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Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World
Forget what you know about the world of work
You crave feedback. Your organization's culture is the key to its success. Strategic planning is essential. Your competencies should be measured and your weaknesses shored up. Leadership is a thing.
These may sound like basic truths of our work lives today. But actually, they're lies. As strengths guru and bestselling author Marcus Buckingham and Cisco Leadership and Team Intelligence head Ashley Goodall show in this provocative, inspiring book, there are some big lies--distortions, faulty assumptions, wrong thinking--that we encounter every time we show up for work. Nine lies, to be exact. They cause dysfunction and frustration, ultimately resulting in workplaces that are a pale shadow of what they could be.
But there are those who can get past the lies and discover what's real. These freethinking leaders recognize the power and beauty of our individual uniqueness. They know that emergent patterns are more valuable than received wisdom and that evidence is more powerful than dogma.
With engaging stories and incisive analysis, the authors reveal the essential truths that such freethinking leaders will recognize that it is the strength and cohesiveness of your team, not your company's culture, that matter most; that we should focus less on top-down planning and more on giving our people reliable, real-time intelligence; that rather than trying to align people's goals we should strive to align people's sense of purpose and meaning; that people don't want constant feedback, they want helpful attention.
This is the real world of work, as it is and as it should be. Nine Lies About Work reveals the few core truths that will help you show just how good you are to those who truly rely on you.
You crave feedback. Your organization's culture is the key to its success. Strategic planning is essential. Your competencies should be measured and your weaknesses shored up. Leadership is a thing.
These may sound like basic truths of our work lives today. But actually, they're lies. As strengths guru and bestselling author Marcus Buckingham and Cisco Leadership and Team Intelligence head Ashley Goodall show in this provocative, inspiring book, there are some big lies--distortions, faulty assumptions, wrong thinking--that we encounter every time we show up for work. Nine lies, to be exact. They cause dysfunction and frustration, ultimately resulting in workplaces that are a pale shadow of what they could be.
But there are those who can get past the lies and discover what's real. These freethinking leaders recognize the power and beauty of our individual uniqueness. They know that emergent patterns are more valuable than received wisdom and that evidence is more powerful than dogma.
With engaging stories and incisive analysis, the authors reveal the essential truths that such freethinking leaders will recognize that it is the strength and cohesiveness of your team, not your company's culture, that matter most; that we should focus less on top-down planning and more on giving our people reliable, real-time intelligence; that rather than trying to align people's goals we should strive to align people's sense of purpose and meaning; that people don't want constant feedback, they want helpful attention.
This is the real world of work, as it is and as it should be. Nine Lies About Work reveals the few core truths that will help you show just how good you are to those who truly rely on you.
332 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 1, 2019
1102 people are currently reading
12898 people want to read
About the author
Marcus Buckingham
56 books613 followersIn a world where efficiency and competency rule the workplace, where do personal strengths fit in?
It's a complex question, one that intrigued Cambridge-educated Marcus Buckingham so greatly, he set out to answer it by challenging years of social theory and utilizing his nearly two decades of research experience as a Sr. Researcher at Gallup Organization to break through the preconceptions about achievements and get to the core of what drives success.
The result of his persistence, and arguably the definitive answer to the strengths question can be found in Buckingham's four best-selling books First, Break All the Rules (coauthored with Curt Coffman, Simon & Schuster, 1999); Now, Discover Your Strengths (coauthored with Donald O. Clifton, The Free Press, 2001); The One Thing You Need to Know (The Free Press, 2005) and Go Put Your Strengths To Work (The Free Press, 2007). The author gives important insights to maximizing strengths, understanding the crucial differences between leadership and management, and fulfilling the quest for long-lasting personal success. In his most recent book, Buckingham offers ways to apply your strengths for maximum success at work.
What would happen if men and women spent more than 75% of each day on the job using their strongest skills and engaged in their favorite tasks, basically doing exactly what they wanted to do?
According to Marcus Buckingham (who spent years interviewing thousands of employees at every career stage and who is widely considered one of the world's leading authorities on employee productivity and the practices of leading and managing), companies that focus on cultivating employees' strengths rather than simply improving their weaknesses stand to dramatically increase efficiency while allowing for maximum personal growth and success.
If such a theory sounds revolutionary, that's because it is. Marcus Buckingham calls it the “strengths revolution.”
As he addresses more than 250,000 people around the globe each year, Buckingham touts this strengths revolution as the key to finding the most effective route to personal success and the missing link to the efficiency, competency, and success for which many companies constantly strive.
To kick-start the strengths revolution, Buckingham and Gallup developed the StrengthsFinder exam (StrengthsFinder.com), which identifies signature themes that help employees quantify their personal strengths in the workplace and at home. Since the StrengthsFinder debuted in 2001, more than 1 million people have discovered their strengths with this useful and important tool.
In his role as author, independent consultant and speaker, Marcus Buckingham has been the subject of in-depth profiles in The New York Times, Fortune, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal and is routinely lauded by such corporations as Toyota, Coca-Cola, Master Foods, Wells Fargo, Yahoo and Disney as an invaluable resource in informing, challenging, mentoring and inspiring people to find their strengths and obtain and sustain long-lasting personal success.
A wonderful resource for leaders, managers, and educators, Buckingham challenges conventional wisdom and shows the link between engaged employees and productivity, profit, customer satisfaction, and the rate of turnover. Buckingham graduated from Cambridge University in 1987 with a master's degree in Social and Political Science.
It's a complex question, one that intrigued Cambridge-educated Marcus Buckingham so greatly, he set out to answer it by challenging years of social theory and utilizing his nearly two decades of research experience as a Sr. Researcher at Gallup Organization to break through the preconceptions about achievements and get to the core of what drives success.
The result of his persistence, and arguably the definitive answer to the strengths question can be found in Buckingham's four best-selling books First, Break All the Rules (coauthored with Curt Coffman, Simon & Schuster, 1999); Now, Discover Your Strengths (coauthored with Donald O. Clifton, The Free Press, 2001); The One Thing You Need to Know (The Free Press, 2005) and Go Put Your Strengths To Work (The Free Press, 2007). The author gives important insights to maximizing strengths, understanding the crucial differences between leadership and management, and fulfilling the quest for long-lasting personal success. In his most recent book, Buckingham offers ways to apply your strengths for maximum success at work.
What would happen if men and women spent more than 75% of each day on the job using their strongest skills and engaged in their favorite tasks, basically doing exactly what they wanted to do?
According to Marcus Buckingham (who spent years interviewing thousands of employees at every career stage and who is widely considered one of the world's leading authorities on employee productivity and the practices of leading and managing), companies that focus on cultivating employees' strengths rather than simply improving their weaknesses stand to dramatically increase efficiency while allowing for maximum personal growth and success.
If such a theory sounds revolutionary, that's because it is. Marcus Buckingham calls it the “strengths revolution.”
As he addresses more than 250,000 people around the globe each year, Buckingham touts this strengths revolution as the key to finding the most effective route to personal success and the missing link to the efficiency, competency, and success for which many companies constantly strive.
To kick-start the strengths revolution, Buckingham and Gallup developed the StrengthsFinder exam (StrengthsFinder.com), which identifies signature themes that help employees quantify their personal strengths in the workplace and at home. Since the StrengthsFinder debuted in 2001, more than 1 million people have discovered their strengths with this useful and important tool.
In his role as author, independent consultant and speaker, Marcus Buckingham has been the subject of in-depth profiles in The New York Times, Fortune, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal and is routinely lauded by such corporations as Toyota, Coca-Cola, Master Foods, Wells Fargo, Yahoo and Disney as an invaluable resource in informing, challenging, mentoring and inspiring people to find their strengths and obtain and sustain long-lasting personal success.
A wonderful resource for leaders, managers, and educators, Buckingham challenges conventional wisdom and shows the link between engaged employees and productivity, profit, customer satisfaction, and the rate of turnover. Buckingham graduated from Cambridge University in 1987 with a master's degree in Social and Political Science.
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May 25, 2020
This is a well-written book by an author who has written some other great books. First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently is on my favorites list.
The following are my notes (words in [brackets] are supposed to have the strikeout effect, but there might be a rendering bug. They indicate common misconceptions):
1. People care which [company] team they work for. Because that's where work actually happens.
2. The best [plan] intelligence wins. Because the world moves too fast for plans.
3. The best companies cascade [goals] meaning. Because that's what they all share.
4. The best people are [well-rounded] spiky. Because uniqueness is a feature not a bug.
5. People need [feedback] attention. Because we all want to be seen for who we are at our best.
6. People can reliably rate [other people] their own experience. Because that's all we have.
7. People have [potential] momentum. Because we all move through the world differently.
8. [Work-life balance] Love in work matters most. Because that's what work is really for.
9. [Leadership is a thing] We follow spikes. Because spikes bring us certainty.
Decisions
Information used to be shared by individuals and decisions made by leaders. Now it’s the opposite. Information needs to be shared by leaders with decisions being made by individuals.
Leadership
It’s more important to get team members the information they need then it is to craft a perfect leadership message.
You can’t manufacture or fake leadership, then you fail at authenticity.
Best companies don’t cascade goals they cascade meaning.
Not all leaders create leadership in exactly the same way, which makes it very hard to be measured. He says that the best definition of a leader is someone who people are following. It’s easier to measure followers than leaders.
Management
Everyone should have a one on one every week with their manager as a check in with two questions asked. 1. What are your priorities for this week? 2. How can I help? The check in can be as short as 10 to 15 minutes. Every week is important so that you can get into the nitty-gritty details.
