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What it argues
First, Break All the Rules is the result of Gallup's analysis of interviews with more than 80,000 managers across a variety of industries, aimed at identifying what distinguishes the best managers from the rest. The central finding is both simple and counterintuitive: great managers don't follow the conventional wisdom about management. They break the rules. And they break them in consistent, specific ways.
The most important finding is that the relationship between an employee and their direct manager matters more than any other variable in employee performance and retention — more than company policies, compensation, or executive leadership. The authors use this to argue that companies should hire managers more carefully, develop them more deliberately, and hold them more accountable than most organizations currently do.
What it gets right
- 1.
The single most important variable in employee performance and retention is the quality of the relationship with the direct manager. Everything else is secondary.
- 2.
Great managers don't try to fix weaknesses — they identify each person's unique talents and build roles that leverage those talents instead.
- 3.
The Q12 — twelve questions measuring employee engagement — predicts business unit performance more reliably than most financial metrics. Managers who score well on these questions outperform consistently.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Marcus Buckingham is a British author and researcher who spent seventeen years at Gallup studying management and leadership before founding the Marcus Buckingham Company and later joining the ADP Research Institute. He is the author and co-author of several books including Now, Discover Your Strengths and Nine Lies About Work. Curt Coffman was a senior researcher at Gallup who led the consulting practice and contributed to numerous Gallup management studies. First, Break All the Rules was the first major public output of the research that became the foundation of Buckingham's subsequent strengths-based work.
