Practice What You Preach!: What Managers Must Do to Create a High-achievement Culture (Paperback)

Through extensive research Maister proves, for example, that increasing employee satisfaction will give rise to better financial results and that, in turn, employee satisfaction is caused by setting high standards, coaching and empowerment.

The book identifies 9 key factors which together account for over 50% of variances in profitability. They include such statements as "People within our office always treat others with respect" and "Around here you are required, not just encouraged to learn and develop new skills".

This is hot stuff for anyone in a position of management. Whilst focused primarily on professional service firms, the lessons are relevant to anyone managing a team of people in whatever sphere.

As well as detailed quantitative research (which is well explained) Maister cites some illuminating cases of enligthened managers who do practice what they preach and who, by doing so, are achieving extraordinary business results.

By focusing on the most important issue currently facing professional firms - that of bringing out the very best in their people - Maister reinforces his deserved reputation as a leader in the management of professional service firms.

General Schwartzkopf once said that you should "be the leader you want to have." That's the essence of the message of this book for achieving higher profitability. To make more money in pofessional offices, select and encourage leaders who will set high standards, serve as a good example, police the culture to improve it, and enable people to learn and make progress.

Few works about management and leadership have the superb quantifications involved in this book. The foundation comes in 5589 individual responses (to about 10,000 questionnaires distributed) in 139 offices of 29 firms owned by the same public company. Each office was characterized by four profit tests to establish a profit index. Then differences in employee survey responses were tested against the profit index. Taken in many different cuts, Mr. Maister tells you which questions best correlated statistically with higher profit index numbers for an office. Each key observation is supported by a case example of one office that did well in this dimension. First, he relates what the head of the office said about the office's success and culture. Then he provides a composite interview with the people who work in the office. By comparing the two sets of responses, he then points out the key intersections. It's a fine way of making statistics come to life.

He goes on to use more sophisticated statistical methods to establish which factors together are most significant, and how these factors appear to interact on one another. I was impressed by the quality and thoroughness of this work.

He goes on to drill down to find even more nuances. For example, testing how the youngest employees feel about their work, compensation, and opportunities is the acid test of how well you are doing. As you would expect, cultures usually work better in smaller offices where communication is less likely to become diffused.

The book ends with long lists of practices that seemed to have helped. If you want to know what to do, you should pay the most attention to the summary lessons in chapters 20-25. If you have trouble following all of the statistical analysis early on, just skip back to those sections. Then go back and read the case studies. At that point, you may be ready for the statistical chapters.

The only weakness in the study's design is that it failed to include a comparable set of surveys with clients of the offices. That would have made the richness of the conclusions greater and the persuasive value of the work higher.

How can you set high standards that delight clients and make everyone want to exceed those standards while enabling them to do so? You will find many excellent ideas in this impressive book.

Be the professional service firm you would like to hire!

Maister has done a very elegant yet sophisticated study which he very lucidly and accessibly explains throughout the book and which very clearly proves his point. But don't worry: the book isn't dull and boring. Maister illustrates his research conclusions with fascinating case stories. Of course the message of this book is very positive and hopeful. Like Maister says: "Making money by having high standards [respect, trustworthyness, courage, etc] and never compromising them. What a concept!" But, you might think, is this not all idealistic soft talk?

Is this not too good to be true? Is it that easy? Not really! Practising what you preach requires courage and determination. What I found particularly interesting is the following: this book is more than anything about the difference in what you believe in and what you actually execute. And this is where courage comes in. For example the courage to say 'This far and no further!' when people show disrespect to others, or when other essential standards are violated. It also means saying 'no' to lucrative business which does not fit with your companies' vision/mission. And there is more, but you can read that in the book.

This book can inspire you to escape from the idea that you have to find the right balance between idealism and profitability; it invites you to be both highly idealistic and higly profitable. It can be done. Maister proves it.

Coert Visser