Turn peoples uniqueness into a feature.
Identify times when people are demonstrating strengths and ask them about it.
You cannot create excellence by fixing the current problem.
Find a way to weave what you love into your work. People in the same role love different aspects.
Evaluations
Don’t judge people on their potential, but you can evaluate their current momentum.
Flip evaluations around. Instead of trying to grade people on certain attributes of their character and abilities and asking them on a scale of 1 to 5 does this person show excellence. You should figure out how to ask about information you understand such as do you regularly go to this person when you need someone to architect a solution. Then people aren't guessing on a made-up metric but they are accurately informing based on their past decisions.
The following are my notes (words in [
1. People care which [
2. The best [
3. The best companies cascade [
4. The best people are [
5. People need [
6. People can reliably rate [
7. People have [
8. [
9. [
Decisions
Information used to be shared by individuals and decisions made by leaders. Now it’s the opposite. Information needs to be shared by leaders with decisions being made by individuals.
Leadership
It’s more important to get team members the information they need then it is to craft a perfect leadership message.
You can’t manufacture or fake leadership, then you fail at authenticity.
Best companies don’t cascade goals they cascade meaning.
Not all leaders create leadership in exactly the same way, which makes it very hard to be measured. He says that the best definition of a leader is someone who people are following. It’s easier to measure followers than leaders.
Management
Everyone should have a one on one every week with their manager as a check in with two questions asked. 1. What are your priorities for this week? 2. How can I help? The check in can be as short as 10 to 15 minutes. Every week is important so that you can get into the nitty-gritty details.
Turn peoples uniqueness into a feature.
Identify times when people are demonstrating strengths and ask them about it.
You cannot create excellence by fixing the current problem.
Find a way to weave what you love into your work. People in the same role love different aspects.
Evaluations
Don’t judge people on their potential, but you can evaluate their current momentum.
Flip evaluations around. Instead of trying to grade people on certain attributes of their character and abilities and asking them on a scale of 1 to 5 does this person show excellence. You should figure out how to ask about information you understand such as do you regularly go to this person when you need someone to architect a solution. Then people aren't guessing on a made-up metric but they are accurately informing based on their past decisions.
April 28, 2019
This book speaks to me on so many levels: as someone who worked in an International corporate environment for more than 15 years and as someone who has her own business and interacts with privately-owned businesses on a daily basis. These practices make so much sense to me and I encourage all to read this book, both leaders and followers. It’s a paradigm-shifting book that outlines exactly what we can do to improve our businesses’ performance and the lives of those who work there. Businesses who make these changes have just got to be the best places to work. They will be the ones that talented individuals will choose to work for.
The book addresses generally accepted approaches within many companies and the authors heap up the evidence to contradict each of these, ie: they address the “Nine Lies”.
Key outtakes for me:
* It’s the team we are a part of, not the company we work for that matters. The role of the team leader is the most important role in any company. (So best we pay attention to the quality of our team leaders)
* The people who use the information are in the best position to make sense of it, with smaller, integrated efforts, (which are adjusted as a result of the intelligence gathered) being the way to go. Regular check-ins with team members are essential to retaining (increasing) their engagement
* We need to set our own goals for them to have any value, goals cannot be imposed on us by others. Shared meaning and purpose can be cascaded down to create alignment but we need a,“ detailed understanding of the purpose of our work and the values we should honour in deciding how to get it done.” Leaders need to expound the WHY, then the individuals can tussle with the WHAT
* Excellent performance depends on our working with our strengths daily, not on our being well-rounded. It’s the single most powerful predictor of a team’s productivity. High performers leverage their strengths and work out how to increase the impact of what they do where they already have an ability
* People need to know we genuinely care about them. “Positive attention... is thirty times more powerful than negative attention in creating high performance on a team.” “If you want your people to learn more, pay attention to what’s working for them right now, and then build on that.”
* We are not able to objectively assess the performance of an individual by scoring them, or their overall potential. Rather we should look to understand how a team leader reacts to the team member; how he/she feels.
* We need to discuss human growth and the careers our people aspire to, and how we can help them build those careers, we can’t’ ignore who they are and their needs
* “Love-in-work matters most”, ie: finding love in what we do is really important and is a critical part of what makes each one of us unique. We then need to bring this strength to our team
* A leader is only a leader if they have followers. “The only determinant of whether anyone is leading is whether anyone is following’” Followership can be measured, leadership can’t.
I just loved these quotes:
“A leader who embraces a world in which the weird uniqueness of each individual is seen not as a flaw to be ground down but as a mess worth engaging with, the raw material for all healthy, ethical, thriving organisations: a leader who rejects dogma and instead seeks out evidence….”
“... leaders cannot be in the control business and must be in the intelligence, meaning and empowerment business---- the outcomes business.”
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and will reference it going forward. It’s well written with many stories to help the reader understand the principles and with detailed research supporting the arguments.
With many thanks to the authors, the publishers, Harvard Business Review Press. and NetGalley for my free copy to review
The book addresses generally accepted approaches within many companies and the authors heap up the evidence to contradict each of these, ie: they address the “Nine Lies”.
Key outtakes for me:
* It’s the team we are a part of, not the company we work for that matters. The role of the team leader is the most important role in any company. (So best we pay attention to the quality of our team leaders)
* The people who use the information are in the best position to make sense of it, with smaller, integrated efforts, (which are adjusted as a result of the intelligence gathered) being the way to go. Regular check-ins with team members are essential to retaining (increasing) their engagement
* We need to set our own goals for them to have any value, goals cannot be imposed on us by others. Shared meaning and purpose can be cascaded down to create alignment but we need a,“ detailed understanding of the purpose of our work and the values we should honour in deciding how to get it done.” Leaders need to expound the WHY, then the individuals can tussle with the WHAT
* Excellent performance depends on our working with our strengths daily, not on our being well-rounded. It’s the single most powerful predictor of a team’s productivity. High performers leverage their strengths and work out how to increase the impact of what they do where they already have an ability
* People need to know we genuinely care about them. “Positive attention... is thirty times more powerful than negative attention in creating high performance on a team.” “If you want your people to learn more, pay attention to what’s working for them right now, and then build on that.”
* We are not able to objectively assess the performance of an individual by scoring them, or their overall potential. Rather we should look to understand how a team leader reacts to the team member; how he/she feels.
* We need to discuss human growth and the careers our people aspire to, and how we can help them build those careers, we can’t’ ignore who they are and their needs
* “Love-in-work matters most”, ie: finding love in what we do is really important and is a critical part of what makes each one of us unique. We then need to bring this strength to our team
* A leader is only a leader if they have followers. “The only determinant of whether anyone is leading is whether anyone is following’” Followership can be measured, leadership can’t.
I just loved these quotes:
“A leader who embraces a world in which the weird uniqueness of each individual is seen not as a flaw to be ground down but as a mess worth engaging with, the raw material for all healthy, ethical, thriving organisations: a leader who rejects dogma and instead seeks out evidence….”
“... leaders cannot be in the control business and must be in the intelligence, meaning and empowerment business---- the outcomes business.”
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and will reference it going forward. It’s well written with many stories to help the reader understand the principles and with detailed research supporting the arguments.
With many thanks to the authors, the publishers, Harvard Business Review Press. and NetGalley for my free copy to review
May 17, 2019
I love how this book stretches our thinking and pushes us past the standard HR/Talent Development methods. I really, really love how it uses logic and research to point out the gaps in the existing approaches.
But I'm bummed about how they overreact on the solution. They get caught up in their rhetoric and throw about the baby with the bathwater.
Example, leadership is hard to define and many of our great leaders didn't have all the traits we would say a good leader has--so, they say, there must not be any way to define leadership at all.
So, read this book to stretch your thinking--and then ignore most of the recommendations they have for fixing the holes in the systems.
But I'm bummed about how they overreact on the solution. They get caught up in their rhetoric and throw about the baby with the bathwater.
Example, leadership is hard to define and many of our great leaders didn't have all the traits we would say a good leader has--so, they say, there must not be any way to define leadership at all.
So, read this book to stretch your thinking--and then ignore most of the recommendations they have for fixing the holes in the systems.
November 18, 2021
Great non-fiction book with clear examples for leadership
July 11, 2019
Where to start.
Reasons to avoid reading the book
1. Can be summarised in a page - serious readers wishing some take away please wait for book summaries to spout up in the net, read from there
2. Provides no new insight - its a mish mash of few professionals deciding on topics of interest and writing essays with sprinklers of weird real life analogies and examples
3. The book has a lot of built-in-distractions that deviate you from the flow. Sudden jargons will sprout to simply validate the origin or the thought, and will take up space, by the time the jargonized phrase is over you’ve sort of forgotten where you started.
4. whatever few interesting original points were made, they were over diluted with paras going nowhere
5. Silly examples, with an attempt to over-generalise the functioning of an organisation
6. Theories are benchmarked with some one-size-fit-all model organization and the authors go on to refute what's wrong with the theory
7. The topics are not cogently delivered
Reasons to avoid reading the book
1. Can be summarised in a page - serious readers wishing some take away please wait for book summaries to spout up in the net, read from there
2. Provides no new insight - its a mish mash of few professionals deciding on topics of interest and writing essays with sprinklers of weird real life analogies and examples
3. The book has a lot of built-in-distractions that deviate you from the flow. Sudden jargons will sprout to simply validate the origin or the thought, and will take up space, by the time the jargonized phrase is over you’ve sort of forgotten where you started.
