label these people talented
(p. 93). Another myth dispelled by the authors is
that some roles are so easy they dont require
talent. Indeed, they indicate to us that all roles
should be valued and one of the very remarkable
parts of this book is how it systematically
recommends and promotes the notion that each
role no matter how modest requires talent on the
one hand and requires valuation on the other.
This is consistent throughout the book and indeed
it is at the heart of the compensation system (a
broad banding system) which is recommended at
the end of the book.
Thus, they spend a great deal of time describing
the talents required to be a good housekeeper in a

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hotel and how some individuals have this talent
and find great valuation in such jobs. The authors
suggest at the end that in the minds of great
managers, every role performed at excellence
deserves respect. Every role has its own nobility
(p. 98). In french the saying goes that Il ny a
pas de sot mtier, (there are no unimportant
trades).
Managing the talented and the talentless
One of the great problems confronting American
industry and human services probably is that
many people are put into positions, jobs, and
roles for which they do not have the talent. Very
often, managers are told that these low achievers
and unachievers are the very people who must
take up most of their time. Indeed, policy
manuals and step-by-step approaches to doing a
job and other rigidities in the work environment
usually come from these individuals who do not
know what to do and are not motivated or valued
in the positions that they occupy. The American
Armed Forces calls these individuals ROAD
warriors and in this way they describe the sleepy
folk who do the strict minimum and are quite
happy to retire on active duty or ROAD (p. 22).
However, the authors tell us that great managers
dont waste much time with ROAD warriors.
Indeed, they spend minimal amounts of time with
employees who dont perform well preferring to
give most of their attention to their high
performers. Indeed, their high performers
perform even better when they receive a lot of
feedback, particularly positive feedback. Thus,
mentoring enters into the relationship equation
between good managers and excellent employees.
Managers should manage by exception, they
should not follow the golden rule which suggests
that everybody should be treated equally; nor
should everyone be treated as you would want to
be treated. One of the books premises is that
everyone is exceptional and that everyone should
be treated as an exception. Treat people as you

would like to be treated. The best managers

break the Golden Rule every day. They would
say dont treat people as you would like to be
treated. This presupposes that everyone breathes
the same psychological oxygen as you (p.151).
As stated above, managers spend most of the time
with their best people.
But great managers do not place a
premium on either control or instruction.
Both have their place, particularly with
novice employees, but they are not the
core: they are too elementary, too static.
For great managers, the core of their role
is the catalyst role: turning talent into
performance. So when they spend time
with an employee, they are not fixing or
correcting or instructing. Instead they are
racking their brains, trying to figure out
better and better ways to unleash that
employees distinct talents:
$

$
$

They strive to carve out a unique

set of expectations that will stretch
and focus each particular
individual...
They try to highlight and perfect
each persons unique style...
And they plot how they, the
manager, can run interference for
each employee, so that each can
exercise his or her talents even
more freely (p. 153-154).

Feedback is a key ingredient for the relationship

between excellent performers and excellent
managers.
They remember that they are
permanently center stage. In particular
they remember that the less attention they
pay to the productive behaviors of their
superstars, the less of those behaviors they
will get. Since human beings are wired to
need attention of some kind, if they are

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not getting attention, they will tend, either
subconsciously or consciously, to alter
their behavior until they do. Therefore, as
a manager, if you pay the most attention
to your strugglers and ignore your stars,
you can inadvertently alter the behaviors
of your stars... You are always on stage.
Your misplaced time and attention is not a
neutral act. No news is never good news.
No news kills the very behaviors you want
to multiply... They told us that investing
in their best was, first, the fairest thing to
do; second, the best way to learn; and,
third, the only way to stay focused on
excellence (p. 155).
Here again the book converges with the best
knowledge we have on resilience and positive
psychology. In this book, we are told that great
managers are students of excellence and not of
failure.
You cannot learn very much about
excellence from studying failure. Of all
the infinite number of ways to perform a
certain task, most of them are wrong.
There are only a few right ways...
Excellence is not the opposite of failure.
It is just different. It has its own
configuration, which sometimes includes
behaviors that look surprisingly similar to
the behaviors of your strugglers (p. 157).
One thing the authors strive to reinforce time and
again in the book is that excellent performance
comes from individuals who are in a position to
fully realize the potential of their God given
talents. Thus, its the fit between the jobs and its
requirements, the person in his talents, and the
manager who develops the required skills that
makes excellence. Moreover, they suggest that
excellence is something that occurs at the micro
level of organizations. In the basic relationships
that are established between front-line staff and

their immediate managers.

