Book SummaryNine Lies About Work, by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Nine Lies About Work

Published in 2019, Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World explains why many of our workplace norms and practices are flawed and, thus, prevent people and organizations from flourishing. Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall argue that to build a thriving organization, today’s leader should be a freethinking leader, one who questions established systems and beliefs and who values individuality over conformity.

Buckingham is the best-selling author of First, Break All the Rules. He worked at the Gallup Organization, a US analytics and advisory company, before starting his own coaching and software company. Co-author Goodall has first-hand leadership experience at large organizations—he’s a senior vice president at Cisco Systems and previously oversaw leadership development at...

Nine Lies About Work Summary Lies About Organizations

The typical organization has rules and processes that dictate how to evaluate, train, retain, pay, and promote employees. However, Buckingham and Goodall argue that these pervasive systems are lies, based on outdated or faulty beliefs. As a result, the majority of workers aren’t engaged at work and productivity growth is lagging. (Shortform note: Research suggests that the two are correlated. Companies with high employee engagement—meaning their employees are committed enough to the company to do their best work—are 21% more profitable.)

In this section, we’ll discuss these organizational lies and what leaders can do to address them.

Lie #1: Corporate Culture Is Important

According to Buckingham and Goodall, organizations emphasize building a strong corporate culture, because they believe that it can attract and retain employees. They offer perks and implement policies that reinforce the culture they want to cultivate—for example, they offer free lunches to demonstrate that they’re people-centric or install solar panels to send the message that they’re eco-conscious.

(Shortform note: People...

Nine Lies About Work Summary Lies About People

The previous set of lies uncovered the flawed systems and processes at organizations: an emphasis on corporate culture, a top-down approach to planning and goal-setting, and a reliance on seemingly objective performance appraisals. In the following set of lies, Buckingham and Goodall discuss the ineffectiveness of conventional approaches to people management and development, which seek to eliminate individuality so that companies can more easily control employees. The authors’ main argument is that individuality should be seen as the main feature of human beings, not as a glitch—recognizing and nurturing what makes people unique makes them perform better and feel more fulfilled.

Lie #5: People Should Work on Their Weaknesses

In the fifth lie (Lie #4 in the book), the authors describe how employees are typically evaluated on their core competencies, or specific skills required for the job. Those who are proficient at most or all of the competencies are given opportunities for advancement. Meanwhile, those who demonstrate weakness in some areas are held back from promotion, even if they have specific (though limited) strengths. These employees are then required to work...

Shortform Exercise: Find More Fulfillment at Work

Buckingham and Goodall write that you should forget about work-life balance and find more fulfillment in your work by doing more of the tasks that you love.

List your work tasks in the past week and divide them into two categories: what you loved (something you looked forward to and that energized you) and what you hated (something you put off doing or passed on to someone else).