First Break All The Rules

5 Pages 1152 Words

First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently was written in 1999 by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. The book is based on an in-depth research study conducted by the Gallup Organization, the leadership institute in which Buckingham and Coffman are employed. This detailed study involves over 80,000 interviews with managers across nearly every industry, and explores the challenge of how companies can attain, keep, and achieve employee satisfaction. In seven chapters Buckingham and Coffman, two Gallup researchers, put together over 20 years of surveys and hundreds of thousands of interviews, trying to determine exactly what separates good managers from great managers.

First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently can be a powerful tool for those managers and companies that are looking for that “something different” that can give them the competitive advantage over all others. The book is not meant for those managers and companies that are content with being mediocre. First Break All the Rules is by no means a step-by-step instructional manual that implies the journey from mediocrity to excellence is easy.

This book was written for several reasons. One of the reasons is to inform good managers that in order to become a great manager, they must go against the grain of conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is conventional for a reason: It is the easier, softer way. The ideas and principles presented in this book are far from easy. They take time, effort, discipline and require much more from great managers.

First, Break All the Rules describes why great managers do not follow the typical philosophy of conventional wisdom. Throughout this book, the authors describe certain “rules” that should be broken. For example, one of the most controversial arguments in this book is how the authors believe that all people should not be treated equ...