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Synopsis

The Best of the Gallup Management Journal 2001-2007 could not be more relevant today, as executives continue to struggle with the transition into a 21st century global economy. Many leaders have reengineered and reorganized their companies numerous times. But what remains is the biggest business challenge of all: improving and perfecting relationships with customers and with the employees who engage them. More than anything, executives and managers need quantifiable, measurable strategies for making the "intangible" side of their businesses as productive and profitable as it can be.

For years, hardheaded business leaders and gurus have said that it's impossible to measure these intangibles. The GMJ argues that they're wrong, and this book offers proof. Drawing on interviews with millions of employees and customers worldwide, the articles and interviews in these pages cover topics such as the best way to get meaningful employee feedback, why customer satisfaction is the wrong measure, the 12 elements of great managing, why most advertising doesn't work, and the impact of positive leadership.

A range of voices from within and outside Gallup is included in these pages. A Ritz-Carlton executive tells how his company is reinventing its world-class brand, while a leader at Ann Taylor describes how the retailer invests in talent. Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman probes how customers think, while one of the inventors of the Internet, Vinton Cerf, speculates on the future of his creation.

With its lively writing and penetrating research-driven insights, The Best of the Gallup Management Journal 2001-2007 is essential reading for leaders who want to engage employees and customers in a hyper-competitive and ever-changing global economy.

Editorial Reviews

"Paying attention to local human interactions helps businesses of every stripe meet that one big objective -- higher revenues and earnings -- more surely than focusing on financials alone."

-- John H. Fleming, Ph.D., coauthor of Human Sigma: Managing the Employee-Customer Encounter, and James K. Harter, Ph.D., coauthor of 12: The Elements of Great Managing, from "Optimize"

"The worst thing that can happen to your business is for 100% of your customers to base their relationships 100% on price. When this happens, your leadership needs to go from 'lousy to good' in a hurry."

-- Jim Clifton, Chairman and CEO, Gallup, from "Good to Great? Or Lousy to Good?"

"Many Fortune 500 businesses remain woefully unprepared to understand and counter threats from competitors. High school football teams know more about their rivals than do most companies."

-- Bill Hoffman, Partner, Gallup, from "James Bond Comes to the Boardroom"

"We sometimes forget that walls can be torn down. Part of the problem is determining who should wield the crowbar."

-- Tom Rieger, Principal, Gallup, and Craig Kamins, Senior Consultant, Gallup, from "Are You Failing to Engage?"

"There are better and worse ways of making decisions. Probably the worst way is to look at the decision in isolation from everything else. . . . If you focus too much on each problem separately, you'll get very lost and make bad decisions."

-- Daniel Kahneman, Ph.D., Winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics, from "What Were They Thinking?"

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