4. whatever few interesting original points were made, they were over diluted with paras going nowhere
5. Silly examples, with an attempt to over-generalise the functioning of an organisation
6. Theories are benchmarked with some one-size-fit-all model organization and the authors go on to refute what's wrong with the theory
7. The topics are not cogently delivered
July 1, 2019
I am a fan of Marcus Buckingham's work. I always have my teams do the strengthsfinder exercise so they are aware of what they love and can use those to go from good to great.
The book has 9 parts:
1. People join companies, but leave teams. The theory is that while people care for the company they join, what it stands for, culture, values etc. the biggest part of their experience is their team. Yeah, kinda true, but also true of managers. And depending on the role, multiple teams really.
2. Focus on sharing intelligence rather than plans - Planning doesn't tell you where to go, it more helps you understand where you are. Goals have to be directionally correct, not set in excruciating detail. As a leader, share as much data as you can, let the team build intelligence around it and use it as they see fit. Watch and optimize. I liked this - makes a good case for openness
3. Best companies cascade meaning, not just goals - explaining why is always better than giving people goals to cascade to. True story. From MBOs to SMART goals to KPIs to BHAGs to the now trendy OKRs, they never tell the story of why, just the what. We obsess over "what" instead of explain why. Cascading meaning can be through culture(what we stand for), rituals or stories
4. Good leaders are spiky, not fully well rounded - this is a corollary to the strengths theory. Strengths are what give you joy, make you feel strong, rather than just what you are good at. Good leaders are really great at a few things and not bad at most others. It is the sum of these that matter rather than being good at everything. Each of us are unique, hone and cultivate this uniqueness, partner up with a team that can balance you out rather than trying to do that within an individual
5. People need attention, not feedback - this one was meh. While I buy the fact that positive attention is often the best catalyst to good performance, writing off negative feedback entirely renders a disservice to people. Radical candor did a better job of capturing this, in my mind
6. Managers can rate people reliably - again, this felt like overgeneralization killed the point. While the specific leading qs (would you go to this person for any difficult job? would you promote them now if you can?) were concrete tips, it didn’t generate any great insight
7. People have momentum - I liked the articulation of this. Momentum, a product of mass (strengths/traits that individuals have) and velocity (outcomes delivered thus far) as a way to describe performance trajectory rather than potential
8. Love of work matters more than work-life balance. “You’ll never feel proud of your work if you find no joy in it, your best work is always joyful work” Find ways to do more of what you love and you’ll get better at your job. Sounds like new age advice but I quite liked the practical advice around self-awareness on the job, tracking “red threads”, weaving strengths into your daily routine etc.
9. Leadership is what your followers experience, not what you do - The currency of leadership is human relationships - emotional bonds, trust, love. If you understand who you are, at your core and hone that understanding into a few special abilities, each of which magnifies your intent, your essence, your humanity, then people are inspired to follow.
Overall, a great read, even if you aren’t familiar with Gallup or Marcus’ earlier work. The stories are engaging and the quotes are fun.
The book has 9 parts:
1. People join companies, but leave teams. The theory is that while people care for the company they join, what it stands for, culture, values etc. the biggest part of their experience is their team. Yeah, kinda true, but also true of managers. And depending on the role, multiple teams really.
2. Focus on sharing intelligence rather than plans - Planning doesn't tell you where to go, it more helps you understand where you are. Goals have to be directionally correct, not set in excruciating detail. As a leader, share as much data as you can, let the team build intelligence around it and use it as they see fit. Watch and optimize. I liked this - makes a good case for openness
3. Best companies cascade meaning, not just goals - explaining why is always better than giving people goals to cascade to. True story. From MBOs to SMART goals to KPIs to BHAGs to the now trendy OKRs, they never tell the story of why, just the what. We obsess over "what" instead of explain why. Cascading meaning can be through culture(what we stand for), rituals or stories
4. Good leaders are spiky, not fully well rounded - this is a corollary to the strengths theory. Strengths are what give you joy, make you feel strong, rather than just what you are good at. Good leaders are really great at a few things and not bad at most others. It is the sum of these that matter rather than being good at everything. Each of us are unique, hone and cultivate this uniqueness, partner up with a team that can balance you out rather than trying to do that within an individual
5. People need attention, not feedback - this one was meh. While I buy the fact that positive attention is often the best catalyst to good performance, writing off negative feedback entirely renders a disservice to people. Radical candor did a better job of capturing this, in my mind
6. Managers can rate people reliably - again, this felt like overgeneralization killed the point. While the specific leading qs (would you go to this person for any difficult job? would you promote them now if you can?) were concrete tips, it didn’t generate any great insight
7. People have momentum - I liked the articulation of this. Momentum, a product of mass (strengths/traits that individuals have) and velocity (outcomes delivered thus far) as a way to describe performance trajectory rather than potential
8. Love of work matters more than work-life balance. “You’ll never feel proud of your work if you find no joy in it, your best work is always joyful work” Find ways to do more of what you love and you’ll get better at your job. Sounds like new age advice but I quite liked the practical advice around self-awareness on the job, tracking “red threads”, weaving strengths into your daily routine etc.
9. Leadership is what your followers experience, not what you do - The currency of leadership is human relationships - emotional bonds, trust, love. If you understand who you are, at your core and hone that understanding into a few special abilities, each of which magnifies your intent, your essence, your humanity, then people are inspired to follow.
Overall, a great read, even if you aren’t familiar with Gallup or Marcus’ earlier work. The stories are engaging and the quotes are fun.
November 26, 2019
Loved the new look at how to manage.
a mixture of quotes and [notes]:
8 Things that predict highest performing teams
1) I am really enthusiastic about the mission of my company.
2) At work I clearly understand what is expected of me.
3) In my team I am surrounded by people who share my values
4) I have the chance to use my strengths every day at work
5) My teammates have my back
6) I know I will be recognized for excellent work
7) I have great confidence in my company's future
8) In my work I am always challenged to grow
To love the little platoon we belong to is the first principle, the germ as it were, of public affection.
>>people love their team more than their company
Teams simplify - they help us see where to focus and what to do. Culture doesn't do this funnily enough because it's too abstract. Teams make work real....Teams aren't about sameness... they are about unlocking what is unique about each of us in the service of something shared.
Plans scope the problem not the solution... It's far better to coordinate your team's efforts in real time, relying heavily on the formed detailed intelligence in each unique teammember.
Instead of cascading goals, instead of cascading instructions or actions, cascade meaning or purpose. The best leaders realize that their people are wise, that they do not need to be coerced into alignment through yearly goal setting. These leaders strive instead to bring to life for their people through meaning and purpose of their work, the missions and contributions and methods that truly matter...whereas cascaded goals are a control mechanism, cascaded meaning is a release mechanism.
Many leaders set about [writing out their values] and wind up with a list of generic values such as integrity, innovation, and - god forbid- teamwork, which are about as meaningful as musak and then wonder why the whole exercise didn't make much difference . Instead apply some creativity...don't tell them what you value, show them. What do you actually want them to see and bump into at work?
The everyday-ness of the feeling that your work plays to your strengths is a vital condition of high performance. Somehow on the best teams the team leader is able not only to identify the strengths of each person but also to tweak roles and responsibilities so that team-members, individually, feel that their work calls upon them to exercise their strengths on a daily basis.
Beyond the obvious point that if all a company did was to become brilliant at failing in more and more ways, faster and faster, it would be, well, a failure. The truth is that large success is an aggregation of small successes and that therefore improvement consists of finding out in each trial what works, seizing hold of it, and figuring out how to make more of it. Failure by itself doesn't teach us anything about success. Just as our deficits by themselves don't teach us anything about our strengths. And the moment we begin to get better is the moment something actually works not when it doesn't.
The more diverse the team members - the more weird, spikey, and idiosyncratic they are - the more well rounded the team. Competencies and all the other normative and deficit focused tools we have don't push in this direction of expressing and harnessing diversity. [when leaders get together they make ideals] These are not abilities to be measured. They are values to be shared. so we should remove from our competency models the levels of ability, the individual evaluations, the feedback, and all the other things they have become encumbered with. We should instead simplify them, clarify them, recognize them, and name them for what they are....as a tool of assessment, order, and control they're worse than useless.
The truth then is that people need attention. When you give it to us in a safe and non-judgmental environment we will come and stay and play and work...
[during a challenge] Ask for three things that are working. In doing that you'r epriming his mind with oxytocin [ the creativity drug]. By getting him to think about some specific things that are going right you are deliberately altering his brain chemistry so that he can be open to new solutions and new ways of thinking or acting. BTW you can be totally up front with him about what you are doing. The evidence suggests the more active a participant he is in this the more effective the technique. Next go to the past. Ask him 'when you had a problem like this in the past what did you do that worked?' [think about previous similar issues and solutions] Finally turn to the future. Ask your team-member, "what do you already know you need to do? what do you already know works in this situation." In a sense you're operating under the assumption that he's already made his decision; you're just helping him find it. [what questions not why questions for concrete answers not conjecture].
[designing question] The trick is to invert our line of inquiry. Rather than asking whether a person has a given quality we need to ask how we would react to that other person if he or she did.... "Do you go to this person when you need extraordinary results?"..."Do you choose to work with this team-member as much as you possibly can?"..."would you promote this person today if you could?"..."do you think this person has a performance problem that you need to address immediately?"
