First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham, Curt Coffman

Why We Like This Book:

We love data, and Gallup had a pile of it in developing the key insight here: great managers find people with the right skills for a job, and then focus on enhancing and rewarding what’s already there. They DON’T try to teach everything to everybody. Unlike In Search of Excellence, they didn’t fake this data. Gives detailed guidance, so we REALLY like it.

This podcast is the first in a series of recurring casts - it could easily amount to ten over the next couple of years - about employee retention. The best managers we know do a great job of retention. As a matter of fact, because it goes to the future potential of the organization, retention is one of Mark’s favorite delineators of management talent. Strategy gets done more effectively in places where retention is good.

In this cast, we’re going to talk about bare bones basics. This is the stuff that any manager can do… really, that any manager wanting to think of themselves as a professional MUST do. If you’re not taking these simple steps, you need to start, so you can build a base to some of the more powerful techniques we’ll share in future casts.

This cast shares our most important principle in The Manager Tools Effective Hiring Process: Set the Bar HIGH.

We believe that the biggest invisible organizational personnel failing is hiring poorly. It’s that simple: the vast majority of companies do a terrible job - compared to what they COULD DO EASILY - in hiring the right people.

We’ve said what follows a hundred times. We have systems to test the quality of raw materials coming in to our plants. We reject anything that is even a LITTLE off. We have non-destructive testing methods for inbound materials, and for our own manufacturing processes. Tolerances are incredibly tight. We have financial standards for investing capital that are incredibly rigorous, and monstrously difficult to prepare for at times. We have RIGID standards for EXPENSE REPORTING, for heaven’s sake.

And then, for the most important decisions we make - personnel - we leave the decision to some senior manager who’s never been trained, never been given feedback, is never held accountable, and mostly goes with her gut.

This is like trying to make a gorgeous wedding cake substituting dirt for flour, and adhering strictly to every other step in the process.

We can’t cover the entire process in one cast. But we can start.

This cast explains a simple way to make a job offer to a candidate.

If you’re a manager, you’ve got people working for you. If you have people working for you, you’re going to either lose some, or your team is going to grow. That creates an opening, which, if you’re lucky, you’ll get to fill. And that means interviewing, and hiring someone.

While we think it’s funny (and sad) that so many managers don’t like the hiring process, it seems silly to punish ourselves by not knowing how to do it. Look, even if you hate the process, why mess it up and increase your chances of having to do it again right at the very end? It’s like being in the lead of a mile long race, only to fall down and then have to run an extra mile.

Interviewing candidates for your organization is one of the most important things managers do. And yet, somehow, it’s one of those things that doesn’t seem to get taught anywhere. What this means is very few managers know how, or at least, they just do it “their way”. That’s not a very effective approach for an organization to have regarding the key talent screening process that it has, but the data are overwhelming:

Your interviews stink!

Most managers simply don’t have a good way to always ensure that they are conducting an effective interview. Some managers routinely create false positives with shallow questions, little probing, and a lack of understanding about the role. Other managers routinely create false negatives…and usually, for the very same reasons on the surface.

Conducting Effective Interviews is too big a topic to cover all at once..unless you wanted a 30 hour cast! So, in this cast, we’ll talk about the steps effective managers take to get ready for an interview.

More and more, companies are using psychological and behavioral tests as pre-employment screening devices. They supplement their interviewing processes in order to ensure less false-positives.This is wise, in our judgment, based on what we see of interviewing. Too many companies don’t screen rigorously enough, and have started enlisting more cerebral and/or technical techniques to be certain of new hires.

Even if you haven’t experienced one yet, it’s becoming more and more likely.

What does this mean for you? What’s the best way to approach and be successful at pre-employment tests? This is Manager Tools, and we’ll walk you through it.

This cast describes a technique for measuring your team and/or organization’s ability to recognize talent.

Many managers mistakenly fail to connect the process of hiring with the later successes and failures of the organization. When someone doesn’t work out, particularly if it’s 3-5 years after they were hired, very few managers think that the problem started when they were being interviewed. But the fact is, just like our elected leaders in a democracy, we get the people we deserve. If we hired them, we MUST have wanted them? Right?

Somehow, though, this kind of analysis is never done. While it’s probably not terribly helpful for those who leave the company after 20 years, there ought to be a way to evaluate managers’ abilities to find and hire good, talented people (”talent”) for the company.

And now there is: The Manager Tools Talent Scouting Average.