Do Corporate Leaders Have It All WrongWhen It Comes to People?

Gallup’s Marcus Buckingham thinks that corporate leaders have it all wrong when it comes to fostering talent within their organizations. It may sound like common sense, Buckingham says, but if you are going to succeed, you have to play to your strengths. “It is intriguing,” he says. “All of the best managers we have studied say focus on your strengths and manage your weaknesses. It seems so crushingly obvious. And yet all of the companies we’ve looked at say the opposite. It’s not like they are slightly wrong—they are totally off. They say maintain a person’s strengths and focus all of your time on fixing the weaknesses.”For the past 15 years, the 35-year-old Buckingham has studied the connection between workplace performance and bottom-line results for many of Gallup’s clients, including Toyota, Wells Fargo, and Disney. Recently, Buckingham completed a Gallup study that helps corporate America measure a culture’s impact on company performance. For the study, Buckingham first identified 12 core traits of a healthy work atmosphere (dubbed “Q12”) such as workers feeling actively engaged in their work or whether workers have had the opportunity to learn and grow. Then, using more than 30 years of corporate data collected at Gallup, Buckingham measured how these factor contributed to a company’s success. So far, corporate America is failing the test.On average there is an inverse correlation between length of service and a positive Q12 score, according to the study. “What it means is the longer you stay in your job with a company, the less engaged you become,” Buckingham says. “So [this study] makes it very specific. Despite all of the money that we are spending on leadership and management development, we actually depreciate our human capital.“We all say that human capital is one of the few assets that a company has that can generally appreciate,” he says. “And yet, according to the humans within that human capital, over time they actually become less clear about their expectations, less cared about, less well-cast in their job.” Corporate America is founded on three flawed assumptions, says Buckingham. First: Everyone who excels at a particular job does it in the same way. A good example of how this assumption is wrong, says Buckingham, is the founding fathers of America, each with their own personal style. “It would have been ludicrous to say, ‘John Adams, you need to be less belligerent and calmer like Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson, you are a terrible public speaker; you need to become like John Adams,’ ” he says. “The only thing those leaders had in common was they created the same outcome. People followed them.”

The second flawed assumption: Everything can be learned. “If you think about it, one of the reasons that current performance management systems are so popular is because of the success of process improvement initiatives like Six Sigma,” Buckingham says. “And if you play this out, Six Sigma has a very good reputation because you can take a process and endlessly rework it until all of the kinks are gone. Because a process is endlessly malleable, you can keep playing around with it. The problem is we have become so enamored with that, we’ve applied it wholesale to people. And we have forgotten that people and process are made of different things. You aren’t endlessly malleable. There are some things about you that you can change, but there are some things about you that you are never going to change.”The third flawed assumption is that corporate America believes fixing weaknesses will lead to success. “Fixing weaknesses will prevent failure,” Buckingham says, “but that’s a different thing; it’s damage control, not development. It gets you from minus six to zero.”Buckingham hopes that his projects will be a call to arms for CEOs to begin actively measuring what really matters. “What we are giving CEOs is a way for them to shine an accurate light within their company to say, ‘How strong is our culture? Where is it getting stronger? Where is it getting weaker? What’s the range?’ ” Buckingham says, “If you want to build a stronger culture, you had better answer one question right: What is the best way to improve one person’s performance? If you can answer that question, it will inform everything that you do.”

Case SummaryBuckingham says, but if you are going to succeed, you have to play to your strengths. It means that you have to go to your strengths rather than fixing just weakness. Normally it is said that focus on your strengths and maintain your weaknesses but what is practiced is that companies do opposite to it by maintaining their strengths & giving their all focus on fixing weaknesses 35 year old Buckingham observed the impact of the culture on the performance of corporate America by studying the performance and bottom-line results for many of Galup’s clients, like Toyota, wells forge, Disney.What is the Q12?The Gallup Q12 is a survey designed to measure employee engagement. The instrument was the result of hundreds of focus groups and interviews. Researchers found that there were 12 key expectations, that when satisfied, form the foundation of strong feelings of engagement. So far 87,000 work units and 1.5 million employees have participated in the Q12 instrument. Comparisons of engagement scores reveal that those with high Q12 scores exhibit lower turnover, higher sales growth, better productivity, better

customer loyalty and other manifestations of superior performance. The Gallup organization also uses the Q12 as a semi-annual employee engagement Index – a random sampling of employee across the country.The engagement index slots people into one of three categories.• Engaged employees work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company. They drive innovation and move the organization forward.• Not-Engaged employees are essentially “checked out.” They are sleepwalking through their workday. They are putting in time, but not enough energy or passion into their work.• Actively Disengaged employees aren’t just unhappy at work; they’re busy acting out their unhappiness. Every day, these workers undermine what their engaged co-workers accomplish.

The Q12 Index1. Do I know what is expected of me at work? 2. Do I have the materials and equipment that I need in order to do my work right?