[potential as Pygmalion] The careless and unreliable labeling of some folks as hipos and lopos is deeply immoral. It explicitly stamps large numbers of people with a 'less than' branding derived not from a measure of current performance, but from a rater's hopelessly unreliable rating of a thing that isn't a thing. And then this rating of a thing that isn't a thing opens doors for some, confers prestige on some, blesses some, and sets them up for a brighter future all while relegating others to a status less than human. How explicitly awful. It is also unproductive. The maximization machine should make the most of every single human within it, not just a rarefied subset. This notion that some people have lots of potential while others don't leads us to miss the gloriously weird possibilities lying hidden in each and every team-member, even the ones who at first blush seem to have little to offer the team's future.
Those who reported they spent at least 20% of their time doing things they loved had dramatically lower risk of burnout. Each percentage point reduction below this 20% level resulted in a commensurate and almost linear increase in burnout risk. [>> weave strengths into work]
These characteristics are curiously circumscribed. Authenticity is important right up until the point when the leader authentically says that he had no idea what to do which then fractures his vision. likewise vulnerability is important until the moment when the leader's comfort with her own flaws causes us to doubt her and question whether she is sufficiently inspirational.
The only determinant of whether anyone is leading is whether anyone else is following. This might seem like an obvious statement until we recall how easily we overlook its implications: followers. Their needs, their feelings their fears and hopes are strangely absent when we think of leaders as exemplars of strategy, execution, vision, oratory, relationships, charisma, and so on. The idea of of leadership is missing the idea of followers. It's missing the idea that our subject here is at heart a question of a particularly human relationship. Namely, why anyone would choose to devote his or her energies to and to take risks on behalf of someone else. And in that it's missing the entire point.
So the question is why do we follow....what makes us voluntarily place some part of our destiny in the hands of another human being?...We follow leaders who connect us to a mission we believe in, who clarify what's expected of us, who surround us with people who define excellence the same way we do, who value us for our strengths, who know that our teammates will always be there for us, who diligently replay our winning plays, who challenge us to keep getting better, who give us confidence in the future. This is not a set of qualities in a leader but rather a set of feelings in a follower... Your challenege is to find and refine your own idosyncratic way of creating in your team these 8 emotional outcomes. Do this well and you will lead well. Interestingly and happily a close study of the real world reveals that these two are linked. Your ability to create the outcomes you want in your followers is tied directly to how seriously and intelligently you cultivate your own idiosyncrasy and to what end. The deeper and more extreme your idiosyncrasy becomes the more passionately your followers follow.
Followers want instead an increasingly vivid picture of the future not another reminder of its inherent uncertainty. Your greatest challenge as a leader then is to honor each person's legitimate fear of the unknown and at the same time to turn that fear into spiritedness. We your followers like the comfort of where we stand, yet know that the flow of events is pulling us inexorably into the unknown. So when we find something, anything however slight that lessens our uncertainty we cling on for dear life. The final characteristic of the best teams... is the feeling that for each team member ‘I have great confidence in my company's future’. This confidence in the future, it seems, is the antidote to our universal uncertainty and it explains why we follow. The act of following is a barter. We entrust some part of a future to a leader only when we get something in return. That something in return is confidence and what gives us confidence in the future is seeing in a leader some great and pronounced level of ability in something we care about. We follow people who are really good at something that matters to us. We follow the spikes it's as if the spikes give us something to hook onto. We're well aware of our own shortcomings and we know that what lies ahead of us in life is unknowable. We're aware, also, that our journey will be easier if we can do it in partnership with others. And when we see in others some ability that offsets our own deficits and that removes for us even if only slightly some of the mist of the future then we hold on. We don't necessarily follow vision or strategy or execution or relationship-building or any of the other leadership things. Instead we follow mastery and it doesn't matter how this mastery manifests itself as long as we the followers find it relevant.
We follow a leader because he is deep in something and he knows what that something is. His knowledge of it and the evidence of his knowledge of it gives us both certainty in the present and confidence in the future.
It is strong not because of the breadth of his abilities but because of the narrowness and their focus and consequently their distinctiveness and their power. This is what drew followers to him by the millions in his life and this is what outlives him and draws us to his cause to this day. Leading and following are not abstractions. They are human interactions, human relationships and their currency is the currency of all human relationships, the currency of emotional bonds, of trust and of love. If you, as a leader, forget these things and yet master everything that theory world tells you matters you will find yourself alone. But if you understand who you are at your core and hone that understanding into a few special abilities each of which refracts and magnifies your intent, your essence, and your humanity, then in the real world we will see you and we will follow.
Truths:
1) People care which team they're on because that's where work actually happens
2) The best intelligence wins because the world moves too fast for plans
3) The best companies cascade meaning because people want to know what they all share
4) The best people are spikey because uniqueness is a feature not a bug
5) People need attention because we all want to be seen for who we are at our best
6) People can reliably rate their own experience because that's all we have
7) People have momentum because we all move through the world differently
8) Love in work matters most because that is what work is really for
9) We follow spikes because spikes give us certainty
a mixture of quotes and [notes]:
8 Things that predict highest performing teams
1) I am really enthusiastic about the mission of my company.
2) At work I clearly understand what is expected of me.
3) In my team I am surrounded by people who share my values
4) I have the chance to use my strengths every day at work
5) My teammates have my back
6) I know I will be recognized for excellent work
7) I have great confidence in my company's future
8) In my work I am always challenged to grow
To love the little platoon we belong to is the first principle, the germ as it were, of public affection.
>>people love their team more than their company
Teams simplify - they help us see where to focus and what to do. Culture doesn't do this funnily enough because it's too abstract. Teams make work real....Teams aren't about sameness... they are about unlocking what is unique about each of us in the service of something shared.
Plans scope the problem not the solution... It's far better to coordinate your team's efforts in real time, relying heavily on the formed detailed intelligence in each unique teammember.
Instead of cascading goals, instead of cascading instructions or actions, cascade meaning or purpose. The best leaders realize that their people are wise, that they do not need to be coerced into alignment through yearly goal setting. These leaders strive instead to bring to life for their people through meaning and purpose of their work, the missions and contributions and methods that truly matter...whereas cascaded goals are a control mechanism, cascaded meaning is a release mechanism.
Many leaders set about [writing out their values] and wind up with a list of generic values such as integrity, innovation, and - god forbid- teamwork, which are about as meaningful as musak and then wonder why the whole exercise didn't make much difference . Instead apply some creativity...don't tell them what you value, show them. What do you actually want them to see and bump into at work?
The everyday-ness of the feeling that your work plays to your strengths is a vital condition of high performance. Somehow on the best teams the team leader is able not only to identify the strengths of each person but also to tweak roles and responsibilities so that team-members, individually, feel that their work calls upon them to exercise their strengths on a daily basis.
Beyond the obvious point that if all a company did was to become brilliant at failing in more and more ways, faster and faster, it would be, well, a failure. The truth is that large success is an aggregation of small successes and that therefore improvement consists of finding out in each trial what works, seizing hold of it, and figuring out how to make more of it. Failure by itself doesn't teach us anything about success. Just as our deficits by themselves don't teach us anything about our strengths. And the moment we begin to get better is the moment something actually works not when it doesn't.
The more diverse the team members - the more weird, spikey, and idiosyncratic they are - the more well rounded the team. Competencies and all the other normative and deficit focused tools we have don't push in this direction of expressing and harnessing diversity. [when leaders get together they make ideals] These are not abilities to be measured. They are values to be shared. so we should remove from our competency models the levels of ability, the individual evaluations, the feedback, and all the other things they have become encumbered with. We should instead simplify them, clarify them, recognize them, and name them for what they are....as a tool of assessment, order, and control they're worse than useless.
The truth then is that people need attention. When you give it to us in a safe and non-judgmental environment we will come and stay and play and work...
[during a challenge] Ask for three things that are working. In doing that you'r epriming his mind with oxytocin [ the creativity drug]. By getting him to think about some specific things that are going right you are deliberately altering his brain chemistry so that he can be open to new solutions and new ways of thinking or acting. BTW you can be totally up front with him about what you are doing. The evidence suggests the more active a participant he is in this the more effective the technique. Next go to the past. Ask him 'when you had a problem like this in the past what did you do that worked?' [think about previous similar issues and solutions] Finally turn to the future. Ask your team-member, "what do you already know you need to do? what do you already know works in this situation." In a sense you're operating under the assumption that he's already made his decision; you're just helping him find it. [what questions not why questions for concrete answers not conjecture].
[designing question] The trick is to invert our line of inquiry. Rather than asking whether a person has a given quality we need to ask how we would react to that other person if he or she did.... "Do you go to this person when you need extraordinary results?"..."Do you choose to work with this team-member as much as you possibly can?"..."would you promote this person today if you could?"..."do you think this person has a performance problem that you need to address immediately?"
[potential as Pygmalion] The careless and unreliable labeling of some folks as hipos and lopos is deeply immoral. It explicitly stamps large numbers of people with a 'less than' branding derived not from a measure of current performance, but from a rater's hopelessly unreliable rating of a thing that isn't a thing. And then this rating of a thing that isn't a thing opens doors for some, confers prestige on some, blesses some, and sets them up for a brighter future all while relegating others to a status less than human. How explicitly awful. It is also unproductive. The maximization machine should make the most of every single human within it, not just a rarefied subset. This notion that some people have lots of potential while others don't leads us to miss the gloriously weird possibilities lying hidden in each and every team-member, even the ones who at first blush seem to have little to offer the team's future.
