Book Review: “It’s The Manager” by Jim Clifton and Jim Harter

If you’re looking for the key ingredients to get an engaged workforce, this is a great cookbook. To be clear, the key word is “engaged”. Employees sometimes stay because they feel comfortable, because they’re creatures of habit, because they like the owner, or because it’s just too scary to think about doing anything else. The best organizations have employees that are engaged. These are the employees that come to work because they really want to be there, and they walk in the door ready to make an impact every day. Gallup did a fine job, as they often do, of investigating the organizations and people who are most engaged. They boil it down to 12 essential ingredients that these organizations, and more importantly, the managers within those organizations have. If you’re looking to understand the health of your organization, a survey on those 12 ingredients is a great start.

What’s great about this book?

The advice is solid and straightforward. The study behind it is scientific and not just one person’s opinion. The chapters are short and the print is big, making it extremely readable. It’s a great playbook on helping people move from “boss to coach.”

Any Criticisms

As Jim Clifton often does, the book circles back to the StrengthsFinders assessment towards the end. To be clear, we’re fans of the assessment and the previous books dedicated to it. In this book in particular, the tie in feels forced, and adds about 100 pages of Appendix to the book.