What do I get?

3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?4. In the past 7 days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?

What do I give?

7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?8. Does the mission or purpose of my company make me feel that my job is important?9. Are my coworkers committed to doing quality work?10. Do I have a best friend at work?

Do I belong here?

11. In the past six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress? 12. This past year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

How do we all grow?

Study reveals that there is inverse relationship between length of service and Q12 score, means longer you stay less you are engaged. According to Buckingham he does not want to invest more on leadership and management, and says that length of service makes a human careless about a job. The corporate America is based on three Assumptions these are:

1. Everyone who excels at a particular job does it in a same way.2. Everything can be learned by taking help of six sigma’s which

improve their management performance.

3. The corporate America believes that fixing weaknesses will prevent failure.

Buckingham disagrees to the assumptions which are followed by corporate America.Buckingham hopes that his research will be guideline for managers if they follow his research they can shine.

Questions for Discussion1. Which of the seven people-centered practices discussed at the beginning of this chapter play a role in this case? Explain.2. For managers who want to do a better job of managing people, what learning points and action items emerge from Buckingham’s findings and beliefs?3. On which points do you most strongly agree with Buckingham? Why?4. Any points of disagreement? Explain.

Question #1: Which of the seven people-centered practices discussed at the beginning of this chapter play a role in this case? Explain.

The following seven people-centered practices are defined for the successful companies lets have a look at these with reference to Buckingham’s research:1. Job security (to eliminate fear of layoffs). Job security means that if any organization reduces the fear of layoff or fire from job for its employees this reduction of fear of being fired from job is job security. This can be done through giving considerable salary, bonuses, gifts, etc. As Q12 tells us that what do I get, what do I give, do I belong here, and how do we all grow. These are the four questions (comprising 12 questions described earlier) which Mr. Buckingham asked from the employees of the organizations which he studied. The answers to these questions plays vital role for managers to best give job security to employees. If you give job security to any employee he will be highly engaged in the organization.

2. Careful hiring (emphasizing a good fit with the company culture).It is the second People-centered practice. Careful hiring means recruiting those people, who best fulfill the needs of the company and its environment. Mr. Buckingham’s research tells us that organization needs those people who are strengthened and well trained, they should not be weak. They should not be weak if they are weak organization have to focus on their weaknesses which is too costly in many dimensions.

3. Power to the people (via decentralization and self-managed teams).The group and team power is recognized in the modern world and management styles. If you look at the last fourth question of the Mr. Buckingham, how do we all grow tells us about the team spirit which is well gained through giving power to the people.

4. Generous pay for performance.This factor comes under job security and tells us that how much a person is engaged in and organization varies with salary he/she gets.

5. Lots of training.Training is necessary factor. Training means equipping employees with latest tricks and tools, which are vary necessary for proper job performance, If your organization will not provide you tools and equipment you will be less engaged in the job. 6. Less emphasis on status (to build a “we” feeling).Stratification is an idea which means that some groups in the society have different status. The power is defined with status. So if you want to engage your employees you have to build the “we” felling which reduces the felling about status.

7. Trust building (through the sharing of critical information).If you are well at trust building you have the power to manage the people. Do I belong here? In the Q12 tells about the trust building. Importantly, these factors are a package deal, meaning they need to be installed in a coordinated and systematic manner—not in bits and pieces.

Question #2: For managers who want to do a better job of managing people, what learning points and action items emerge from Buckingham’s findings and beliefs?

Strengths refer to the competitive advantages and other distinctive competencies that a company can exert in the marketplace. Weaknesses are constraints that hinder movements in certain directions.Mr. Buckingham tells us that “Focus on your strengths rather than fixing your weaknesses.” Fixing weaknesses will make you 0 from -6 but focusing on and developing your strengths will made 6 from 0. The study of Mr. Buckingham at Gallup tells us that there is Inverse relationship between the length of the service and Q12 Score. It means that experienced and old employees of any organization are less engaged in the matters of the organization.

Question #3: On which points do you most strongly agree with Buckingham? Why?

The strengths are one of the world’s most powerful tools that one can feel proud of. Mr. Buckingham says, but if you are going to succeed, you have to play to your strengths. This is the main point on which I strongly agree with Buckingham because weaknesses can prevent the failure and playing to strengths makes you success.

Question #4: Any points of disagreement? Explain.

Length of the service having inverse relationship with performance as Q12 score of the Buckingham’s research tells us. I do not agree with the Buckingham on this point of case. Length of the service gives us the most experienced people which are the appreciated asset of the organization the negative Q12 score tells us that the employee is less engaged but does not tell that he/she is totally not engaged. This Q12 score can be made positive by applying the seven people-centered practices, defined earlier in the case study.Strengths and weaknesses are two simultaneous processes if you leave weaknesses you can not overcome the strengths. It means you have to eradicate the weaknesses with playing to your strengths.