Of course, some employees are miscast, do not
have the talent for the role they are required to
play and very simply should get on with their
lives in a new career. The authors tell us that
none of this is easy, and they suggest a tough
love approach to dealing with these situations
...which is not a technique, or sequence of action
steps, but a mind-set, one that reconciles an
uncompromising focus on excellence with a
genuine need to care. It is a mind-set that forces
great managers to confront poor performance
early and directly. Yet it allows them to keep
their relationship with the employee intact (p.
207).
It is interesting that the authors suggest that
unacceptable performance is any level that
hovers around average with no trend upward (p.
207). So, of course, they suggest that the
employee who just doesnt have the talent, who
will be unable to improve over time, will
eventually lead to much frustration and
eventually boredom with the job.
The four keys
The thrust of the book of course is an attempt to
simplify the managerial role in a way that it
becomes understandable but also in reaction to
the very recent tendency to complexify roles,
strategies and procedures in order in some way to
mimic and match the perceived complexity of the
world and of organizations. It would seem indeed
that good managers are able to keep it simple, to
be able to see the essence of a role, the essence of
a task, and the essence of results, and then, by
drilling down to the essence and sharing it with
their co-workers, they are able to create an
atmosphere where things are easily understood
and doable. This capacity to simplify and manage
effectively by forthright interactions calls to mind
Blanchards (1981) One minute Manager, with its

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one minute goal setting, one minute praisings,
and one minute reprimands: ongoing feedback is
the thing.
There are four keys for a manager to play his role
successfully:
$
$
$
$

When selecting someone, they select for

talent . . . not simply experience,
intelligence, or determination.
When setting expectations, they define the
right outcomes . . . not the right steps.
When motivating someone, they focus on
strengths . . . not on weaknesses.
When developing someone, they help him
find the right fit . . . not simply the next
rung on the ladder(p. 67).

The authors also suggest that human resource

departments have a natural tendency to
complicate things and develop an ascendency on
all things relating to the retaining, the evaluating,
and so on of all human resources within an
organization. Thus, human resource departments
tend to over complexify and sub-categorize job
descriptions into multiple pages, multiple
sections, and subdivide competencies into subskills, into personal skills, work habits, core
competencies, and the like. The authors suggest
that this is careless language and careless
thinking. They suggest that what is important is
that people should be selected for their innate
talents upon which we might be able to build
through training the skills required to perform the
duties that are incumbent with a given job.
Therefore, competency based training and
competency based job descriptions and so on is
according to the authors nothing more than a fad.
For them, competencies are
part skills, part knowledge, and part
talent. They lump together, haphazardly,
some characteristics that can be taught
with others that cannot. Consequently,
even though designed with clarity in

mind, competencies can wind up

confusing everybody. Managers soon
find themselves sending people off to
training classes to learn such
competencies as strategic thinking or
attention to detail or innovation. But
these arent competencies. These are
talents. They cannot be taught. If you are
going to us competencies, make it clear
which are skills or knowledge and
therefore can be taught, and which are
talents and therefore cannot (p. 89).
Other words are confusingly use that also needs
some clarification. Thus, for the authors, words
such as habits which describe our first nature,
those characteristics and behaviors that we
habitually demonstrate, attitudes and finally drive
are words that describe types of talents.
Performance management and performance
measurement
Here we are told the great managers dislike the
complexity of most company-sponsored
performance appraisal schemes (p. 222). We are
told that performance evaluation and performance
management is routine and has done on a
continuous basis and must be viewed as a
relationship builder between the manager and his
employees. The routine is 1) simple, 2) requires
frequent interaction, 3) is focused on the future,
and 4) engages the employee in keeping track of
his own performance and learnings. Selfassessment by the employee is important and
because the relationship between the manager and
the employee is strong it is tested against the
objective and helpful scrutiny of the supervisor.
Once again, in performance management, the
issue is the persons strengths and the
development of these strengths as they pertain to
the job at hand. Once again, I was quite surprised
by the convergence of this book with what we

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know on resilience, positive psychology,
expectancies, and so on.

Miller, 1999).
.

