It’s the Manager - Summary

Leaders Book Summaries

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About the Book’s Authors

Jim Clifton is Chairman and CEO of the Gallup organization, and Jim Harter is Chief Scientist, Workplace, for Gallup.

About Leaders Book Summaries

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Table of Contents

Nutshell Summary

Full Summary

How to Read This Book

INTRODUCTION: The New Will of the World

STRATEGY

CULTURE

EMPLOYMENT BRAND

BOSS TO COACH

THE FUTURE OF WORK

IN CLOSING: Human Nature’s Role in Business Outcomes

Nutshell Summary- To go to the full summary click here.

How to Read This Book

This is a reference book for CEOs, CHROs and managers. As you read this book, keep in mind that the quality of your managers and team leaders is the single biggest factor in your organization’s success.

INTRODUCTION: The New Will of the World

When team inspiration grows, client build-outs, revenue and quality earnings grow. 70% of the variance in team engagement is determined solely by the manager. When you have great managers who can maximize the potential of every team member, you have delivered on the new global will which is a great job and a great life.

STRATEGY

Millennials and Generation Z want a purpose. They are no longer pursuing job satisfaction—they are pursuing development. They don’t want bosses—they want coaches. They don’t want annual reviews—they want ongoing conversation. They don’t want a manager who fixates on their weaknesses. They want a job that is no longer a job—they want a life. Inspirational messages are important but they’ll have no significant impact unless leaders build a strategy to bring multiple teams together and make great decisions.

CULTURE

Your organization’s culture has a direct, measurable impact on performance. Most CEOs and CHROs want a culture that is agile and adaptable to changes happening around the world. They especially want a culture with high collaboration where they can make good decisions and execute them quickly. They want a culture that attracts and retains the biggest stars. What has to happen to change a culture? Identify the purpose and brand. Audit all programs and communication for alignment and consistency. Reposition managers as coaches. Only your best managers can implement the culture you want.

EMPLOYMENT BRAND

With social media and instant communication, your organization’s reputation travels much more quickly now than in the past. Companies spend time and money on marketing campaigns to build a loyal customer base, but they often neglect to develop an equally strong employment brand to attract the best applicants. What behaviors do you expect from every employee? Seven expectations are necessary for success in any role. Build relationships. Develop people. Lead change. Inspire others. Think critically. Communicate clearly. Create accountability. Leaders need to be the first to model these demands because their behavior dictates what employees interpret as a real expectation. Everybody should think about how they can use their strengths to meet each of the seven expectations.

BOSS TO COACH

A culture of high employee development is the most productive environment for both your business and your employees. Transform your managers into coaches by teaching them to meet these three requirements: (1) establish expectations (2) continually coach (3) create accountability. Employees whose manager involved them in setting goals were nearly four times more likely to be engaged than other employees. Employees who receive daily feedback from their manager are three times more likely to be engaged than those who receive feedback once a year or less. Performance measurement needs to be paired with individualized development to keep it connected to business goals in the employee’s mind. While team size—and other team dynamics such as connectedness to the rest of the organization, composition of the team’s strengths, and experience working together—can influence engagement, the most important factor is the quality of the manager or team leader.

THE FUTURE OF WORK

Among the many challenges leaders and managers face today are managing a diverse workforce, remote employees, the rise of artificial intelligence, gig work, and the blurring of work and life. There are millions of things you can measure in an organization, but what leaders want to know is what handful of things really count when it comes to moving the needle. Leaders benefit from big data and analytics when they find breakthroughs and discoveries that help them build high-performance teams and create new customers. The purpose of predictive analytics is superior decision-making. Most leaders don’t need more data. They need help maximizing all the data they already have.

IN CLOSING: Human Nature’s Role in Business Outcomes

You may have great products, great marketing and advertising, and great traditional economics in general but the most powerful behavioral level to pull is increasing the number of your employees who are engaged. If you give every team member in your company a great manager—a great coach—one who cares about their development and growth, you have successfully engineered an organization with unlimited potential.

