Manifesto for a Revolution

Review of Follow This Path by Curt Coffman and Gabriel Gonzalez-Molina

Reviewed by Don Blohowiak, Lead Well Institute, www.LeadWell.com

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 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 from Gallup and many others makes clear, that's the only level at which real change actually occurs anyway.

Get the book and read it with a scientific mind, skeptical but open. Then get busy charting your own course through the new frontier of what Gallup aptly terms The Emotional Economy.

Chances are, you'll feel better...with rising productivity and profits...because customers feel better...because your employees feel better.

Buy this important book here.

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