Everybody Matters - Bob Chapman & Raj Sisodia

Why read this book?

It does exactly as the title suggests, showing you what can be achieved in business when ‘everybody matters’. Rather than a theoretical look at leadership, this book outlines how Bob Chapman, over the course of many years and many mistakes, came up with his own practical methods for turning around struggling businesses by focusing on people over everything else. This book follows Bob’s journey and business philosophies.

The author

Bob Chapman is Chairman and CEO of global manufacturing business, Barry-Wehmiller. After some initial struggles, he turned around the fortunes of the business and has since overseen around 90 successful acquisitions.

Raj Sisodia is an international speaker and author on organisational philosophy.

Here’s a video of Bob:

What has this book encouraged me to do differently?

To rethink how business is done. Or more how business can to be done. As Simon Sinek mentions in the foreward, organisations focusing solely on people are an optimist’s dream. But as Bob has achieved it, it’s no longer just for optimists, but can be a dream for realists too.

97% of ‘Lean’ initiatives fail. Organisations cut costs, reduce waste, increase efficiencies and streamline processes. But they make the decisions based on numbers, not humans. So the humans often end up miserable, with a lack of control, lack of trust, lack of purpose and the general feeling that their employee doesn’t care about them.

This book encourages you to consider each employee as a human - which sounds like common sense, but is very rarely done especially in times of redundancy, downsizing and restructuring. Would you want your children to be treated the way your employees currently are?

Leadership should be considered an honour, you have people’s time and feelings entrusted to you - do what you can to send them home happy and make this the culture of your organisation. Happy, engaged and cared for employees, that are genuinely listened to, may just surprise you with the performance levels they achieve.

Who knows, by taking a more human approach to leadership, your business may experience the levels of commitment and loyalty experienced by Bob. They’ve even developed their own in-house ‘university’ where all lecturers are employees - to ensure the culture and principles continue to be spread through every new business acquisition.

From reframing leadership, building a culture and planning for the future; to providing freedom, recognising success and humanising every process… worth a read to see how things can work very differently.