Full Summary

How to Read This Book

This is a reference book for CEOs, CHROs and managers. This book includes more than 50 breakthroughs grouped into five sections: Strategy, Culture, Employment Brand, Boss to Coach and The Future of Work. All companies are at a different stage in their journey. Your organization may have addressed some of these topics but is still struggling with others. As you read this book, keep in mind that the quality of your managers and team leaders is the single biggest factor in your organization’s success.

INTRODUCTION: The New Will of the World

When team inspiration grows, client build-outs, revenue and quality earnings grow. Dating back 80 years to our founder, George Gallup, the single most profound, distinct and clarifying finding—ever—is probably this one: 70% of the variance in team engagement is determined solely by the manager. When you have great managers who can maximize the potential of every team member, you have delivered on the new global will which is a great job and a great life.

STRATEGY

Inspirational messages are important but they’ll have no significant impact unless leaders build a strategy to bring multiple teams together and make great decisions.

Chapter 1: What Exactly Should CEOs and CHROs Change?

Changing your culture begins by changing what CEOs and CHROs believe, then changing what their organization’s managers believe and then changing how those managers develop every single team member. Millennials and Generation Z want a purpose, not just a paycheck. They are no longer pursuing job satisfaction—they are pursuing development. They don’t want bosses—they want coaches. They don’t want annual reviews—they want ongoing conversation. They don’t want a manager who fixates on their weaknesses. They want a job that is no longer a job—they want a life.

Chapter 2: Why Organizational Change is So Hard

The old boss-to-employee, command-and-control leadership environment has “worked” when it comes to building process-efficiency systems, engineering large building and creating infrastructure. But the top-down leadership techniques of the past have not adapted to a workplace that now demands coaching and collaboration to thrive.

Chapter 3: Two Non-Negotiable Traits for Leaders

Most of the traits of successful leaders can be distilled down to two elements. Inspirational messages are important—but there will be no significant impact until leaders have a strategy for how they (1) bring teams together and (2) make great decisions.

Chapter 4: Bring Multiple Teams Together

Managers at all levels (whether they are team leaders, managers of other managers or executive leaders) need a well-defined and well-articulated mission and purpose that everyone can easily relate back to the work they do every day. They need clear expectations that are continually redefined with the ongoing, often changing, corporate strategy. They also need continual coaching and accountability so that they can see their progress and potential.

Chapter 5: Make Great Decisions

Beyond luck, which some right decisions are attributed to, there are three keys to success. Leaders know their limits, meaning their strengths and weaknesses. They apply critical thinking and identify high-risk blind sides. They use analytics-driven evidence. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezo said, “The great thing about fact-based decisions is that they overrule the hierarchy.”

CULTURE

Your organization’s culture has a direct, measurable impact on performance.

Chapter 6: What is an Organizational Culture?

Culture begins with your purpose, meaning why you are in business. It lives or dies day to day through your managers. Culture determines your brand which is how employees and customers view your company. A world-class culture inspires your most talented employees to create superior customer experiences. When an organization makes a brand promise but fails to deliver, it loses credibility with customers and especially employees. An organization’s performance improves when its employees understand what differentiates its brand.

Chapter 7: Why Culture Matters

Culture has a direct, measurable impact on performance. Gallup analytics finds that employees and teams who align with their organizations culture consistently perform better on internal key performance metrics than those who do not. Organizations need an approach to culture that is flexible enough to identify their uniqueness and one that is grounded in rigorous science.

Chapter 8: How to Change a Culture

Most CEOs and CHROs want a culture that is agile and adaptable to changes happening around the world. They especially want a culture with high collaboration where they can make good decisions and execute them quickly. They want a culture that attracts and retains the biggest stars. What has to happen to change a culture? Identify the purpose and brand and audit all programs and communication for alignment and consistency. Reposition managers as coaches. Only your best managers can implement the culture you want.

EMPLOYMENT BRAND

With social media and instant communication, your organization’s reputation travels much more quickly now than in the past.