Customer satisfaction

Managing by remote control

The authors tells us that satisfaction is based on

expectations which, of course, is not surprising.
We are told that these expectations are
hierarchical and I think they relate quite well to
the expectations that human service consumers
must also have. Level 1 expectations are that
customers expect accuracy; in terms of human
services we would suggest that this means that we
will respond in accordance to what clients tell us
about their problems. Level 2 is that service is
available and that people wont have to wait for it
and we will make it accessible. These first two
levels of expectancy are quite basic and
correspond to the notions of clrit (speed of
response) and solicitude (solicitude).

We are told that good managers and supervisors

are not in the face of their employees. Managers
we are told cant make anything happen. All you
can do is influence, motivate, berate, or cajole in
the hope that most of your people will do what
you ask of them. This isnt control. This is
remote control. And it is coupled, nonetheless,
with all of the accountability for the teams
performance (p. 109). We are told that good
managers define outcomes rather than means.
Define the right outcomes and then let each
person find his own route toward those
outcomes (p. 110). This concept is very similar
to Blanchards management approach.

The next two levels of expectancy are more

sophisticated and they are based on the notion of
relationship. At Level 3, a client expects
partnership they want you to listen to them, to
be responsive to them, to make them feel they are
on the same side of the fence as you, in other
words we are in this together and lets resolve it
together. Some might think of the word
empathy, though I think empathy has lost value
because of overuse. At Level 4, the authors tell us
that the customer expects advice, in other words
our expertise where the customer (client) accepts
the notion that service is a learning experience
and that the professional that they have called
upon is there to provide them with competence
and teaching. It is interesting that these four
levels of expectancy are quite related to the four
factors research that suggests that effectiveness
in human services is mostly tied to the client
himself (who is the hero of the change process),
his expectancies, his relationship with the human
service professional, and finally to the human
service professionals expertise (Hubble, Duncan,

Measuring workplace performance and the

strength of a workplace: The 12 Key questions
The Gallup Organization when it started this
research was attempting to identify the factors
that would best describe high performance
workplaces. What were the core elements:
needed to attract, focus, and keep the most
talented employees (p. 28). Not surprisingly,
given that Gallup is a survey and interview
organization, they found a certain number of
questions that best described good strong
workplaces to which talented employees could
respond yes, I strongly agree!. These twelve
questions are: (p. 28)
1.
2.
3.
4.

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

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5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.

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?
At work, do my opinions seem to count?
Does the mission/purpose of my company
make me feel my job is important?
Are my co-workers committed to doing
quality work?
Do I have a best friend at work?
In the last six months, has someone at
work talked to me about my progress?
This last year, have I had opportunities at
work to learn and grow?

We are told that each of the twelve questions was

linked to at least one of four important business
outcomes: productivity, profitability, retention,
and customer satisfaction. Ten of the twelve
were linked to productivity, eight of the twelve to
profitability, only five of the questions however
were strongly linked to employee retention.
These were: (p. 33)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Do I know what is expected of me at

work?
Do I have the materials and equipment I
need to do my work right?
Do I have the opportunity to do what I do
best every day?
Does my supervisor, or someone at work,
seem to care about me as a person?
At work, do my opinions seem to count?

The authors tell us that this means that people

leave managers, not companies ... then, in the
end, turnover is mostly a manager issue. If you
have a turnover problem, look first to your
managers (p. 33). Finally, the most powerful six
questions of the twelve are the following: (p.p.
33-34)
1.

Do I know what is expected of me at

2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

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

The twelve questions can also cluster into five

different factors that make up excellent
workplaces.
1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Work Environment/Procedures: This

factor addressed issues relating to the
physical work environment issues such
as safety, cleanliness, pay, benefits, and
policies.
Immediate Supervisor: This factor
addressed issues relating to the behavior
of the employees immediate supervisor
issues such as selection, recognition,
development, trust, understanding, and
discipline.
Team/Co-workers: This factor addressed
issues relating to the employees
perceptions of team members issues
such as cooperation, shared goals,
communication, and trust.
Overall Company/Senior Management:
This factor addressed issues relating to
company initiatives and leaders issues
such as the employees faith in the
companys mission and strategy or in the
competence of the leaders themselves.
Individual Commitment/Service Intention:
This factor addressed issues relating to the
employees sense of their own
commitment to the company and to the
customers issues such as the employees
pride in the company, likelihood to

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recommend the company to friends as a
place to work, likelihood to stay with the
company for their whole career, and
desire to provide excellent service to
customers
Although other subfactors were found
subfactors like communication or development
these five major factors explain virtually all of
the variance in the data. And of the five major
factors, by far the most powerful is the immediate
supervisor factor. It explains a disproportionately
large percentage of the variance in the data (pp.
253-254).
Conclusion
What can a company do to create a friendly
climate for great manager.
1.

