Book Review--Helping People Win at Work

As many of you know by now, I'm a reader...I have read an average of about 50 books a year my entire adult life. One of my goals this year was actually to read LESS...so far, that's not working out too well, I'm on pace for 40something, I had hoped to finish only around 25...

I was unaware of my latest read until last week when I saw a dozen copies on my Boss's desk and hoped aloud that I would be getting a copy, turns out they weren't for me, but he was gracious enough to find me one...on the condition that I give him some feedback.

Since I needed to give him feedback, and since I'm trying to do better at taking notes for retention, I've decided to share some basic impressions here.

Helping People Win at Work by Ken Blanchard and Garry Ridge, came out a week ago.

It's a bit of a twist on the average Managing for Success and Servant Leadership ideas that have been popular of late. I found this book to be high on inspiration and quotables, without a whole lot of new info, they talk Tribes, SMART goals, Hierarchy of needs, Vision/Mission, etc...really felt a little all over the place.

It's written by two authors and they split the book by each taking chapter sections, I found Garry's info to be much more fresh and applied, while everything I read from Ken left me with a Dejavu feeling...

The highlights for me--

-The concept of "Don't Mark my Paper, help me get an A"--Seemed simple enough, until I walked that through to execution and started to get a headache at how you undo the age old ranking and ordering of performance...

-Is your Company "Partnering for Performance, or using performance reviews as alarms to send in the seagull manager"?

-Effective Performance Review System= Planning, Execution, Review and Learning...spend a lot of time time planning ("Don't just do something, sit there"), and make the review and learning a frequent and ongoing piece rather than an annual event.

-Tribes vs. Teams--Yes, this seems to be a bit "borrowed" from Seth Godin, but that's the sincerest form, of flattery right?

-Rank Ordering your values--I liked this idea, we all do it whether we think about it or not, but to put them in rank order is great. For instance, Our corporate values may include Doing the Right thing and Profitability, but profits never come before doing the right thing. "Life is about value conflicts. That means sometimes you can't honor two values at the same time."

Good Quotes from the book--

"At Best Leadership is a Partnership"

"All Good performance starts with clear goals"

"Don't save up feedback until somebody fails"

"A tribe is a place you belong; a team is something you play on once in a while."

"The real key to organizational vitality is operational leadership."

Summary--

Easy, fast read, with some good concepts and a little more fluff than I care for, which is surprising since it's less than 160 pages. I'd recommend the Intro and Chapter One to nearly everyone, my recommendation gets lighter the farther you go. If you don't read much in the way of leadership, this would be a good intro, as they discuss many ideas at a high level.