The One Thing You Need to Know, Part II

I liked this book so much by Marcus Buckingham that I wanted to re-blog it with a different approach. I felt it helped crystallize a few key concepts on life in general as well an management.

"Get me to the core" means there is one concept that will determine ones success or failure in a certain endeavor - one primary insight anyone could employ that transcends the methods required to get there. It will focus groups of people accomplish a difficult talk in a streamlined way. It is the difference between putting on a great performance and teaching the core concept that can transform a company because it will help everyone get to transformational success. Find the broad pattern in the data that predicts success of the elite performers. What makes people so good at their role? Maybe it is their strength, in action, positioned to yield its highest return -- because they are fit for the role with their passions, personality, and skills traits aligned in synergy.

What are the controlling insights of success? organizational? personal?
The two roles that underline organizational success are great managing, and great leading.
The core insight to individual success is building on your strengths/your passions and saying no to things you don't enjoy/your areas of miserable weakness

1 Corinthians 13:13 -- "And now faith, hope, and love, abide these three, but the greatest of these is love." Wow, love is the greatest!

The discovery of a core concept for a happy marriage is very interesting - a broad swath of studies showed results that when pooled together showed a common theme that the most enduring and happiest marriages had spouses which chose the most generous explanation for eachothers actions. These spouses ranked eachother strong in areas where the spouse self-ranked their weaknesses. Now, how could this be? Are these people unintelligent? Can only people who are not accurate in their assessments have an enduring and happy marriage? Not truly. Rather, these were intelligent people who faced a dichotomy of choice. When one creates positive illusions of love, one is able and willing to risk and commit a great deal in the hopes of a lifelong relationship. The commitment one makes gives one security in the relationship decision. Security fosters intimacy. Intimacy leads to stronger love. The trade off is generosity in assessment in exchange for security. Find the most generous explanation for eachothers behavior and believe it.

Mr. Buckingham mentions some other interesting and astounding controlling insights to natural phenomena ~ the tides are best explained by the presence and position of the moon, and his stuttering speech due to higher levels of testosterone exposure in utero (also with his ring finger is longer than his index finger in these cases), and the theory of natural selection to explain biological diversity, and . . . on and on!

The One Thing you are looking for must pass a few tests . .
-- it must explain a wide variety of circumstances
-- it must serve as a multiplier of success rather than just a strong correlator - the greatest return on your efforts and energy.
-- it must guide action

Properly armed, these controlling insights can help one to excell at filtering the world, cut through clutter with laser-like precision, place less value on all that you can remember, and move on to the things that you must never forget.

Sonntag-Reeve: We can never forget that we are nothing without great customer service!!

Part I: Core Concept to Great Managing
--Build on the strengths of your employees in their assignments
--utilize individualization to accomplish more for the common good
--have an inherent ability and desire to help others succeed, give them tips for growth, confront and improve static employees, and s

Part II: Core Concepts to Great Leading
-- Great Leaders Rally people to a better future
-- Great Leader have CLARITY of purpose - their message is CLEAR (key feature!)
their patrons demand it, groups will not grant you success without it - it is your obligation to them.
-- The "I am not satisfied" mantra burns deep in a leader because he cannot rest with the conflict between what is and what his vision of what it should be . . . .
-- leaders have an overwhelming belief they can overcome the challenges and forge ahead, to rally people to a better future, to do better, to reach their vision.
--"The effective leader takes his self-belief, his self-assurance, his self-confidence and presses them into service of an enterprise bigger than himself. For the egomaniac, the self is the enterprise."


"The managers starting point is the individual employee. He looks at her palette of talents, skills, knowledge, experience, and goals, then uses these to design a specific future in which the individual can be successful. That person's success is his focus.
"The leader sees things differently. He starts with his image of the future. This better future is what he talks about, thinks about, ruminates on, designs and refines. Only with this image clear in his mind does he turn his attention to persuading other people that they can be successful in the future he envisions. But through it all, the future remains his focus.
"You can play both roles, of course, but if you do, you must know when to change gears. When you want to manage, begin with the person. When you want to lead, begin with the picture of where you are headed.