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| The One Thing You Need to Know: ... About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success | 
 enlarge | Author: Marcus Buckingham
Publisher: Free Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy Used: $2.99
You Save: $26.96 (90%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  46 reviews
Sales Rank: 4409
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 0743261658
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.409
EAN: 9780743261654
ASIN: 0743261658
Publication Date: March 7, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Withdrawn Library copy with customary markings; No writing within text; Missing front page; Splash mark on side pages.Ships within hours from Charleston, SC. Established seller with nearly 10 years of online history.
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Amazon.com Review
As a social science researcher and an esteemed business consultant, Marcus Buckingham (First, Break All the Rules and Now, Discover Your Strengths) has spent considerable time studying the big picture. This wide-angle approach led him to an unexpectedly narrow conclusion: There is a core concept to even the most complex topic. What he has discovered in The One Thing You Need to Know is that single "controlling insights" exist for a whole range of situations, and when properly applied, can encourage exponential improvement and lead to precise action and results. In applying this concept to managing, leading, and individual performance he has pinpointed the single element necessary for achieving success in each of these three key positions. Buckingham acknowledges the subtleties of the topic and his goal is "not to make these subjects simpler, merely clearer." And what could be clearer than one thing? The challenge lies in filtering out the nonessential matters and distinguishing "between what is merely important and what is imperative" in order to produce the greatest and most far-reaching effects. In offering advice on how to do this he also details the three things you need to learn about a person to manage them effectively, explains why a lack of balance is a good thing, shows how to identify your own strengths and weaknesses, and discusses which personality traits all great leaders must possess. Clearly written, informative, and enjoyable, the book aims to motivate readers to act--not just think--differently by providing concrete examples and specific lessons. And it need not be confined to the office--the concepts outlined in these pages can help people feel more fulfilled and productive in all aspects of life. --Shawn Carkonen Essential Buckingham 
First, Break All the Rules | 
Now, Discover Your Strengths | 
The One Thing You Need To Know, Audio CD | 
First, Break All The Rules, Audio CD | 
Now, Discover Your Strengths, Audio CD | 
First, Break All the Rules, Audio Cassette | If You Like Buckingham, You'll Love... - Jack Welch
- Jim Collins
- Larry Bossidy
| - Patrick Lencioni
- Stephen Covey
- Malcolm Gladwell
| - Tom Rath
- Daniel Goleman
- Clayton Christensen
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Product Description
Following the success of the landmark bestsellers First, Break All the Rules and Now, Discover Your Strengths, Marcus Buckingham offers a dramatically new way to understand the art of success. With over 1.6 million copies of First, Break All the Rules (co-authored with Curt Coffman) and Now, Discover Your Strengths (co-authored with Donald O. Clifton) in print, Cambridge-educated Buckingham is considered one of the most respected business authorities on the subject of management and leadership in the world. With The One Thing You Need to Know, he gives readers an invaluable course in outstanding achievement -- a guide to capturing the essence of the three most fundamental areas of professional activity. Great managing, leading, and career success -- Buckingham draws on a wealth of applicable examples to reveal that a controlling insight lies at the heart of the three. Lose sight of this "one thing" and even the best efforts will be diminished or compromised. Readers will be eager to discover the surprisingly different answers to each of these rich and complex subjects. Each could be explained endlessly to detail their many facets, but Buckingham's great gift is his ability to cut through the mass of often-conflicting agendas and zero in on what matters most, without ever oversimplifying. As he observes, success comes to those who remain mindful of the core insight, understand all of its ramifications, and orient their decisions around it. Buckingham backs his arguments with authoritative research from a wide variety of sources, including his own research data and in-depth interviews with individuals at every level of an organization, from CEO's to hotel maids and stockboys. In every way a groundbreaking book, The One Thing You Need to Know offers crucial performance and career lessons for business people at all career stages.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 41 more reviews...
 Full of quality, though some of it is recycled material March 10, 2005
102 out of 105 found this review helpful
Buckingham's book is very good overall; the practical anecdotes he provides of people actually DOING the "one thing" are compelling, and his style is entertaining, and yet no-nonsense.
In giving us "the one thing," Buckingham emphasizes the need for what he calls the "controlling insight" to provide a means not only for getting on to the field of play, but "how to win and keep winning the game."
Armed with this description, he unveils what, based on his considerable experience and research, he considers the controlling insight about great managing, great leading, and sustained individual success.
Here are the "one things" for each:
Managing: "Discover what is unique about each person and capitalize on it."
Leading: "Discover what is universal and capitalize on it."
Sustained individual success: "Discover what you don't like doing and stop doing it."
Along the way, Buckingham provides some excellent points of focus, including a very important differentiation between managing and leading that too many of his contemporaries have overlooked: "When you want to manage, begin with the person. When you want to lead, begin with the picture of where you are headed."