Chapter 9: Attracting the New Workforce

Companies spend time and money on marketing campaigns to build a loyal customer base. They often neglect to develop an equally strong employment brand to attract the best applicants. Millennials are highly networked. When searching for jobs, they go to trusted relationships. If there’s a discrepancy between how your organization presents itself to the world and how it really is, prospective employees will find out about it online and from their friends. The word will spread.

Chapter 10: Hiring Star Employees

Hiring star employees who are engaged costs organizations less because they boost customer engagement, revenues and profitability. The right selection decisions establish a culture of high performance. They also establish how easily people will integrate into your culture, how quickly they’ll develop, how long they’ll stay, how they’ll represent your organization and whether they’ll persist when times are tough. Now there are efficient measures and methods that can substantially reduce hiring bias by providing science-based thin slices and that have been shown to predict performance after the hiring decision.

Chapter 11: Hiring Analytics—the Solution

Gallup researchers have discovered five general innate traits/tendencies that predict performance across job types. They are motivation (drive for achievement), work style (efficiently organizing work), initiation (taking action), collaboration (building partnerships), and thought process (solving problems through assimilation of new information). Gallup recommends four criteria for successful hiring. (1) Prior experiences and achievements, (2) Innate tendencies, (3) Multiple interviews, and (4) On-the-job observation.

Chapter 12: Where to Find “Game Film” on Future Stars

Attracting star employees should start while your future stars are in still in college. One of the best ways is through meaningful internships and apprenticeships. To prepare your next wave of recruits, consider partnering with colleges and universities to create intensive work-integrated experience for students. Who is in a better position to mentor the future workforce than the professionals who are currently doing the work?

Chapter 13: Five Questions for Onboarding

The goal of onboarding should be to introduce foundational elements that employees can build on throughout their career—those that influence their performance over decades not quarters. There are five questions you must answer for every new employee to have a successful onboarding program. (1) “What do we believe in around here?” (2) “What are my strengths?” (3) “What is my role?” (4) “Who are my partners?” (5) “What does my future here look like?”

A note of caution: your onboarding employee experience must align with your real culture.

Chapter 14: Shortcut to Development—Strengths-Based Conversations

Traditional performance management is set up to rank and rate employees and to “correct” their weaknesses. This approach often fails to actually improve performance. So how can managers know the right balance between praise and criticism for employees? Serious review of an individual’s strengths and weaknesses is essential to exceptional career development. To inspire exceptional performance, managers have to lead with meaningful feedback based on what each person naturally does best. Gallup data suggests that employees in today’s workforce expect their managers to coach them—primarily based on their strengths.

Chapter 15: The History of Clifton Strengths

Dr. Don Clifton studied what was right with people. He wanted to identify tendencies that were unique to each individual but that could be developed into strengths with practice. The purpose of this work was to bring focus to conversations so people could better understand not just who they are—but what they could become. The Clifton Strength Assessment helps people discover their strengths among 34 themes (Achiever, Analytical, Empathy, Learner, Maximizer, Relator, Strategic, etc.).

Chapter 16: Five Steps to Building a Strengths-Based Culture

Organizations and teams with strengths-based cultures consistently outperform their competitors, but simply knowing everyone’s strengths is not enough to create change. It takes ongoing conversations, reflection and practice to successfully integrate strengths into your organization’s daily routines. (1) Start with the CEO or it doesn’t work. (2) Require every employee to discover their strengths. (3) Build an internal network of strengths coaches. (4) Integrate strengths into performance management. (5) Transform your learning programs to maximize the time each person uses to improve competencies.

Chapter 17: The Right Expectations—Competencies 2.0

What behaviors do you expect from every employee? Seven expectations are necessary for success in any role. Build relationships. Develop people. Lead change. Inspire others. Think critically. Communicate clearly. Create accountability. Leaders need to be the first to model these demands because their behavior dictates what employees interpret as a real expectation. But everybody should think about how they can use their strengths to meet each of the seven expectations.