Those who reported they spent at least 20% of their time doing things they loved had dramatically lower risk of burnout. Each percentage point reduction below this 20% level resulted in a commensurate and almost linear increase in burnout risk. [>> weave strengths into work]
These characteristics are curiously circumscribed. Authenticity is important right up until the point when the leader authentically says that he had no idea what to do which then fractures his vision. likewise vulnerability is important until the moment when the leader's comfort with her own flaws causes us to doubt her and question whether she is sufficiently inspirational.
The only determinant of whether anyone is leading is whether anyone else is following. This might seem like an obvious statement until we recall how easily we overlook its implications: followers. Their needs, their feelings their fears and hopes are strangely absent when we think of leaders as exemplars of strategy, execution, vision, oratory, relationships, charisma, and so on. The idea of of leadership is missing the idea of followers. It's missing the idea that our subject here is at heart a question of a particularly human relationship. Namely, why anyone would choose to devote his or her energies to and to take risks on behalf of someone else. And in that it's missing the entire point.
So the question is why do we follow....what makes us voluntarily place some part of our destiny in the hands of another human being?...We follow leaders who connect us to a mission we believe in, who clarify what's expected of us, who surround us with people who define excellence the same way we do, who value us for our strengths, who know that our teammates will always be there for us, who diligently replay our winning plays, who challenge us to keep getting better, who give us confidence in the future. This is not a set of qualities in a leader but rather a set of feelings in a follower... Your challenege is to find and refine your own idosyncratic way of creating in your team these 8 emotional outcomes. Do this well and you will lead well. Interestingly and happily a close study of the real world reveals that these two are linked. Your ability to create the outcomes you want in your followers is tied directly to how seriously and intelligently you cultivate your own idiosyncrasy and to what end. The deeper and more extreme your idiosyncrasy becomes the more passionately your followers follow.
Followers want instead an increasingly vivid picture of the future not another reminder of its inherent uncertainty. Your greatest challenge as a leader then is to honor each person's legitimate fear of the unknown and at the same time to turn that fear into spiritedness. We your followers like the comfort of where we stand, yet know that the flow of events is pulling us inexorably into the unknown. So when we find something, anything however slight that lessens our uncertainty we cling on for dear life. The final characteristic of the best teams... is the feeling that for each team member ‘I have great confidence in my company's future’. This confidence in the future, it seems, is the antidote to our universal uncertainty and it explains why we follow. The act of following is a barter. We entrust some part of a future to a leader only when we get something in return. That something in return is confidence and what gives us confidence in the future is seeing in a leader some great and pronounced level of ability in something we care about. We follow people who are really good at something that matters to us. We follow the spikes it's as if the spikes give us something to hook onto. We're well aware of our own shortcomings and we know that what lies ahead of us in life is unknowable. We're aware, also, that our journey will be easier if we can do it in partnership with others. And when we see in others some ability that offsets our own deficits and that removes for us even if only slightly some of the mist of the future then we hold on. We don't necessarily follow vision or strategy or execution or relationship-building or any of the other leadership things. Instead we follow mastery and it doesn't matter how this mastery manifests itself as long as we the followers find it relevant.
We follow a leader because he is deep in something and he knows what that something is. His knowledge of it and the evidence of his knowledge of it gives us both certainty in the present and confidence in the future.
It is strong not because of the breadth of his abilities but because of the narrowness and their focus and consequently their distinctiveness and their power. This is what drew followers to him by the millions in his life and this is what outlives him and draws us to his cause to this day. Leading and following are not abstractions. They are human interactions, human relationships and their currency is the currency of all human relationships, the currency of emotional bonds, of trust and of love. If you, as a leader, forget these things and yet master everything that theory world tells you matters you will find yourself alone. But if you understand who you are at your core and hone that understanding into a few special abilities each of which refracts and magnifies your intent, your essence, and your humanity, then in the real world we will see you and we will follow.
Truths:
1) People care which team they're on because that's where work actually happens
2) The best intelligence wins because the world moves too fast for plans
3) The best companies cascade meaning because people want to know what they all share
4) The best people are spikey because uniqueness is a feature not a bug
5) People need attention because we all want to be seen for who we are at our best
6) People can reliably rate their own experience because that's all we have
7) People have momentum because we all move through the world differently
8) Love in work matters most because that is what work is really for
9) We follow spikes because spikes give us certainty
January 4, 2022
This book opened my eyes to many of the empirical and somewhat esoteric aspects of these "truths" we wholeheartedly believe in the business scene.
Up until now, I hadn't heard of a book trying to educate people around these lies (thank you). Unfortunately, if we repeat a lie often enough, it will invariably become truth - and worst, people will perhaps not even question its veracity.
[spoilers below]
Lies that stood out to me:
1. People care which company they work for
Unless you are a small startup, you will care which team you work for. In other words, teams matter more than companies.
In my opinion, local experiences have huge and overarching potential to impact the whole business.
2. The best companies cascade goals
We spend a lot of time and energy coming up with the best plan and strategy. The truth is, today's plan will be obsolete by tomorrow.
Therefore, the best companies and team leaders don't cascade goals. They cascade meaning.
3. People can reliably rate other people
That's the most impactful lie I've come across in this book. Knowing that people aren't able to rate other people accurately has been eye-opening, to say the least. I.e., your work rating reflects more about your manager's personality or rating patterns than it does about you or your work. That also applies to peer reviews.
4. People have potential
In this business context, this word tries to place people into two different buckets high-potentials (the ones that best fit the company's competencies and outperform their peers) and low-potentials (those who are misfits and need more training, PIP, etc.). In other words, high-potentials/low-potentials become a way of diminishing people's potential - this can't predict someone's performance at all.
On the other hand, people have momentum. If we as leaders understand how to tap into and identify someone's momentum, we can promote the growth potential we aim to see in our team members.
Lies I'm currently marinating on:
1. The best people are well-rounded
Coming from software engineering, this one is tough to digest, IMO — the way the whole industry is set up for well-rounded people. Although there are specialists, methodologies such as extreme programming (the 2000s) have shown that having well-rounded engineers might be really powerful.
2. Work-life balance matter most
I agree with some of the things said in this chapter, like finding the things you like in your job and creating your job rather than the opposite - that sounds more real than love what you do kind of BS. However, I still don't buy this "love-in-work" portraited in the book - because it still separates work and personal life. This is the problem; we are bound to separate work and personal life. This is crazy, we spend most of the time at work, and we don't consider it "life." It is as though we want to erase that time from our lives. It's a huge burden - what if everything is "life"?
Up until now, I hadn't heard of a book trying to educate people around these lies (thank you). Unfortunately, if we repeat a lie often enough, it will invariably become truth - and worst, people will perhaps not even question its veracity.
[spoilers below]
Lies that stood out to me:
1. People care which company they work for
Unless you are a small startup, you will care which team you work for. In other words, teams matter more than companies.
In my opinion, local experiences have huge and overarching potential to impact the whole business.
2. The best companies cascade goals
We spend a lot of time and energy coming up with the best plan and strategy. The truth is, today's plan will be obsolete by tomorrow.
Therefore, the best companies and team leaders don't cascade goals. They cascade meaning.
3. People can reliably rate other people
That's the most impactful lie I've come across in this book. Knowing that people aren't able to rate other people accurately has been eye-opening, to say the least. I.e., your work rating reflects more about your manager's personality or rating patterns than it does about you or your work. That also applies to peer reviews.
4. People have potential
In this business context, this word tries to place people into two different buckets high-potentials (the ones that best fit the company's competencies and outperform their peers) and low-potentials (those who are misfits and need more training, PIP, etc.). In other words, high-potentials/low-potentials become a way of diminishing people's potential - this can't predict someone's performance at all.
On the other hand, people have momentum. If we as leaders understand how to tap into and identify someone's momentum, we can promote the growth potential we aim to see in our team members.
Lies I'm currently marinating on:
1. The best people are well-rounded
Coming from software engineering, this one is tough to digest, IMO — the way the whole industry is set up for well-rounded people. Although there are specialists, methodologies such as extreme programming (the 2000s) have shown that having well-rounded engineers might be really powerful.
2. Work-life balance matter most
I agree with some of the things said in this chapter, like finding the things you like in your job and creating your job rather than the opposite - that sounds more real than love what you do kind of BS. However, I still don't buy this "love-in-work" portraited in the book - because it still separates work and personal life. This is the problem; we are bound to separate work and personal life. This is crazy, we spend most of the time at work, and we don't consider it "life." It is as though we want to erase that time from our lives. It's a huge burden - what if everything is "life"?
November 3, 2020
The book covers so many topics I've felt to be true in so many ways having a hard time explaining or fully describing in the past.
This book is for you if you believe that
- people care about which company they work for
- the best plan wins
- the best companies cascade goals
- the best people are well-rounded
- people need feedback
- people can reliably rate other people
- people have potential
- work-life balance matters most
- leadership is a thing
because none of this is true when taken from different perspectives.
Read this book if you want to know the way to better understand your team, your company, your place in all of it, or theirs, and challenge some of the norms accepted and followed.
The maturity of the book for me is in the writing style where authors are not only challenging the topic leaving the reader empty-handed but turn it around with a new look as an answer to the challenge raised. You will not be left with questions, you will be given a new perspective to look at things. For practicality seekers, this will be a gem to be found.
This book is for you if you believe that
- people care about which company they work for
- the best plan wins
- the best companies cascade goals
- the best people are well-rounded
- people need feedback
- people can reliably rate other people
- people have potential
- work-life balance matters most
- leadership is a thing
because none of this is true when taken from different perspectives.
