Customer Reviews

The Greatest Management Principle in the World

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Read this book years ago. It IS the greatest management book ever.

You get what you reward. Seems simple enough. But, LeBouef will walk you through why this principle is so easily missed and misused.

The book is short and well written. A simple principle presented simply.

I lost (lent out?) my copy and now I find that it is out of print. Just ordered a collectible condition hard bound copy (Thank you Amazon for the ability to do so).

The "greatest management principle in the world" is that "the things that get rewarded get done". This may sound simplistic, but only a small percentage of people apply it.

This has been one of the best business books that I have read, and I have read hundreds. In many ways, it seems so obvious that many people do not bother to understand it. As a result, we keep re-inventing the wheel and wondering why our resources are being wasted.

There are many guidelines of how to spot the ways we are indirectly rewarding the opposite of what we desire. You will soon find yourself often saying to yourself, and hopefully others, "well, the things that get rewarded get done".

This should be required reading for MBA programs, but it was not for the one I was in and it appears it is not in most others. Alas, the things that get rewarded get done.

The late Earl Nightingale on one of his radio programs recommended this book back in the '70s, and I bought a copy back then, read it, and lost it. I was happy to see it here at Amazon and re-purchased the book to review again. It talks about the secret of motivating employees to do their best at what you need done. You will immediately recognize the wisdom in the pages of this short, pithy, powerful book. It tells a secret we all know instinctively, but further goes on to tell how the secret gets misused and misinterpreted. You see, the Greatest Management Principal can work just as well to foul things up as it does to fix them. LeBofuf sets the watch-points you will need to use the principal wisely, to lead your business to success. This is a must-read for anyone who leads others, or who wants to make their mark in business.

Sometimes we get caught up in 'the trees' and miss the 'big picture'.

This is a very good, older book for remembering 'the forest'. We tend to get more of the behavior we reward.

I frequently miss the fact that I am rewarding bad behavior. Sometimes, the very disapproval I give, is actually taken as a reward of sorts. This book is very simple, but the advice may be surprisingly difficult to follow. The problem is that rewards are a form of communication, and they, like any form of communication, can be confused.

This book is a reminder to examine our reward systems for effectiveness.