CHAPTER  |  SIX

Move Your Company Ahead by Encouraging Your People

To Peter Drucker, management was more than a job, even more than a profession. It was a calling. So, managers were certainly not supposed to cause harm. This doesn't mean that managers should not strive for efficiency in what they or others do, or that they aren't responsible for performance in their areas of work. Rather, it is that being the boss is not like a switch that you turn on and forget. Leading others consists of always respecting and helping those you lead and work with, not driving them hard while you focus on competing with others for your own success.

Max DePree is the former chairman and CEO of Herman Miller, Inc., the furniture maker that Fortune magazine once named one of the ten “best managed” and “most innovative” companies in America. DePree wrote: “The best people working for organizations are like volunteers. Since they could probably find good jobs in any number of groups, they choose to work somewhere for reasons less tangible than salary or position. Volunteers do not need contracts, they need covenants.”¹

Peter Drucker taught the same thing. In the modern world, where employees have mobility, even in a recession, all employees should be treated as if they were volunteers and can go somewhere else—because they can. And “volunteer treatment” is a strong form of giving employees the most help.

Treating People with Respect Gains Respect

Isn't it within your power as a manager to treat people with respect and to ensure that others in your organization do the same? Certainly every human being deserves to be treated with respect. Many outstanding leaders maintain that those who work for you should be treated with even more than respect. Mary Kay Ash, the woman who built a billion-dollar corporation, Mary Kay Cosmetics, recommended that managers imagine that everyone they meet every day is wearing a large sign saying, MAKE ME FEEL IMPORTANT.

James MacGregor Burns, an American political scientist, wrote an excellent book called Leadership. (In fact, the book was so outstanding that it won the Pulitzer Prize.) Here's his succinct advice, for Drucker could not have put it much better himself: “In real life, the most practical advice for leaders is not to treat pawns like pawns, nor princes like princes, but all persons like persons.”² Drucker followed this advice. He treated virtually everyone with respect. I suspect that not only CEOs, but also heads of state were treated exactly the way he treated his students.

Recognition for Good Work Is Desired and Deserved

Everyone wants recognition, according to Connie Podesta and Jean Gatz, two management consultants who wrote How to Be the Person Successful Companies Fight to Keep. They reported that one CEO confided his frustration and distress:

I have worked so hard to turn this company around. I have managed to keep our profits up without laying off one person. I provide excellent benefits, and I'm willing to pay for my employees to go to school. I spend a great deal of money on picnics, parties, and celebrations because I want them to enjoy their jobs and feel as though this is a family they can count on. Very few of them have ever said thank you or even seem to appreciate how hard I try to make this a great place to work. On the other hand, if one little thing goes wrong or I have to say no to any of their ideas, some of them threaten to quit. And others won't speak to me.³

You may feel that this is the nature of workers and that this CEO must learn to be more thick-skinned. Perhaps. But here is an important manager, a CEO who has made it to the top of his company. He has power and responsibility, and is probably making a good salary. Yet even he craves recognition for what he does for his workers. If this is true of a powerful person like this, think how true it must be for everyone else—including you and me, and those you may wish to motivate.

There are so many ways to recognize your employees. Management expert Dr. Bob Nelson, a friend who completed the same doctoral program under Drucker that I did, actually identified over a thousand! He published them in a book entitled 1001 Ways to Reward Employees. If you think that's a lot (and it is!), Bob recently updated his book with a new one: 1501 Ways to Reward Employees.⁴

Workers Need to Develop Their Skills

Do you create opportunities for those in your organization to develop their skills? Can you provide special courses in-house? How about a few hours off every week to complete a college degree? Maybe you can hire a physical fitness instructor to work with employees during lunch or after work. Sometimes an employee has the ability to do this, or has unique knowledge about which he or she is willing to instruct other employees. All you need to do is ask. Don't forget that you and other managers or workers in your organization can act as teachers if any of you have expertise in special areas. Of course, those who teach also learn.

Let Your Workers Think for Themselves

Are you open to letting your people think for themselves? Drucker said that you could tell people what to do; however, he also taught that managers must allow their workers to decide how to do most parts of their jobs for themselves—that it motivated workers to do so. Peter Drucker didn't mean that you shouldn't give help if asked. However, you need to recognize that people have their own abilities, experiences, and unique backgrounds. That's why they have been given the duties that they have been assigned. That's also why they're such valuable resources: They have a lot to contribute. It's wasteful to do all of the thinking for everyone in your organization. Try that, and sooner or later you are certain to run into difficulties.

Even if you could do all of the thinking for all of your workers, you would be ill-advised to do so. If all of your people thought exactly like you, your organization would have a pretty limited source of ideas. In addition, researchers have discovered that synergy is created such that the products of many separate brains working together are far greater than the sum of each considered separately. If you try to do all the thinking in your organization yourself, you will lose this important synergism. Let your workers do their own thinking, and you'll be amazed and surprised at what they come up with and how they use their expertise to solve your problems.

A business scientist by the name of Frederick Herzberg built on Maslow's work involving motivation and needs. Herzberg collected data on job attitudes among employees in hundreds of companies. From studying the data, he concluded that workers have two completely different categories of needs that affect satisfaction or dissatisfaction with a job.

According to Herzberg, real motivators are satisfying factors that relate to the job itself. They involve feelings of achievement, recognition for accomplishment, challenging work, increased responsibility, growth, and development. These are the factors that produce job satisfaction as contrasted with the other category, “hygiene needs,” which only prevent job dissatisfaction.

Herzberg's work is important to us because it means that if we reduce the hygiene factors, we're going to get job dissatisfaction. How would you feel if someone reduced your salary? So to avoid job dissatisfaction, we maintain the hygiene factors at their present levels. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. Most workers will accept reduction for the good of the organization if everyone's salary is reduced proportionately on a fair basis.

However, if we want those we lead to be more satisfied with their jobs, we must use the real motivators, not only salary. That is, we must look for ways that we can increase:

• Feelings of achievement
• Recognition
• Challenge in the work
• Responsibility
• Growth and development

What Does It Cost to Give Workers What They Really Want?

Most of the factors considered important by workers can probably be improved by you today. These are factors that you can improve regardless of restrictions or limitations on salary or benefits placed by your parent organization. And none of these will cost you very much to implement compared with pay, benefits, or providing perfect job security. This is good news if you have limited resources and want to motivate and help your workers achieve higher performance.

While you are helping others in your company, you will help your company get ahead at the same time. That's the Peter Drucker way to success for your organization: Care for your people, and it will be a win-win for you and them, and a win for your organization. He meant what he said in teaching us that, above all, do no harm. He wanted us to succeed with our organizations, and he knew that the way to do this was a focus not only on goals but on people as well.