Keep the focus on the outcomes: As

much as possible, define every role using
outcome terms... measurement always
improves performance (p. 236). We are
told that a good way of doing this is by
holding managers accountable for their
employees responses to the twelve
questions presented in this book.

provide a forum for showcasing how your

best, in very role, do what they do (p.
237).
4.

Teach the language of great managers:

Language affects thinking. Thinking
affects behavior. Companies must change
how people speak if they are to change
how people behave (p. 237). Here we
are told that many important things need
to be done. In particular emphasize the
difference among skills, knowledge, and
talents ... Change recruiting practices, job
descriptions, and rsum qualifications to
reflect the critical importance and the
broader definition of talent ... A great
company is clear about what can be
trained and what cannot ... Remove the
remedial element from training. Send
your most talented people to learn new
skills and knowledge that can complement
their talents. Stop sending less talented
people to training classes to be fixed.
Give every employee the benefit of
feedback ... Start the great managers
performance management routine (p.p.
237-238).

2.

Value world-class performance in every

role: We were told to formally and
publically recognize excellent
performance and establish clear and
specific criteria for such performance.
We are also told that it is very important
to celebrate personal bests.

What an excellent book. Firstly, it is quite

consistent with most of the things we are trying to
achieve in our organization and much of the
important literature and thinking going on
currently in psychology, particularly as it relates
to resilience and positive psychology and in what
we know about social role valorization and
positive expectancies.

3.

Study your best: It is very important that

we build a talent profile for each role, that
we spend time with our best employees to
know what it is about them that makes
them the best. An interesting notion is
set up an internal university. The main
function of this university should be to

The book is also quite consistent with the

findings from the major study by Jim Collins:
Good to Great. It strikes me that Level 5
Leadership which in a sense is non charismatic
leadership, leaves a lot of space for managers to
do their own leading and do their own thing.
There are other aspects of Good to Great that also

Page 11 of 11
This suggests however that roles have to
grow and provide for responsibility and
recognition.

correspond and I will leave that to a further

writing.
I think that First Break, all the Rules is a book
that is required reading for all managers and just
as importantly their bosses. It is a book that
requires reflection and that can serve as an
interesting starting point for the further
development of our organization.
Five ideas stand out from this book.
1)

2)

3)

Quality, excellence, and effectiveness

start with managers and their front-line
staff. Front-line managers need room and
space for initiative leadership and
managers must be recognized for their
foremost contribution to organizational
excellence. Many current problems in
child welfare and other human services
come from a profound miscalculation:
over standardizing the work of front line
staff which devalues the contribution of
supervisors and front-line managers.
Quality and excellence are
phenomenological and occur (or can
occur) daily between clients, front line
staff and their immediate managers.
Selecting staff for an organization must be
based on talent, potential, and strengths
not on competence or qualifications.
Moreover, this suggest that the process is
simple rather than complex. It also
suggest however that organizations need a
very strong ongoing employee
formation/training component to be
successful.
Career paths are not necessarily up a
hierarchy but rather performance and
excellence must be promoted in any role,
rather than promoting excellent people out
of roles where they perform excellently.

4)

Managers are always on stage for their

staff and must always recognize that their
performance is being scrutinized.
Managers play to applause.
Managers/supervisors are leaders.

5)

Excellence, effectiveness and quality are

built upon relationship. The relationship
between the front-line staff and his client
and the relationship between the front-line
staff and his manager, and ultimately, of
course, the relationship between the frontline manager and his boss.

References

Blanchard, K. and Johnson, S. (1981). The

One Minute Manager. New York Berkley
Books. 111 pages.
Collins, Jim, C. (2001). Good to Great: Why
Some Companies Make the Leapand Others
Dont. New York: Harper Business.
Hubble, M. A., Duncan, B. L. & Miller, S. D.
(eds) (1999). The Heart and Soul of Change:
What works in therapy. Washington: American
Psychological Association.
Seligman, M. E. P. (2002). Authentic Happiness:
Using the new positive psychology to realize your
potential for lasting fulfillment. New York: The
Free Press.
RL:yf
03-01-24
revised 03-02-03
nfarrell2003/crits2003-raymond/janviers-mars/buckingham
coffman first, break all the rules