Do Corporate Leaders Have It All Wrong

When 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 Summary
Buckingham 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 Index
1. Do I know what is expected of me at work? What do I
2. Do I have the materials and equipment that I need in order to get?
do my work right?

3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every What do I

day? give?
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?

7. At work, do my opinions seem to count? Do I belong

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

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

1. 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.