Chapter 18: Getting Succession Planning Right

Effective succession planning is essential for retaining world-class talent at all levels of the organization. Decisions to promote from within the organization result in higher success rates when done right. This is because decision-makers can closely observe and use on-the-job performance to make better decisions. There are four practical steps to make your succession planning more scientific. Start with objective performance measures and audit successes. Analyze the key experiences that create success. Tap into innate tendencies (but don’t replace the two on-the-job criteria: performance and key experiences.) Design highly individualized leadership development—strengths-based with the end goal of creating high self-awareness.

Chapter 19: The Exit

Every company experiences good turnover and bad turnover. What does a successful exit look like? (1) The employee feels heard. (2) The employee leaves feeling proud of their contribution. (3) You create a brand ambassador. The experiences and interactions people have during their employee life cycle in your organization will determine your retention of star employees and ultimately your employment brand. All this depends on how well your managers coach each person you hire.

BOSS TO COACH

A culture of high employee development is the most productive environment for both your business and your employees.

Chapter 20: Three Requirements of Coaching

Transform your managers into coaches by teaching them to meet these three requirements: (1) Establish expectations. (2) Continually coach. (3) Create accountability. Employees whose manager involved them in setting goals were nearly four times more likely to be engaged than other employees. Employees who receive daily feedback from their manager are three times more likely to be engaged than those who receive feedback once a year or less. While many organizations are changing their annual review systems, accountability is still important. Performance measurement needs to be paired with individualized development to keep it connected to business goals in the employee’s mind.

Chapter 21: The Five Coaching Conversations

Much of the criticism aimed at performance management focuses on annual reviews—and for good reason. If leaders were to prioritize one action, Gallup recommends that they equip their managers to become coaches. Coaching starts with an initial conversation to get to know each individual and their strengths. For managers to become effective coaches, they need to develop the Quick Connect habit meaning brief interactions (1 to 10 minutes) at least once a month. Check-in conversations review successes and barriers and align and reset priorities. Developmental coaching conversations give the employee direction, support and advice when they are exploring career aspirational or developmental opportunities. Progress Review conversations are a powerful tool when focus on celebrating success, preparing for future achievements, and planning for developing and growth opportunities.

Chapter 22: Pay and Promotion

Pay and promotion demand their own conversation. Development should never take a back seat to pay and promotion. On the contrary, pay and promotion discussions need to be consistent with development and real career progress. While pay is a personal matter, criteria for pay increases and promotions should be transparent. Don’t use forced rankings to determine pay or promotion for small groups, assuming each team has high, middle and low performers. Generally, most employees want some form of incentive pay and they want autonomy and influence over their pay. When your employees have high well-being, they perform better, so make financial well-being an organizational responsibility.

Chapter 23: Performance Ratings: The Bias

Should your organization “rate” employees or do away with performance rating altogether? The problem isn’t the ratings themselves. They were developed with the right intentions, but annual reviews and the resulting performance ratings were executed based on flawed assumptions. The most flawed assumption is believing that a single manager can reliably rate an employee’s performance through observation alone. In the end, the performance rating reveals more about the supervisor than it does about the employee. To improve the reliability would be to include information from multiple sources and have more frequent discussions with your employees.

Chapter 24: Performance Ratings: The Fix

Our analysis revealed three performance dimensions that provide the simplest and most comprehensive definition of performance that best statistically predicts overall success in a role. They are (1) Responsibilities that employees achieve independently, (2) How effectively employees work with their teammates to achieve success. (3) Impact an employee’s work has on customers (external and internal customers).

Chapter 25: Make “My Development” The Reason Employees Stay

Gallup discovered that the No. 1 reason people change jobs today is “career growth opportunities.” Gallup recommends offering ambitious and productive employees these new paths for advancement beyond becoming a manager:

(1) individual achievement as manager or high-performing contributor, (2) personalized development toward a career path and (3) flexible career paths with different options for different stages of life.

Chapter 26: Moneyball for Workplaces

Just as baseball teams apply Moneyball data to make better decisions, businesses that measure and manage the 12 elements of engagement can increase performance and improve their chances of success. Gallup assesses team engagement using 12 statements that measure critical workplace elements with proven linkages to performance outcomes (“I know what is expected of me,” “I have the materials and equipment I need,” etc.)

