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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.314
EAN num: 9780446530507
ISBN number: 0446530506
Label: Business Plus
Manufacturer: Business Plus
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 256
Printing Date: October 08, 2002
Publishing house: Business Plus
Sale Popularity Level: 417761
Studio: Business Plus
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When it comes to getting ahead in business, The Gallup Organization has led the way with two landmark books: the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers First, Break all the Rules and Now, Discover Your Strengths. In its latest guide the world's hottest management consulting firm reveals your company's most valuable asset-and, with groundbreaking new findings and methods, shows you how developing that asset can lead to a quantum leap in cost efficiencies and profits.
FOLLOW THIS PATH
What do the world's greatest organizations have in common? They know that their most valuable resource is human-their employees and customers. And the best companies understand two important facts: people are emotional very first and rational second, and because of that, employees and customers must be emotionally engaged in order for the organization to reach its full potential. Gallup research not only bears that out, but has uncovered the secrets of creating and managing an 'emotional economy' that will provide boom possibilities for your company.
FOLLOW THIS PATH shows you how the traditional ways to engage people no longer apply in today's world. Instead, it offers a system it calls The Gallup Path, based on the proven, revolutionary strategies of the most successful businesses. You'll learn the prerequisites of an effective workplace, forge unbreakable bonds between employees and customers with the book's 34 Routes to Superior Performance, know the three crucial links that drive productivity and growth, discover the best employee and customer motivators, and much more.
Ignore the emotional economy-and miss out on financial performance. Helping you build relationships one customer and one employee at a time, this important book offers a unique new path for your organization to follow. All you have to do is value and develop human relationships all around you to transform your business-starting today.
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Rated by buyers 
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What a great book! Simple, straight-forward, and relevant to sales managers today. Follow This Path was recommended to me by a friend and fellow manager. Like most managers, I've read dozens of books on management and leadership so I didn't expect any new revelations. However, this one surprised me. It gets right to the heart of what makes a great organization and why its people are key to any competitive advantage. Much of this book has been described as plain common sense, but the authors incorporate extensive research from the Gallup Organization to support their conclusions. If an organization isn't as productive as it should be - according to Gallup approximately 75% of employees in most companies are not engaged - then the number one goal is to get people engaged. The challenge is to figure out what people are good at, align those skill sets with company objectives, and focus more on outcomes instead of the process. That's where Follow This Path can help. The book offers a practical, sensible guide to maximizing individual strengths and talents in order to gain a competitive advantage - focusing more on heads and hearts and less on hands and feet! When you're working with people who are engaged and truly enjoy their work, managing them can be very rewarding. I highly recommend this book to managers who need a simple, yet proven approach to motivating employees and helping them reach their potential.
Rated by buyers -
Like most management theory books this theory will probably be replaced by yet another but it does provide an interesting thought for human resources and management alike. The idea that you can unlock human potential by helping your employees maximize their work experience should be common sense. This book gives some great suggestions on how to start out along that path but like most business you will have to find your own. If you are interested in academic management this is probably a book that you will enjoy otherwise I would not waste your time.
Rated by buyers 
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We use Gallup at my workplace. Gallup is an excellent organization and we're better for working with them. However, this was too much. It's not a book. It's a brochure. Their Engagement Index is brilliant, but you can skim the other 260 pages without missing anything important.
Rated by buyers -
Review of "Follow This Path"
The central thesis of this valuable and highly readable work can be summed up in three words: Feelings drive actions.
This book from The Gallup Organization focuses on applying that briefest but most fundamental truth to business success. The authors' conclusion can be simply stated: The feelings of your employees influence the feelings of your customers, and that drives their buying behavior and your profits.
It works like this: Understand your employees so that they are assigned to do work for which they're really best suited at the deepest personal level ('cuz they'll do that work better than any other). And treat your employees in ways that encourage them to be fully engaged in their work ('cuz that gets you more loyalty and productivity at no extra cost). And then, in turn, your employees will treat your customers in a way that makes your customers feel good about your company ('cuz that leads them to spend more with your firm for a longer time). And, voila!, your company makes more money with less effort.
At this point you might feel compelled to release a loud exclamation of, "Well, duh!"
But hold on.