Read this book if you want to know the way to better understand your team, your company, your place in all of it, or theirs, and challenge some of the norms accepted and followed.
The maturity of the book for me is in the writing style where authors are not only challenging the topic leaving the reader empty-handed but turn it around with a new look as an answer to the challenge raised. You will not be left with questions, you will be given a new perspective to look at things. For practicality seekers, this will be a gem to be found.
July 8, 2019
Bland. Wordy. Could have made 9 decent blogs or articles instead of one overlong piece of dreck.
Does a good job of pointing out the overabundance of similar dreck. Mistakes itself for not adding dreck to the dreck pile.
Does a good job of pointing out the overabundance of similar dreck. Mistakes itself for not adding dreck to the dreck pile.
February 15, 2024
Made me feel "researchsque". I love feeling researchsque, by the way.
(I just invented this word, thank me later)
(I just invented this word, thank me later)
March 30, 2021
Lie #1: People care which company they work for.
Truth #1: People care which team they're on. The theory is that while people care for the company they join, what it stands for, culture, values etc. the biggest part of their experience is their team.
- How to create a high performing team? 8 Things that predict highest performing teams. Ask these to each of your team mates, and figure out how to change the team to make these positive
1) I am really enthusiastic about the mission of my company.
2) At work I clearly understand what is expected of me.
3) In my team I am surrounded by people who share my values
4) I have the chance to use my strengths every day at work
5) My teammates have my back
6) I know I will be recognized for excellent work
7) I have great confidence in my company's future
8) In my work I am always challenged to grow
Lie #2: The best plan always wins.
Truth #2: The best intelligence wins. Planning doesn't tell you where to go, it more helps you understand where you are. Goals have to be directionally correct, not set in excruciating detail. As a leader, a better strategy is to regularly provide teams with the best, most up-to-date information possible and let the team build intelligence around it and use it as they see fit. Watch and optimize.
Lie #3: The best companies cascade goals.
Truth #3: The best companies cascade meaning. MBOs, SMART goals, KPIs, BHAGs, OKRs demonstrate 'what' goal to set. If you want the team / employees to buy into the mission, we need meaningful purpose and shared values — this is accomplished by cascading meaning, which can be done through culture, rituals, or stories.
Lie #4: The best people are well-rounded.
Truth #4: The best people are spiky. Because for humans, uniqueness is a feature, not a bug. Strengths are what give you joy, make you feel strong, rather than just what you are good at. Good leaders are really great at a few things and not bad at most others. It is the sum of these that matter rather than being good at everything. Each of us are unique, hone and cultivate this uniqueness, partner up with a team that can balance you out rather than trying to do that within an individual
Lie #5: People need feedback.
Truth #5: People need attention. Because we all want to be seen for how we are at our best, not our worst. The idea being that employees don’t need feedback—they need their team leaders to give them frequent positive attention. Ask them what strategies/activities works for them in the current/past work and their gut feeling about what will work in future.
- How to provide constructive feedback [during a challenge]
- **Ask for three things that are working.** In doing that you're priming his mind with oxytocin [ the creativity drug]. By getting him to think about some specific things that are going right you are deliberately altering his brain chemistry so that he can be open to new solutions and new ways of thinking or acting. BTW you can be totally up front with him about what you are doing. The evidence suggests the more active a participant he is in this the more effective the technique. Next go to the past.
- **Ask him 'when you had a problem like this in the past what did you do that worked?'** [think about previous similar issues and solutions] Finally turn to the future.
- **Ask your team-member, "what do you already know you need to do? what do you already know works in this situation."** In a sense you're operating under the assumption that he's already made his decision; you're just helping him find it. [what questions not why questions for concrete answers not conjecture].
Lie #6: People can reliably rate other people.
Truth #6: People can reliably rate their own experience. The only things that human beings can accurately and reliably rate are their own experiences and feelings.
Lie #7: People have potential.
Truth #7: People have momentum. We all move through life differently, it is hard to tell who has potential, but we can tell who has momentum. Momentum, a product of mass (strengths/traits that individuals have) and velocity (outcomes delivered thus far) as a way to describe performance trajectory rather than potential. This is a better way of evaluating if a person can make the 'next step'
Lie #8: Work-life balance matters most.
Truth #8: Love-in-work matters most. “You’ll never feel proud of your work if you find no joy in it, your best work is always joyful work” Find ways to do more of what you love and you’ll get better at your job. There will always be parts of the job you do not like, but the more you can find 'red threads' (things that you enjoy doing - regardless if you are good at it now) will help you find enjoyment at work (and hopefully success later)
- Those who reported they spent at least 20% of their time doing things they loved had dramatically lower risk of burnout. Each percentage point reduction below this 20% level resulted in a commensurate and almost linear increase in burnout risk. [>> weave strengths into work]
Lie #9: Leadership is a set of predictable traits.
Truth #9: There is no one-size-fits all strategy for leadership. The currency of leadership is human relationships - emotional bonds, trust, love. If you understand who you are, at your core and hone that understanding into a few special abilities, each of which magnifies your intent, your essence, your humanity, then people are inspired to follow.
Truth #1: People care which team they're on. The theory is that while people care for the company they join, what it stands for, culture, values etc. the biggest part of their experience is their team.
- How to create a high performing team? 8 Things that predict highest performing teams. Ask these to each of your team mates, and figure out how to change the team to make these positive
1) I am really enthusiastic about the mission of my company.
2) At work I clearly understand what is expected of me.
3) In my team I am surrounded by people who share my values
4) I have the chance to use my strengths every day at work
5) My teammates have my back
6) I know I will be recognized for excellent work
7) I have great confidence in my company's future
8) In my work I am always challenged to grow
Lie #2: The best plan always wins.
Truth #2: The best intelligence wins. Planning doesn't tell you where to go, it more helps you understand where you are. Goals have to be directionally correct, not set in excruciating detail. As a leader, a better strategy is to regularly provide teams with the best, most up-to-date information possible and let the team build intelligence around it and use it as they see fit. Watch and optimize.
Lie #3: The best companies cascade goals.
Truth #3: The best companies cascade meaning. MBOs, SMART goals, KPIs, BHAGs, OKRs demonstrate 'what' goal to set. If you want the team / employees to buy into the mission, we need meaningful purpose and shared values — this is accomplished by cascading meaning, which can be done through culture, rituals, or stories.
Lie #4: The best people are well-rounded.
Truth #4: The best people are spiky. Because for humans, uniqueness is a feature, not a bug. Strengths are what give you joy, make you feel strong, rather than just what you are good at. Good leaders are really great at a few things and not bad at most others. It is the sum of these that matter rather than being good at everything. Each of us are unique, hone and cultivate this uniqueness, partner up with a team that can balance you out rather than trying to do that within an individual
Lie #5: People need feedback.
Truth #5: People need attention. Because we all want to be seen for how we are at our best, not our worst. The idea being that employees don’t need feedback—they need their team leaders to give them frequent positive attention. Ask them what strategies/activities works for them in the current/past work and their gut feeling about what will work in future.
- How to provide constructive feedback [during a challenge]
- **Ask for three things that are working.** In doing that you're priming his mind with oxytocin [ the creativity drug]. By getting him to think about some specific things that are going right you are deliberately altering his brain chemistry so that he can be open to new solutions and new ways of thinking or acting. BTW you can be totally up front with him about what you are doing. The evidence suggests the more active a participant he is in this the more effective the technique. Next go to the past.
- **Ask him 'when you had a problem like this in the past what did you do that worked?'** [think about previous similar issues and solutions] Finally turn to the future.
- **Ask your team-member, "what do you already know you need to do? what do you already know works in this situation."** In a sense you're operating under the assumption that he's already made his decision; you're just helping him find it. [what questions not why questions for concrete answers not conjecture].
Lie #6: People can reliably rate other people.
Truth #6: People can reliably rate their own experience. The only things that human beings can accurately and reliably rate are their own experiences and feelings.
Lie #7: People have potential.
Truth #7: People have momentum. We all move through life differently, it is hard to tell who has potential, but we can tell who has momentum. Momentum, a product of mass (strengths/traits that individuals have) and velocity (outcomes delivered thus far) as a way to describe performance trajectory rather than potential. This is a better way of evaluating if a person can make the 'next step'
Lie #8: Work-life balance matters most.
Truth #8: Love-in-work matters most. “You’ll never feel proud of your work if you find no joy in it, your best work is always joyful work” Find ways to do more of what you love and you’ll get better at your job. There will always be parts of the job you do not like, but the more you can find 'red threads' (things that you enjoy doing - regardless if you are good at it now) will help you find enjoyment at work (and hopefully success later)
- Those who reported they spent at least 20% of their time doing things they loved had dramatically lower risk of burnout. Each percentage point reduction below this 20% level resulted in a commensurate and almost linear increase in burnout risk. [>> weave strengths into work]
Lie #9: Leadership is a set of predictable traits.
Truth #9: There is no one-size-fits all strategy for leadership. The currency of leadership is human relationships - emotional bonds, trust, love. If you understand who you are, at your core and hone that understanding into a few special abilities, each of which magnifies your intent, your essence, your humanity, then people are inspired to follow.