Predictably though, much of the argument for each of the three controlling insights is predicated upon strengths theory, which Buckingham and Clifton popularized with "Now, Discover Your Strengths." In the management chapter, the anecdotes more or less focus on individuals who are able to identify the strengths of their people, and put them to the best possible use. In the sustained individual success chapter, he takes strengths theory a step further, advocating not only discovering your strengths and cultivating them, but eliminating, or managing, those areas in which you are weak as a primary (where "Now" made it more secondary) pursuit.
It is primarily for these chapters that I say some of the material is recycled. However, when you have the research to back up the claims, as Gallup (for whom Buckingham no longer works) certainly does with the StrengthsFinder instrument, you can hardly deviate from it very far.
Another way in which the material is somewhat recycled, though, is in its similarity to Collins' "Good to Great." Buckingham praises the work of Collins in some points, but takes minor swipes at it in others. This is a strange irony in the book, as Buckingham's arguments are very similar to those of Collins, just phrased differently. For example: Collins' "level 5 leadership" entails what he calls "The Stockdale Paradox"--a willingness to look at the brutal reality of the situation, but remain hopeful and determined that one will overcome it. Now, from Buckingham: "When I say leaders are optimistic I mean simply that nothing--not their mood, not the reasoned arguments of others, not the bleak conditions of the present--nothing can undermine their faith that things will get better."
Buckingham's slightly different definition of words like optimism (which could easily be defined as hope) and humility cause him to see Collins in a slightly different light, in spite of the fact that their findings are almost exactly the same. I found myself slightly disappointed by this, but I would recommend this book nevertheless, as it is an excellent compendium of insights overall from a man that few would dispute has become a global leader in these areas.
One humorous note: I'm fairly certain Buckingham has signed a two book deal with Free Press, so I'm anxiously awaiting the second book, especially as he has already given us "The One Thing You Need to Know." :-)
 An obviously great approach I've never seen used before. April 7, 2005
48 out of 51 found this review helpful
Marcus Buckingham is quickly setting himself apart from the current pack of management and leadership gurus out there. He isn't yet in the same league as Peter Drucker or Tom Peters, but he's young and he's headed in their direction.
His latest effort, "The One Thing" joins two instant classics he's already written, "First, Break all the Rules" and "Now, Discover Your Strengths." This book starts with a premise that sounds obvious once you hear it, but that I've never seen used before. Buckingham approaches the complex topics of management, leadership and sustained individual success and asks, "If you wanted to excel in any of these areas, but could focus in on just one single idea, what would be the most important and effective things you could focus on?"
Buckingham then goes on to give you "The One Thing" in each of those areas. His points aren't arrived at frivolously. Buckingham spent years and years working with Gallup, studying and interviewing thousands upon thousands of managers, leaders, and individual contributors, some good and some bad; he knows what separates the wheat from the chaff.
The book is so filled with great insights and "Why didn't I think of that" moments that my copy is all dog-eared and marked up and some of the things I've learned are going into practice as I type this.
Very highly recommended.
 One thing you need to know about this book June 5, 2005
27 out of 38 found this review helpful
One thing you need to know about this book is that it is extremely wordy and contains little substance to justify a 280 page book. Mostly, the author writes what are seemingly useless paragraphs to meander from the focal point of the book: just what is the that one "thing" you should know? For example, the author compares three movies, and concludes that one of the movie was annoying because it didn't answer the question of "what is the meaning of life". I didn't find his wanna-be movie critic analysis useful, intriguing, or entertaining.
Let me save you some money by saying that one thing you should know is to understand your and others' strengths and capitalize on that strength by making it even stronger and utilizing it as much as possible. Everyone should focus on the strengths, not weaknesses.
Extremely disappointing book July 24, 2005
21 out of 30 found this review helpful
I could not read three pages of this book without wanting to take a nap. I couldn't believe that this book was written by the same man who wrote First Break all the Rules.
Basically hthe author takes universal concepts from Optimal Thinking (Wiley) by Rosalene Glickman, Ph.D. and then uses suboptimal thinking to describe The One Thing. It doesn't make sense.
Buckingham says we should manage by discovering what is unique about each person and capitalize on it. Why not optimize instead of manage? as Glickman recommends. Lead by discovering what is universal and capitalize on that. Hmm, universal what?
Achieve sustained individual success by determining what you don't like doing and then stop doing that. So I stop dealing with conflict?
Instead, I recommend Optimal Thinking, Good to Great and Buckingham's, First Break All the Rules.
The one thing -- is the power of optimization March 9, 2005
16 out of 24 found this review helpful
Here is an excerpt. "During the course of your life you will inevitably be exposed to all manner of options, opportunities, and pressures. The key to sustaining success is to be able to filter all these possibilities and fasten on to those few that will allow you to express the best of yourself." Buckingham then goes on to talk about "Controlling insights." This book is really a series of case examples of Dr. Rosalene Glickman's book, Optimal Thinking: How to Be Your Best Self.
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