Overview (from Amazon.com)
12: The Elements of Great Managing is the long-awaited sequel to the 1999 runaway bestseller First, Break All the Rules. Grounded in Gallup’s 10 million employee and manager interviews spanning 114 countries, 12 follows great managers as they harness employee engagement to turn around a failing call center, save a struggling hotel, improve patient care in a hospital, maintain production through power outages, and successfully face a host of other challenges in settings around the world.
Authors Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter weave the latest Gallup insights with recent discoveries in the fields of neuroscience, game theory, psychology, sociology, and economics. Written for managers and employees of companies large and small, 12 explains what every company needs to know about creating and sustaining employee engagement.
Why the President Should Read This Book
What helps an employee enjoy their job? Oh, we all have our speculations, but this book is based on 10 million employee and manager interviews, so it’s a bit more science-based, and while that’s not a foolproof way to answer the question, it seems pretty darn good in this case, in my opinion. We don’t often think of the President as an employer, but he runs the largest “company” in the world. The federal government employs almost 3 million people, which makes our President the manager of more people than the CEO of Walmart. Granted, I think it would be much preferable for the President to manage a fraction that many people, but inasmuch as that’s what we’ve got, he might as well do a good job, and this book helps.
But perhaps more importantly, this book would help the President understand better what it’s like to be an employee as well as an employer, and how government interferes with both, in the form of regulations that pit employer against employee and prevent the two from developing relationships that would make businesses more efficient.