The premise of "Follow This Path" seems deceptively simple for two reasons:
1) It contrasts markedly with the "rational" model that still shapes most interactions with both employees and customers in most organizations; and
2) It stands in direct opposition to the assumptions underlying most business initiatives that are supposed to improve quality, productivity, or even customer satisfaction. Most, if not all, of those projects are aimed at mechanistically tweaking operational processes. And they don't positively affect the people on either side of the transaction: employees or customers. And so they have little to no effect on fundamentally improving the business. (But they sure do suck up a lot of time, create many distractions, and generate healthy fees for consultants.)
MORE THAN A REHASH
While tempting, it is misguided to characterize this book as a mere rehash of its predecessors from the Gallup Organization, "First, Break All the Rules" and "Now, Discover Your Strengths." Candidly, when very first flipping through the book, "rehash" was my impression, too.
However, "Follow This Path" is a significant contribution in its own right. It integrates and extends Gallup's two previous works. This book's insights derive from an expanded data set supplied by Gallup's massive survey-based research, and the book also (as is all the rage in business tomes these days) draws on much of the historical and current research into the origins of behavior from both psychological and biological underpinnings. A smattering of readable anecdotes from real people help to bring the principles to life. (The end notes also are worth reading as the text there is written as a narrative and adds worthwhile insights. In addition, this work contains an appendix of what likely will strike most readers as mind-numbing statistical mumbo-jumbo, aimed, no doubt, at quieting critics who question the validity of the data underpinning Gallup's claims and conclusions.)
The effect is to validate sound, albeit somewhat non-traditional, perspectives on what really lies behind the elusive, mercantile holy grail of successfully competing in today's crazy, cut-throat marketplace.
THE UPSHOT
The good news is that these principles are easy to grasp and make intuitive sense (after reconsidering traditional biases).
The bad news is that for organizations to take advantage of these simple truths, they must unlearn much of what their managers "know" about how business works. The challenge is to move managers from the realm of the rational, definable, and controllable --- the hallmark characteristic of virtually every manager in virtually every corporation (perhaps with the exception of those strange and intrepid folks populating the marketing communications department).
The new reality: To compete effectively, managers must migrate to the still largely uncharted domain of the emotional, psychological, and personal in order to affect both employees and customers. In a gross understatement, this imperative represents a frighteningly major shift and no easy undertaking.
Making such a dramatic and fundamental change in both mindset and behaviors implies considerable adaptations at two levels: In the minds and hearts of individual managers, and in the policies and systems of their employing organizations.
All exaggeration aside, we're talking social revolution here. Undoubtedly, it will keep Gallup's consulting organization, and firms such as my own, very busy for many years to come.
But what if your boss or CEO is a Neanderthal and "doesn't get it"? Press on. Start with yourself and your very own work group. As the research ... Read More
Rated by buyers -
I really didn't want to like this book. It just sounded too much like some new age, pop psychology dribble on how to feel good. I couldn't have been further from the truth. Although this isn't a great book, it is a very valuable book, not only for the businessman, but for leaders of nonprofits as well.
The premise of the book is simple. In an age where prices have been cut to razor thin margins, and businesses have become commodities, the only way to profitably survive is to unleash the human potential among your employees and customers. The authors ask this simple, but profound question: Why would a customer drive past your competition and pay a higher price to purchase your product? The answer: You have an emotionally engaged customer.
The authors demonstrate the world's greatest organizations connect with their customers on an emotional level. When this happens customers return because of the way they feel- they become emotional engaged. The businesses manta for the last century has been based on reason- if you build a better mousetrap, offer it at the lowest price, people will buy. Studies have shown that people are more driven by their emotions when it comes to purchase and repurchase than they are by reason. The same holds true for employees. The Gallop organization also has shown that emotionally engaged employees produce more, stay longer, have less accidents, etc.
Any problems? Maybe one. When hiring, the authors tell us again and again to commit to talent above education, experience, willingness to work hard, and the usual resume items. Inborn talent produces engaged employees; but what they did not address was the integrity issue. Jack Welch points out that the most dangerous employee is not the rude, insensitive, actively disengaged employee; but the one with the talent who does not hold to the values of the corporation. The actively disengaged employee will hurt the company, and yes, if you have enough of them they will destroy the company, but the real danger lies with talented, engaged employees who love their work but who do not hold to the company's values. These are the ones Welch would immediately get rid of.
All in all, it's a valuable book. For a pastor of a small church, or a midlevel manager, the Q-12 (Questions developed by the Gallop organization which identify the conditions of a great work space) are invaluable. By unleashing the human potential in staff, volunteers and members the leader of a nonprofit can build a great organization.
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