Chapter 27: The Leader Breakthrough

While team size and other team dynamics such as connectedness to the rest of the organization, composition of the team’s strengths, and experience working together can influence engagement, the most important factor is the quality of the manager or team leader.

Chapter 28: Why Employee Engagement Programs Haven’t Worked

Gallup has been tracking employee engagement in the U.S. since 2000. Two-thirds of U.S. employees have been either not engaged or actively disengaged in their jobs and workplaces during this time. A high-development workplace requires much more than just administering surveys. Measurement on its own doesn’t inspire change or boost performance or improve the workplace or business outcomes.

Chapter 29: Creating a Culture of High Development

A culture of high employee development is the most productive environment for both your business and your employees. You need to start with an intentional, well-planned strategy and know the specific behaviors they are trying to achieve and why those behaviors matter for success. High-development cultures are CEO and board initiated, educate managers on new ways of managing, practice companywide communication and hold managers accountable.

Chapter 30: The Five Traits of Great Managers

About half of great managing is rooted in hardwired tendencies, and the other half comes from experiences and ongoing development. Great managers inspire teams to get exceptional work done, set goals and align resources for the team to excel, influence others to act by pushing through adversity and resistance, build committed teams with deep bonds, and take an analytical approach to strategy and decision-making.

Chapter 31: How to Develop Your Managers

Managing isn’t a great experience for most people. Work is worth more for them than for the people they manage. Managers report more stress and burnout, worse work-life balance, and worse physical well-being than the individual contributors on the teams they lead. Gallup recommends development programs consistent with building a strength’s based culture, shifting from being a boss to being more like a coach, and require executives to have strengths-based conversations once a week with each manager or team leader.

THE FUTURE OF WORK

Among the many challenges leaders and managers face today are managing a diverse workforce, remote employees, the rise of artificial intelligence, gig work, and the blurring of work and life.

Chapter 32: A Quick Review of What Has Changed in the Workplace

Today’s workforce has far more racial, cultural and gender diversity than prior generations. Remote working continues to increase. Mobile technology is blurring work and life. Contingent and “gig” jobs are here to stay. The most desired perk is workplace flexibility.

Chapter 33: Three Requirements for Diversity and Inclusion

Diversity categories include race, age, gender, religion, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, disability, lifestyle, personality characteristics, height, weight, other physical characteristics, family composition, educational background, tenure with the organization, political ideology, and worldview which essentially constitutes the full spectrum of human differences. How does a leader address them all? The solution lies in how your employees feel about three requirements. “Treat me with respect,” “Value me for my strengths,” “Leaders will do what is right.”

Chapter 34: Diversity and Inclusion: “Treat Me With Respect”

Disrespect is toxic. It may be one of the most intense feelings people experience. Everyone can remember times in their lives when they felt disrespected. A Gallup study showed when managers and employees of different races work in an engaging workplace, employees’ intentions to stay were even higher than when managers and employees of the same race worked in an engaging environment.

Chapter 35: Diversity and Inclusion: “Value Me for My Strengths”

The best strategy to improve inclusion across your organization is to adopt a strengths-based approach to employee development and to build a strengths-based culture. Your employees, like everyone else, want to feel like they belong and have value regardless of who they are and where they come from.

Chapter 36: Diversity and Inclusion: “Leaders Will Do What is Right.”

Organizations need strategies for how to hire and develop a diverse group of people, and standards for what behaviors the culture will and will not tolerate. Your organization also needs to have a system for reporting ethics issues and a protocol for how you will handle them. Nothing else matters until you have cultural requirements and a strong system in place.

Chapter 37: The Gender Gap

Organizations globally need a much higher proportion of women in the workplace, not just because it benefits women, but because it’s good for business. Gender-balanced work groups have a greater capability to get work done and to meet customer’s needs. On average, women are more engaged than men, and female managers tend to have more engaged employees than male managers. The top challenges facing women who work at paid jobs fall under these three areas: unfair treatment, pay inequity, and work-life flexibility.