August 10, 2020
I enjoyed the different perspective. Being in a leadership role, this book has given me some different perspectives. Here is a short nutshell if you don’t want to read it the book:
Lie #1: People care which Company they work for. While people might care which company they join, they don’t care which company they work for. Once they’re there, they care which team they’re on. How an individual interacts with immediate colleagues – trumps company and uniform culture every time. (which would confirm a number of our exit interviews)
Lie #2: The best plan wins. Nope! But the best intelligence and hardwork does. Change happens so fast that you can’t really plan. But if you are smart and willing to work hard, and let people be able to adapt to the challenges, you will win. (can anyone say COVID).
Lie #3: The best companies cascade goals. People don’t need to be told what to do. They need to be told why. The best companies cascade meaning. Goals can be good, however, they need to be set voluntarily. Your goals define the dent you want to make in the world. (changing our self-assessments)
Lie #4: The best people are well-rounded. High performers are unique and distinct and excel precisely because they understand and cultivate their uniqueness. When you identify strengths of someone you should hone those strengths and let the person gravitate towards that which they excel. (I think of some of our employees that we have said we need to get them to do something that is outside their comfort zone to make them well rounded, maybe the best solution is to leave them in positions that cater to their strengths.
Lie #5: People need feedback. Nope. They are looking for positive, future-focused attention instead. Although negative feedback has some positive impact over no feedback, negative feedback doesn’t enable learning, in fact it inhibits it. Positive attention, meanwhile, is 30x more powerful than negative attention in creating high performance. (currently not a strong aspect in certain parts of the office)
Lie #6: People can reliably rate other people. This one really hit home. People hate performance improvement plans. People do not have a reliable measure of who you are, but they can reliably rate their reactions to you/their experiences with you. Hence the reason for the re-evaluation of the re-evaluation of the performance reviews. People cannot reliably rate other people. Typically the rating you get tells you more about the rating pattern of your manager than about someone’s performance. (do I need to say more)
Lie #7: People have potential. The truth is, people have momentum. Potential is a one-side evaluation. Momentum is an ongoing conversation. Potential tells you if you will or won’t; it is not a trait. Momentum encourages them to consider where they are right now, as a unique team member moving purposefully through the organization. To say you have potential simply means you have the capacity to learn, grow and get better like every other human being. It’s not about whether people can grow. It’s about helping team leaders about human growth and promoting them to discuss careers with tier people in terms of ‘momentum’– who each team member is and how fast each is moving through the world. (although this makes sense, I am struggle with this how this ‘lie’ is conceptualized).
Lie #8: Work-life balance matters most. Love-in-work matters most. The assumption is that work is bad and life is good. The problem is balance. This is not finding work you love, it is the skill of finding love in what you do. What we really wrestle with is not work and life but love and loathe. If people love what they do, everything else balances itself out. (makes perfect sense to me. Can an organization really get someone to love the work/organization or is that something the person has to do).
Lie #9: Leadership is a thing. The true lesson in leading from the real world: A leader is someone who has followers. To determine if someone is leading see if anyone else is following. This does not emerge from a list of skills or competencies or from a person’s level within a hierarchy. Leadership is scarce (we see that in the 2C). If leading were easy, there would be more good leaders. Leadership isn’t a thing, because it cannot be measured reliably. Followership is a thing, because it can.
Lie #1: People care which Company they work for. While people might care which company they join, they don’t care which company they work for. Once they’re there, they care which team they’re on. How an individual interacts with immediate colleagues – trumps company and uniform culture every time. (which would confirm a number of our exit interviews)
Lie #2: The best plan wins. Nope! But the best intelligence and hardwork does. Change happens so fast that you can’t really plan. But if you are smart and willing to work hard, and let people be able to adapt to the challenges, you will win. (can anyone say COVID).
Lie #3: The best companies cascade goals. People don’t need to be told what to do. They need to be told why. The best companies cascade meaning. Goals can be good, however, they need to be set voluntarily. Your goals define the dent you want to make in the world. (changing our self-assessments)
Lie #4: The best people are well-rounded. High performers are unique and distinct and excel precisely because they understand and cultivate their uniqueness. When you identify strengths of someone you should hone those strengths and let the person gravitate towards that which they excel. (I think of some of our employees that we have said we need to get them to do something that is outside their comfort zone to make them well rounded, maybe the best solution is to leave them in positions that cater to their strengths.
Lie #5: People need feedback. Nope. They are looking for positive, future-focused attention instead. Although negative feedback has some positive impact over no feedback, negative feedback doesn’t enable learning, in fact it inhibits it. Positive attention, meanwhile, is 30x more powerful than negative attention in creating high performance. (currently not a strong aspect in certain parts of the office)
Lie #6: People can reliably rate other people. This one really hit home. People hate performance improvement plans. People do not have a reliable measure of who you are, but they can reliably rate their reactions to you/their experiences with you. Hence the reason for the re-evaluation of the re-evaluation of the performance reviews. People cannot reliably rate other people. Typically the rating you get tells you more about the rating pattern of your manager than about someone’s performance. (do I need to say more)
Lie #7: People have potential. The truth is, people have momentum. Potential is a one-side evaluation. Momentum is an ongoing conversation. Potential tells you if you will or won’t; it is not a trait. Momentum encourages them to consider where they are right now, as a unique team member moving purposefully through the organization. To say you have potential simply means you have the capacity to learn, grow and get better like every other human being. It’s not about whether people can grow. It’s about helping team leaders about human growth and promoting them to discuss careers with tier people in terms of ‘momentum’– who each team member is and how fast each is moving through the world. (although this makes sense, I am struggle with this how this ‘lie’ is conceptualized).
Lie #8: Work-life balance matters most. Love-in-work matters most. The assumption is that work is bad and life is good. The problem is balance. This is not finding work you love, it is the skill of finding love in what you do. What we really wrestle with is not work and life but love and loathe. If people love what they do, everything else balances itself out. (makes perfect sense to me. Can an organization really get someone to love the work/organization or is that something the person has to do).
Lie #9: Leadership is a thing. The true lesson in leading from the real world: A leader is someone who has followers. To determine if someone is leading see if anyone else is following. This does not emerge from a list of skills or competencies or from a person’s level within a hierarchy. Leadership is scarce (we see that in the 2C). If leading were easy, there would be more good leaders. Leadership isn’t a thing, because it cannot be measured reliably. Followership is a thing, because it can.
June 5, 2020
Worth reading if you want to be a good manager and avoid falling into the generalization trap.
I was not taken by the style. Not all the "lies" were truly eye-opening, but in general I love the battle against de-humanizing people.
I know we all believe that what is measured can be managed, but with people it is not as easy as organizations want it to be.
My favorite thought:
Forget about someone's potential (hard to assess, hard to measure), focus on the momentum (where they are, how they grow, what's the next step).
I was not taken by the style. Not all the "lies" were truly eye-opening, but in general I love the battle against de-humanizing people.
I know we all believe that what is measured can be managed, but with people it is not as easy as organizations want it to be.
My favorite thought:
Forget about someone's potential (hard to assess, hard to measure), focus on the momentum (where they are, how they grow, what's the next step).
November 27, 2019
Don't tell people what you value, show them; cascade meaning instead of goals; life balance is is finding love in what you do. You cannot create excellence by fixing the current problem.
Actually there is much more than five lies. There were definitely thought-provoking ideas in this book but it felt a bit unpolished. Maybe I was also unimpressed by the selection of real-life examples from organizations (Cisco was the most commonly used case study reference).
1. People care which team (NOT company) they work for. Because that's where work actually happens.
2. The best intelligence (NOT plan) wins. Because the world moves too fast for plans.
3. The best companies cascade meaning (NOT goals ). Because that's what they all share.
4. The best people are spiky (NOT well-rounded). Because uniqueness is a feature not a bug.
5. People need attention (NOT feedback). Because we all want to be seen for who we are at our best.
6. People can reliably rate their own experience (NOT other people). Because that's all we have.
7. People have momentum (NOT potential ). Because we all move through the world differently.
8. Love in work (NOT work-life balance) matters most. Because that's what work is really for.
9. We follow spikes (Leadership by itself is NOT a thing). Because spikes bring us certainty.
Information needs to be shared by leaders with decisions being made by individuals VS the opposite.
Actually there is much more than five lies. There were definitely thought-provoking ideas in this book but it felt a bit unpolished. Maybe I was also unimpressed by the selection of real-life examples from organizations (Cisco was the most commonly used case study reference).
1. People care which team (NOT company) they work for. Because that's where work actually happens.
2. The best intelligence (NOT plan) wins. Because the world moves too fast for plans.
3. The best companies cascade meaning (NOT goals ). Because that's what they all share.
4. The best people are spiky (NOT well-rounded). Because uniqueness is a feature not a bug.
5. People need attention (NOT feedback). Because we all want to be seen for who we are at our best.
6. People can reliably rate their own experience (NOT other people). Because that's all we have.
7. People have momentum (NOT potential ). Because we all move through the world differently.
8. Love in work (NOT work-life balance) matters most. Because that's what work is really for.
9. We follow spikes (Leadership by itself is NOT a thing). Because spikes bring us certainty.
Information needs to be shared by leaders with decisions being made by individuals VS the opposite.
August 19, 2019
I was really looking forward to reading this book. I love books that debunk the common and often misinterpreted norms in the workplace. While there were some great key concepts that I underlined and found helpful, most of it was discussing data and stats across surveys and companies, not all data points had a direct line to leadership concepts. I did not agree with all the lies either, as some of what the author was trying to debunk are core principles that other data shows is necessary to lead an organization and team. Reading the book I felt as though I was in a room with someone very long winded, the dialogue went in circles at time and felt repetitive. A lot of extra dialogue and examples around obvious and mediocre concepts. I did like how the author turned the lies into truths at the end of the book. Perhaps a better approach would have been to start out that way and with the data that backs what works vs what doesn't.
