Multipliers makes a key assertion: some leaders are “multipliers” — meaning they get more out of people than normal.  Surely you’ve experienced such a leader, someone who lifted you up, inspired you, and helped you do your best work.

Other leaders are “diminishers” — they lead people to produce less than they can by being micromanagers, blamers, tyrants, and so on.

(If we’re getting technical, both groups are multipliers, it’s just that “multipliers” multiply effort of those they lead by a number > 1, while “diminishers” multiply the efforts of those they lead by a number < 1)

The promise of the book is that they will show you how to be a “multiplier” and how to avoid being a “diminisher.”  To do this they outline one assumption Multipliers make and five things that Multipliers do, then they go in depth on each of those items.  You know what?  Let’s just spoil the book:

• The Assumption: People are smart and will figure it out.
• The “disciplines” (the things multipliers do)
  1. The talent magnet — they look for talent everywhere, find out what people are good at and put them to work doing that
  2. The Liberator — create space for people to work, demand their best work and help them learn from mistakes
  3. The Challenger — defines an opportunity that requires people to stretch
  4. The Debate Maker — drives good decision making by fostering good debate
  5. The investor — gives other people ownership and invests in their success

Now, I can look at this and go “yup, those are all good points” and I can also look at it and go “yup, they’ve all been made before.”  Multipliers doesn’t bring any idea that I would say is particularly novel or innovative.  In fact, let’s look at where I’ve heard these items before:

• The Assumption: People are smart and will figure it out.
  • The Toyota Way, Liker — he has three chapters based around the Toyota principle of “Respecting People”
• The “disciplines” (the things multipliers do)
  1. The talent magnet — they look for talent everywhere, find out what people are good at and put them to work doing that
     1. Any positive psychology-centric book will focus on finding people’s natural strengths and using them, as opposed to “fixing” people’s “weaknesses”
  2. The Liberator — create space for people to work, demand their best work and help them learn from mistakes
     1. Turn the Ship Around, Marquet — he calls this style of leadership “leader leader” as opposed to “leader follower” which is a nomenclature I find pleasing.
  3. The Challenger — defines an opportunity that requires people to stretch
     1. This chapter was probably the one I disliked because it ventured too close to new-agey, quasi-magical thinking for my tastes (“Imagine the most successful your organization could ever be.  Now …. DOUBLE IT.  Now DOUBLE IT AGAIN!!!”).  That’s not what they were going for, but they should’ve clarified things a little, in my opinion.  Anyway, read “Good Strategy Bad Strategy” by Rumelt.
  4. The Debate Maker — drives good decision making by fostering good debate
     1. Death by Meeting, Lencioni — one of his key principles in this book is “mining conflict”, or creating productive debates
  5. The investor — gives other people ownership and invests in their success
     1. Managing to Learn, Shook — talks about the difference between “authority-based” and “responsibility-based” organizations

I went through this exercise to point out two things.  One: none of what they bring up is particularly new and/or novel.  I feel I accomplished it.

The second point, though, is that they do bring together a lot of philosophies found in different sources, and they create a “common language” around them.  In all honesty, that’s way more important than people realize.

The Two Reasons to Read a Book about Leadership

There’s two main reasons you might pick up a book about leadership:

1. You, personally, want to become a better leader
2. You want to lead (or aide) an effort to improve leadership throughout your organization

If your reason is that you want to become a better leader then yes, I say pick up this book.  Also, pick up “Turn the ship around” and “Toyota Kata” and “The Advantage” and “On Becoming a Person” and “The Anatomy of Peace” and …

You get the point.  If your goal is to improve your leadership then read as much as you can.  Find the things that work for you.  Try stuff out.  You’re building your personal leadership toolbox, and you want to take tools from as many sources as possible.  Multipliers will definitely provide some tools.  Does it provide the best tools?  Eh … I’m not sure.  I would say there have been other books that were more influential on my leadership style.  But it does have some good ideas.

I would say Multipliers works better, though, for the second case.  You’re trying to improve leadership throughout an organization.

See, if you’re going to work with a lot of people, you need to speak the same language.  If half of the company has read “the anatomy of peace” and they all start talking about boxes all of a sudden, and the other half has read “The Agile Culture” and they’re talking about “Command & Control” vs “Energy & Innovation” then when these two halves meet they’re going to need to spend the first half-hour just explaining the words they’re using to each other.

So if you’re trying to lead cultural change in a company, especially around leadership, you’ll all need to decide on a source of truth.  You’ll need to speak the same language.

Multipliers does not provide the only language by any stretch of the imagination.  But the language it provides has a few things going for it:

1. It is generic — The system outlined in Multipliers was not designed with a specific industry in mind, so you don’t need to know that industry to understand some of the context (This is a problem with otherwise excellent books like “The Goal” and “The Toyota Way”)
2. It is approachable — the terms used aren’t super specialized, and they make sense based on the meaning of the words (for the most part)
3. It isn’t too complicated — One “assumption”, five “disciplines” and, under each discipline, a handful of “practices.”  

If you’re saying “Let’s buy a copy of this book for every manager, read it, and then have discussions and TRANSFORM OUR LEADERSHIP” I think Multipliers is a pretty good place to start, for the reasons listed above.  It’s not THE choice.  There’s a few other ones I think worth considering:

• Turn the Ship Around — more anecdotal, but also a more engaging read
• Toyota Kata — requires some knowledge of The Toyota Way, so it’s a little advanced, but I REALLY like the “katas” it lays out
• The Agile Culture — a little more technology focused, and very jargon-y, but still has some really interesting tools
• The Culture Code — Honestly, this is probably the one closest to “multipliers” in terms of generality and approachability, but also is more about how to create culture as opposed to how to be a leader specifically

I could go on.  And really, if you want to do number 2 above, you need to focus on number 1 first.  And if you’re focusing on number 1 you should read all these anyway to see which connects with you and your company’s culture best.  Once you figured out which one book works best, standardize on it in your org and go nuts.  But I think Multipliers is definitely worth including in the list of books you read.