Chapter 38: Women in the Workplace: The #Me Too Era

Your organization’s leaders must have a commitment to zero tolerance of harassment issues. Every organization needs a confidential system for how to alert management to workplace harassment issues as well as a protocol for how to handle them. Some infractions will be “teachable moments” that stem from unintentional disrespect, while others will be grounds for immediate termination.

Chapter 39: Women in the Workplace: Why the Pay Gap

Unequal pay is the top concern of adults in North America and many developing economies. There is no strong evidence that the gender pay gap is due to discrimination. The pay gap (and difference in titles) become substantial a year or two after a female employee has a child. Women without care-giving obligations have incomes similar to men’s. Gallup data also indicate that children are the most influential factor keeping mothers out of the workforce. The key to attracting female employees to your organization is making your workplace culture flexible enough to accommodate family and life issues while giving equitable credit and pay for performance and achievement.

Chapter 40: Women in the Workplace: Work-Life Flexibility

Almost universally, men and women mention “balance between work and family” as one of the top challenges that working women in their countries face. Whether an organization offers flexibility and whether it actually honors flexibility are two different things. Some organizations have an explicit policy about flexibility, yet they implicitly pressure employees to be in the office or make them feel guilty for leaving work to take care of family matters during the day. Perhaps the most salient point is that each individual employee—women as well as men—defines what a good life and career means for them.

Chapter 41: Are Boomers a Burden?

Many older workers don’t want, or can’t afford, to retire. Still others pose organizational risk. If they retire, the organization loses their accumulated wealth of institutional knowledge and wisdom. To keep your company’s talent pool robust as older employees retire and to put younger workers on a rewarding career path, study your top performers. Conduct experience reviews with your most successful older employees—especially those in leadership positions—to determine what experiences younger employees should invest in.

Chapter 42: Benefits, Perks and Flextime: What Do Employees Really Care About?

Employees in the new workforce aren’t looking for amenities such as game rooms, free food and fancy latte machines. They are looking for benefits and perks that will improve their well-being, meaning those that offer them greater flexibility, autonomy and the ability to lead a better life. U.S. employees are the most likely to change jobs for health insurance, which is an expense that, for most, is increasing and cutting into their discretionary income. More than half would change jobs for bonuses, a retirement plan, paid vacation or flextime. Note: the likelihood of changing jobs for better benefits is substantially higher when employees are actively disengaged.

Chapter 43: How Flextime and High Performance Can Go Hand in Hand

When it comes to worker’s engagement and well-being, flextime is the perk or benefit they value most. It is popular because people want to be in control of their own lives. Flextime isn’t feasible in every job. Keep in mind the ultimate outcome of flexible work: autonomy with accountability. Great managers know each person they manage and they hold employees accountable for the outcomes they are responsible for, including individual achievement, collaboration with team members, and customer value. Ultimately the key to flextime that is autonomous with high accountability is the manager.

Chapter 44: The New Office

Today’s employees demand autonomy and flexibility right down to where they work and how their workspace is designed and arranged. Slightly more than half of American workers say they would change jobs for one that offered them more flexibility. More than one-third would change jobs for one that allowed them to work where they want at least part of the time. The three office features employees want are privacy when they need it, personal workspace, and having their own office.

Chapter 45: Corporate Innovation: How to Manage—and Nurture—Creativity

Creativity in organizations is essential. Many organizations say they want their employees to be highly creative. Yet most employees don’t believe that they’re expected to be creative or think of new ways to do things, even though every job has the potential for creativity. No one is closer to the job than the individuals doing it. Even when employees strongly agree that they’re expected to be creative, only half of them are given time each day to do so or believe they can take the risks required to be creative.

Chapter 46: You Can’t Be “Agile” Without Great Managers

Organizations that aren’t agile and that don’t have the capacity to adapt quickly will be overcome by their competitors or put out of business. Adapt or die. Agility, if it exists in an organization at all, is dictated by culture. Is your culture customer-focused and fast? Or is it inwardly focused and bogged down by bureaucracy and progress? Gallup analytics finds that you can’t have exceptional agility without great managers who engage your workforce.