April 2, 2021
I did not expect that a quick and breezy read such as this one would be one of the better management books I read in the past years.
Nine Lies About Work manages to pack original research and case studies that are both novel and unexpected into a story about work, meaning and life. Many books like this regurgitate the same tired cases (Buurtzorg anyone?) and the same Malcolm Gladwell/Freakonomics-sourced long-debunked science and turn that into a quick publication.
I would recommend this book fully for both managers and employees at companies. One word of caution though: the more 'lies' about work this book helps you identify at your current workplace, the more likely it becomes that you will start looking for a new job.
Nine Lies About Work manages to pack original research and case studies that are both novel and unexpected into a story about work, meaning and life. Many books like this regurgitate the same tired cases (Buurtzorg anyone?) and the same Malcolm Gladwell/Freakonomics-sourced long-debunked science and turn that into a quick publication.
I would recommend this book fully for both managers and employees at companies. One word of caution though: the more 'lies' about work this book helps you identify at your current workplace, the more likely it becomes that you will start looking for a new job.
January 22, 2020
The book takes on some common notions about work and explain the subtle but perhaps important errors in those notions. Of course, to make for a catchier title, these notions are called lies.
For instance: the best plan wins. In reality, no fixed plan is good enough for dynamic reality. So let your team figure out solutions on the fly by giving them enough info.
Another example: people need feedback. Millennial’s use social media is sometimes as evidence for “people want feedback”. In fact they crave attention, not feedback.
In general, the authors wrote in a very clear and articulate way, though the insights are not earth shattering.
For instance: the best plan wins. In reality, no fixed plan is good enough for dynamic reality. So let your team figure out solutions on the fly by giving them enough info.
Another example: people need feedback. Millennial’s use social media is sometimes as evidence for “people want feedback”. In fact they crave attention, not feedback.
In general, the authors wrote in a very clear and articulate way, though the insights are not earth shattering.
June 11, 2019
Informative start but lacks the research and imperical data towards the end.
Which, ironically enough, was the books greatest strength found in the first few chapters.
Which, ironically enough, was the books greatest strength found in the first few chapters.
October 18, 2019
Felt like all my unspoken angst about people at work were given a voice:)
Enough strength in the voice too.
Enough strength in the voice too.
March 16, 2021
Nuttige en evidence-based bedrijfspsychologie, so it exists. Oftewel; een boek van 20 euro outscores een opleiding van 5 jaar. Nou ja.
PS: Ik ga nu zoals het een goede graduate betaamt deze eye-opening materie negeren en dit boek 5 sterren aansmeren terwijl ik net heb geleerd dat dat niet mag want de criteria zijn subjectief en ongedefinieerd en deze rating zegt dus meer over mezelf dan over dit boek. (Geef ik mijzelf dan 5 sterren?).
PS: Ik ga nu zoals het een goede graduate betaamt deze eye-opening materie negeren en dit boek 5 sterren aansmeren terwijl ik net heb geleerd dat dat niet mag want de criteria zijn subjectief en ongedefinieerd en deze rating zegt dus meer over mezelf dan over dit boek. (Geef ik mijzelf dan 5 sterren?).
January 18, 2021
Saw Marcus Buckingham speak at a conference and loved his delivery and messaging on this book. Reading the book was the same experience. His different way of thinking about work and management through a different lens was refreshing. I definitely recommend this one for people to enjoy.
May 17, 2020
Such an interesting book! Would recommend to everyone and will definitely go back to read passages, inspiring!
January 20, 2020
I give this book 3.5 stars. It's more for the novice manager/worker who haven't read any of the management books already available. It lacks substance and any new insights, which is apparent when sports examples were used to illustrate a point rather than a work example. It's also as if content was added to fill in the book. I don't think Lie #9 (leadership is a thing) is something that people think is true -- set of leadership qualities that can measured and used to identify the right leader.
January 14, 2022
A quite uneven book. It started out with foundations in observations and data, with a middle that was founded on hypothesis without references to data (at least not in the audio book) and ended on belief. I don't dislike it but if you like me is more evidence based, a book like noise by Daniel Kahneman may better suit you.
February 8, 2020
3.5 stars. Had to read this for work. I enjoyed the "devil's advocate" view of many of the standard leadership rules. Ultimately, we can, and should, communicate what we value - and stay true to ourselves. Nothing fancy needed.
September 9, 2021
Больше обещаний научности, чем фактического научного подхода. Одни непроверенные теории предлагается заменить на другие, такие же непроверенные. Книга интересна как противовес к некоторым менеджерским убеждениям, но не как самостоятельная инструкция к действию.
February 10, 2024
A bit better than your standard work book but still too repetitive and long
August 18, 2019
Reading this book you start to feel as I imagine those standing in the crowd next to the child who pointed out that the Emperor was in fact starkers might have felt; a mix of realization, relief, and embarrassment at having gone along with the charade for so long.
Most of us buy unthinkingly into the competencies frameworks, the 360-degree feedback, the importance of company culture and the 90-day plan. It's so woven into our understanding of how organisations work that we see them as necessary, even if we don't like them much.
So these are the eponymous ‘lies’:
1. People care which company they work for (they don’t: they care which team they’re in)
2. The best plan wins (plans get in the way – give your people goals and real-time information and let them get on with it)
3. The best companies cascade goals (focus on cascading meaning, and let your people create their own goals around that)
4. The best people are well-rounded (No, the best people are spiky, playing to their unique strengths)
5. People need feedback (No, they need attention, and positive attention gets massively better results than negative – notice what’s working)
6. People can reliably rate other people (People suck at rating other people – all we can reliably rate is our own experience of people
7. People have potential (Not a lie, technically, just useless: EVERYONE has potential; they prefer the concept of momentum – direction plus velocity)
8. Work-life balance matters most (When people find love in work, the work = bad, life = good assumption simply evaporates)
9. Leadership is a thing (There’s no single ‘leadership’ quality – only being able to attract followers, and that comes down to being able to make people feel better about the future with you)
Some of these lies carry more ‘aha!’ in their exposing than others. For me, the most revelatory were 5 and 6: it was frankly astonishing to discover that positive feedback is 30 x more effective at improving performance than negative feedback (though even negative feedback is more effective than no attention at all). And it makes complete sense: when we give negative feedback, we’re effectively saying: ‘Not like that, like this.’ We’re telling them to do what works for us; but we’re not them. When we notice what’s working and show it to them, we’re helping them identify what works for them. The same logic lies behind our utter inability to reliably rate someone on their ‘leadership potential’, ‘strategic thinking’ or any other attribute we’re expected to be able to quantify. Not only do we all have very different ideas of what those attributes are supposed to look like, how on earth do we translate these vague impressions into meaningful numbers? The solution, Buckingham and Goodall suggest, is to ask people to rate their own experience of working with someone. It’s a more complex metric, but much more reliable.
Performance measurement and management is a mutli-billion-dollar industry and the preoccupation of most managers. This book brings a bracing blast of common sense that should make every leader at every level reassess how they’re doing it and, just maybe, acknowledge that their tidy charts might actually be the Emperor’s new metrics.
Most of us buy unthinkingly into the competencies frameworks, the 360-degree feedback, the importance of company culture and the 90-day plan. It's so woven into our understanding of how organisations work that we see them as necessary, even if we don't like them much.
So these are the eponymous ‘lies’:
1. People care which company they work for (they don’t: they care which team they’re in)
2. The best plan wins (plans get in the way – give your people goals and real-time information and let them get on with it)
3. The best companies cascade goals (focus on cascading meaning, and let your people create their own goals around that)
4. The best people are well-rounded (No, the best people are spiky, playing to their unique strengths)
5. People need feedback (No, they need attention, and positive attention gets massively better results than negative – notice what’s working)
6. People can reliably rate other people (People suck at rating other people – all we can reliably rate is our own experience of people
7. People have potential (Not a lie, technically, just useless: EVERYONE has potential; they prefer the concept of momentum – direction plus velocity)
8. Work-life balance matters most (When people find love in work, the work = bad, life = good assumption simply evaporates)
9. Leadership is a thing (There’s no single ‘leadership’ quality – only being able to attract followers, and that comes down to being able to make people feel better about the future with you)
Some of these lies carry more ‘aha!’ in their exposing than others. For me, the most revelatory were 5 and 6: it was frankly astonishing to discover that positive feedback is 30 x more effective at improving performance than negative feedback (though even negative feedback is more effective than no attention at all). And it makes complete sense: when we give negative feedback, we’re effectively saying: ‘Not like that, like this.’ We’re telling them to do what works for us; but we’re not them. When we notice what’s working and show it to them, we’re helping them identify what works for them. The same logic lies behind our utter inability to reliably rate someone on their ‘leadership potential’, ‘strategic thinking’ or any other attribute we’re expected to be able to quantify. Not only do we all have very different ideas of what those attributes are supposed to look like, how on earth do we translate these vague impressions into meaningful numbers? The solution, Buckingham and Goodall suggest, is to ask people to rate their own experience of working with someone. It’s a more complex metric, but much more reliable.
Performance measurement and management is a mutli-billion-dollar industry and the preoccupation of most managers. This book brings a bracing blast of common sense that should make every leader at every level reassess how they’re doing it and, just maybe, acknowledge that their tidy charts might actually be the Emperor’s new metrics.
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