Biography

Marcus BUCKINGHAM

2009 ranking: 25

Marcus Buckingham

At first Marcus Buckingham seems an unlikely management guru. He is a cricket-loving Englishman and graduate of Cambridge University. His very name sounds so aristocratic. Buckingham is one of the business world's most sought-after speakers, but for a long time he had a punishing stammer which he has successfully overcome. He still admits to nerves before going on stage.

Marcus Buckingham's message is innovative and fundamentally positive. He believes it's better to concentrate on strengths, instead of worrying about weaknesses and trying to fix them. We all have strengths and talents. Sometimes individuals don't know what their strengths are. To help them identify their talents, he pioneered the Strengths Finder Test while working as a senior researcher with the Gallop Organization. Once people know their strengths they must be prepared to contribute them, but this is where good management kicks in.

Good managers should recognise these talents and appreciate the talents they have, and not try to put square pegs into round holes by attempting to fit individuals to tasks. Managers must equip employees with the skills and tools to help them contribute to their organization, and most importantly they must find adequate means of rewarding employees for success.

Buckingham likes being iconoclastic. There is something irresistibly attractive about the title of his book First, Break all the Rules, co-authored with Curt Coffmann in 1999. It stresses that one of the most important factors in business success is the happiness of an organization's employees, and this in turn is dependant upon managers behaving in an innovative way. This iconoclastic aspect is made even clearer by the book's subtitle: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently. This was not a work written on a whim and a hunch. It was based on 88,000 interviews with managers carried out by Gallup. These were mangers who demonstrated success in transforming employment talent into great performance. Some were top managers in Fortune 500 companies; others in much smaller operations, of differing ages and cultural backgrounds. The one thing they had in common was that they had nothing in common. They were also not hide-bound by convention. Buckingham argued that these showed that the best managers have unlearned a lot of the received truths about management. In this way they have been able to foster and retain talent.

Buckingham was able to discover patterns in their behavior. He called these keys: the first was selecting talent. Talent has to be seen as different from skill or experience. The second key is Defining the Right Outcome. Before an employee can perform well in their task, their manager must have a very clear understanding of what this is. The third key is focusing on strengths, while a fourth key involves finding the right fit. A successful manager is able to turn these keys.

In addition good managers treat all employees as individuals, with strengths and weaknesses, but they concentrate on developing these strengths, and finally they find adequate means of rewarding their employees for jobs well done. They should then provide them with the training and necessary support to achieve this.

In The One Thing You Need to Know (2005) Buckingham is once again in iconoclastic mode. He sees accepted views on leadership, management, and individual performance as at best hazy. They are often expressed more often than they are realised. In particular, he explores the confusion between leadership and management.

Buckingham is a very effective disseminator of his ideas. There are his best-selling books, as well as his frequent appearances as a speaker. He has also shown himself ready to embrace American television. He has made a series of short motivational films called Trombone Player Wanted. The title comes from his frustration at being compelled to learn to play the instrument as a boy - something he had no talent for and which he didn't like. In 3007 he took his message onto the roads of the US in a national bus tour.

He is the founder and CEO of The Marcus Buckingham Company whose professed aim is: to help individuals express the best of themselves and make their greatest contribution possible- at work, at home and in life.

Essential Reading:

First, Break all the rules (co-authored with Curt Coffmann, Simon & Schuster, 1999)

Now, Discover Your Strengths (co-authored with Donald O. Clifton, The Free Press, 2001)

The One Thing You Need to Know ... ..About Great Managing, Great Leading and Sustained Individual Success (The Free Press, 2005)

Go Put Your Strengths To Work (The Free Press, 2007).

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