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12: The Elements of Great Managing
Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter
Gallup Press (2006)
Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman's First, Break All the Rules, was published in 1999. In it, they discuss twelve crucial statements (Q12®) to which millions of workers had responded in surveys conducted by The Gallup Organization during the previous 25 years. Then in 2006, Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter's 12: The Elements of Great Managing was published. (Both Wagner are Harter are Gallup principals.) As they explain, these statements comprise "the 12 Elements of Great Managing...Behind each of these is a fundamental truth about human nature on the job. The correlations between each element and better performance not only draw a roadmap to superior managing; they also reveal fascinating insights into how the human mind - molded by thousands of years foraging, hunting, and cooperating within a close-knit and stable tribe - reacts in a relatively new, artificial world cubicles, project timelines, corporate ambiguity, and changing workgroup membership." I will not provide a list of twelve crucial statements (Q12®), those that identify the 12 elements of great managing, because I have not obtained written consent of The Gallup Organization to do so. However, I can strongly recommend First, Break All the Rules and then 12: The Elements of Great Managing in which there is rigrous and comprehensive discussion of them.
One "crucial imperative" for C-level executives in most organizations is to achieve and then sustain high employee engagement. Consider these statistics based on recent Gallup research: 29% of the U.S. workforce is positively engaged (i.e. loyal, enthusiastic, and productive) whereas 55% is passively disengaged. That is, they are going through the motions, doing only what they must, "mailing it in," coasting, etc. What about the other 16%? They are "actively disengaged" in that they are doing whatever they can to undermine their employer's efforts to succeed. They have a toxic impact on their associates and, in many instances, on customer relations. These are indeed stunning statistics and reasons for them vary from one organization to the next. However, most experts agree that no more than 5% of any given workforce consists of "bad apples," troublemakers, chronic complainers, subversives, etc. As readers work their way through one or both books, they should keep in mind what Jeffrey Pfeiffer and Robert Sutton characterize as "the knowing-doing gap." Obviously, knowing and understanding the twelve crucial statements are quite different from converting that knowledge into effective action. In collaboration with their research associates at Gallup, Rod Wagner and James Harter explain how.
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