The One Thing You Need To Know...About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success

By: Marcus Buckingham

Narrated by: Marcus Buckingham

Length: 3 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

Here's a dramatically new way to understand the art of success.

Great managing, great leading, career success - Marcus Buckingham draws on a wealth of examples to reveal the single controlling insight that lies at the heart of each. Lose sight of this "one thing", and even your best efforts will be diminished or compromised. 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 data and in-depth interviews with individuals at every level of an organization, from CEOs to hotel maids and stock boys.

In every way a groundbreaking audiobook, The One Thing You Need to Know offers essential performance and career lessons for businesspeople at all career stages.

©2005 One Thing Productions, Inc. All rights reserved (P)2005 Simon and Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

Critic reviews

"Top-shelf advice delivered flawlessly by a true organizational visionary." (AudioFile)

Well rounded, shorter book but reads a bit slower

I recently read musk and jobs buographied and the 4 dysfunctions of a team
...if you enjoyed them you'll probably enjoy this but it reads much slower. I actually put it down. a few times and had to force myself to come back to and I am glad I did bc it really shines in the last chapter.

gripping and highly applicable

from beginning to end, solid material. author uses great examples of real world applications and puts the reader immediately into a mindset of how this can apply to their lives, whether they manage people or are an individual contributor.

Very well done.

Took complex roles and boiled them down to the most important area to focus. Each person can excel in each of these roles if they focus on the one thing.

Phenomenal

I know I will come back to this powerful book multiple times in the future. Very insightful

The authors narration is so well done.

Three things

It's one thing each manager needs to know, one thing each leader needs to know, and one thing each person needs to know to sustain individual success. Since I'm all three. There three things I need to know. Good stuff. Nothing really profound.

Marcus Buckingham is a giant in the field

Packed full of useable advice to help you, your management team and your front lines. I highly recommend this audio

This book really made me think a lot!

Really worthwhile for every person to read and not just mangers. Principals shared can be applied in many areas of your life.

Excellent and concise

Excellent, concise book on managing, leading, and individual success. I find myself going back to this one in between books because it's a quick read and very helpful for my stage of life.

I enjoy leadership books in general and they tend to fall into 1 of 2 categories - the thick & thorough (T&T) research dense books and the flighty, vague, "parables." The T&T are enjoyable because there are reams of research on each point and most if not all the details are explained... but at the expense of 14-40+hours to read/listen. The "Parables" for me are pretty useless and are basically 1 idea from the T&T, repackaged and written by a person who has never been in a leader/manager, etc... the positive is that these books tend to be short read/listens 1-4hrs.

This book takes all the positives of a T&T and scales it down to less that 4hours while still being thorough, and clearly fleshing out each of the concepts presented. Love it!

Good content, excellent voice

I felt it was just not enough detail into the strategies and ideas he suggests. Perfectly fine though.

Definitely worth knowing

If you could sum up The One Thing You Need To Know...About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success in three words, what would they be?

Actionable, concise, contextual.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The One Thing You Need To Know...About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success?

The difference between a great manager and a great leader.

What about Marcus Buckingham’s performance did you like?

At-ease style.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

No.

Any additional comments?

This book needs to be updated to no longer lean on Best Buy as a model of success. They're business has suffered in recent years and I suspect that even if Best Buy has high employee engagement, their failure to innovate is weighing heavily on their success.