Chapter 47: Gig Work: The New Employer-Employee Relationship

Since the Great Recession, many observers have been fascinated with the rise of “gig workers,” a term for independent laborers who don’t have a traditional employer-employee relationship. 36% of U.S. workers participate in the gig economy through their primary or secondary job—jobs with short-term contracts or freelance work (“side hustles”). Yet it is unclear if gig work is beneficial for workers and organizations over the long term.

Chapter 48: Gig Workers: Desperate or Satisfied

Controversy over the gig economy has focused on what this trend means for today’s labor market. Are gig workers taking on piecemeal work out of desperation and doing whatever it takes to make ends meet? Or are they choosing to opt out of the traditional 9-to-5 to gain flexibility and autonomy? Is it a movement toward increased entrepreneurship and worker empowerment? Or does it signal a deterioration in the social contract between employees and employers who hire gig workers to cut labor costs and overhead?

Chapter 49: Artificial Intelligence Has Arrived, Now What?

73% of Americans say the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) will lead to net job loss. American workers are more worried about losing their jobs to AI than to immigrants. They see and fear big changes ahead. Although automation, while highly disruptive, has historically been a great job creator. One thing is certain—AI will continue to significantly change how work gets done.

Chapter 50: Artificial Intelligence: Preparing Your Workplace

Where do all the mixed messages about AI—not to mention anxiety and uncertainty—leave employers? First, invest in your people. When everything is automated, customers will have high expectations for face-to-face interactions. A current example is the Genius Bar inside Apple stores. Organizations need to get much better, and fast, at developing people. Leaders will need to be transparent about where their organization is headed and what skills their company needs to win in the future. Automation plus people development will triumph over automation alone.

Chapter 51: Caught Up in Technology—HCM Systems and Other Solutions

Human capital management (HCM) systems are designed to maximize insights using existing data for all sorts of activities. But while humans continue to build systems and machines with increasing capability, humans still have to use them. Technology changes in months. Human nature takes millennia. The goal is to blend technology with human nature—not the other way around. The power of technology, when combined with the power of people, will have a tremendous impact on transforming the workplace of the future, as long as you use the best science. Having great managers in place will ensure that any measurement system you will use with your technology will be productive.

Chapter 52: Better Decision-Making With Predictive Analytics: Moneyball for Managers

There are millions of things you can measure in an organization, but what leaders want to know is what handful of things really count when it comes to moving the needle. Leaders benefit from big data and analytics when they find breakthroughs and discoveries that help them build high-performance teams and create new customers. The purpose of predictive analytics is superior decision-making. Most leaders don’t need more data. They need help maximizing all the data they already have.

IN CLOSING: Human Nature’s Role in Business Outcomes

You may have great products, great marketing and advertising, great traditional economics in general but the most powerful behavioral level to pull is increasing the number of your employees who are engaged. When you have engaged employees, you get a predictable domino effect. Engaged employees create customer engagement, which creates sales growth, which creates profit increase, which finally, creates stock increase. Then everybody wins.

To make all this work perfectly, organizations must focus on the strengths, which means the ability to provide consistent, near-perfect performance in a given activity of every employee. Once you have carefully diagnosed an individual’s strengths and given them a near-perfect job in which they have a natural capacity to perform, make sure they have one of the world’s great managers. If you give every team member in your company a great manager—a great coach—one who cares about their development and growth, you have successfully engineered an organization with unlimited potential.

Table of Contents

Nutshell Summary

Full Summary

How to Read This Book

INTRODUCTION: The New Will of the World

STRATEGY

CULTURE

EMPLOYMENT BRAND

BOSS TO COACH

THE FUTURE OF WORK

IN CLOSING: Human Nature’s Role in Business Outcomes

Table of Contents

Nutshell Summary

Full Summary

How to Read This Book

INTRODUCTION: The New Will of the World

STRATEGY

CULTURE

EMPLOYMENT BRAND

BOSS TO COACH

THE FUTURE OF WORK

IN CLOSING: Human Nature’s Role in Business Outcomes