Notes on — Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter

Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown is a managers book written by consultants. As Ben Horowitz notes on The Hard Thing About Hard Things there is a current problem with business books that talk about the nice aspects of business but never really get down and dirty to the day to day problems of managing and running a business. Multipliers is such a book, although full of nuggets of good advice many of its principles can only be applied given the right context and circumstances.

In the book Wiseman looks to define two types of managers:

a Multiplier who can get twice the productivity from his team by making everyone around him smarter and a Diminisher a manager who through his actions drains the energy of his team and creates a non productive work environment.

Like other books of its kind, Multipliers outlines valuable points about managing a team by defining five distinctive characteristics of Multipliers vs. that of a Diminishers:

• The Multiplier is a Talent Magnet while the Diminisher is an Empire Builder. A Talent Magnet attracts and optimizes talent.
• The Multiplier is a Liberator while the Diminisher is a Tyrant. A Liberator requires people´s best thinking.
• The Multiplier is a Challenger while the Diminisher is a Know-It-All. A Challenger extends challenges to its team.
• The Multiplier is a Debate Maker while the Diminisher is a Decision Maker. A Debate Maker creates debates among its team to reach solutions.
• The Multiplier is an Investor while the Diminisher is a Micromanager. An Investor instills accountability in its team.

The Talent Magnet vs. the Empire Builder

The Talent Magnet gets access to the best talent because the team knows they will be fully utilized and develop. Wiseman describes a relationship where the manager acts as a talent developer and people who seek to be develop flock to work for him.

The Empire Builder is also good at bringing talent but they underutilize it because they are not willing to spend the time developing the team and instead hoard all the resources for their personal benefit.

A Talent Magnet practices the following:

• Look for talent everywhere
• Find People´s Native Genius
• Utilize People to Their Fullest
• Remove the Blockers

To become a Talent Magnet the author advises:

• Becoming a genius watcher: a good manager knows that his most important responsibility is creating an effective team. A Multiplier is always looking for talent in unexpected places,
• Pull some weeds: like a good gardener a Multiplier needs to constantly prune the team to keep and develop the best talent.

The Liberator vs. the Tyrant

A Liberator is a manager who can create a results oriented environment where people are accountable for their results but not afraid to speak out and give their best effort. For the team a Tyrant is a manager who creates a culture of fear in its team making people fearful of speaking out, working cautiously as to not enrage the leader and never giving their best effort.

A Liberator practices the following:

• Creates space it the team so that people can contribute
• Demands the Best Work of people by holding a high standard that everyone is accountable for
• Generates Rapid Learning Cycles where he emphasizes learning over making mistakes.

The Know-It-All Vs. The Challenger

A Challenger sees problems as challenges that the team is responsible for solving, even if this means going beyond the current responsibilities of what the team knows how to do. A Know-It-All believes that he is the only one that can solve hard problems in the team. Every problem becomes his problem and in doing so limits what the organization can collectively achieve.

The Challenger practices:

• Create Opportunities with the team by challenging assumptions and showing the need.
• Lays Down Challenges that are measurable and contributes by asking hard questions but letting others fill in the blanks.
• Makes sure the team believes the challenge is possible

The Decision Maker Vs. The Debate Maker

A Debate Maker is a manager who can create real debates in its team. Forcing people to talk about the hard problems and give honest if sometimes harsh opinions. This leads to sound decisions that benefit the organization. Decision makers do not make inclusive decisiones. They leave the team in the dark when making a decision making the team feel not worthy of contributing to the decision.

The Debate Maker practices:

• Framing the issue by defining the right questions, assembling the data, team and setting the parameters to make the decision.
• Sparks debate by creating places where people are not afraid to voice their honest opinions.
• Drives the team to a sound decision by creating decision-making processes and correctly communicating the rationale behind the decisions.

The Micromanager vs. The Investor

An Investor is a manager who understands not only that people are his greatest asset but that he sees the talent of people as something that he can develop and improve allowing them to produce results independent of the leader. A Micromanager in contrast, looks to control all details of production and create dependence with himself limit the ability of the team to perform.

The Investor practices:

• Gives ownership of end goals stretching the roles of people.
• Invest resources in the team by teaching, coaching and providing backup.
• Holds people accountable to their results making them clear and visible to the organization.

Main takeaways for a Gazelle CEO

For Wiseman a Multiplier is a great team builder who can bring the best out of people while making the team smarter and achieving better results. A Diminisher is a smart, driven, Type A personality employee who through results has managed to move up the organizational ladder, but is absorbed in his own intelligence blocking the teams´development and capability.

Although not described in detail, the author does correctly mention the pitfall of many employees as they move up in an organization.

The skills that made were your strengths as an employee become your weaknesses as a manager.

Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter does a good job of reminding a Gazelle CEO that as a company scales, a CEO needs to build a team of effective managers who can delegate, inspire and bring the best out of people. Making the transition from a small team to a hundred plus employee company needs this. A CEO who gets stuck as a Diminisher (or allows executives to act as Dimishers) will become the bottleneck of the companies´ growth.

Should you read it?

Although not applicable in every scenario and for all teams, Multipliers is a useful book for many entrepreneurs who are scaling an organization. It is a reminder for many entrepreneurs who are smart and driven to not become Diminishers in their organizations. It certainly helped me realize this. This is not a book that will teach you how to correctly manage a team. There are books that address the complexity of this issue in greater detail. You should read this book to remind yourself that your effectiveness as a CEO depends on the effectiveness of your team.

For those interested in reviewing my kindle highlights and notes on the book here is a link