'Working Wounded': What Matters More Than Pay?
— -- D E A R R E A D E R S: Former McKinsey management consultant Jon Katzenbach has long been known as the guru of teams.
His latest book is titled Why Pride Matters More Than Money: The Greatest Motivational Force in the World (Crown Business, 2003).
Read the interview below and you'll see why he's proud to talk up pride as the key to getting the most out of people at work.
Pride and Joy
W.W.: What is the key to business success today?
J.K.: Money attracts and retains, but pride is what motivates people to perform at the highest levels.
W.W.: But pride has a bad connotation for many people, doesn't it?
J.K.: Yes, and self-serving "pridefulness" invariably weakens organizational performance. We see ample evidence of that in the disturbing tales of Enron and Tyco. Such self-serving pride (fueled by money) motivates corrosive behaviors just as institution-building pride motivates highly productive behaviors. The challenge is to counter-balance self-serving pride with institution-building pride.
W.W.: How do you do that?
J.K.: Leaders must believe instilling pride has economic value; they cannot assume that money is the answer. Create a cadre of "pride-builders" close to the frontline people who make and sell your products and services. Focus on accelerating the development of pride-building capability in future managers. Pride-building capability is as learnable as "management by the numbers." Demonstrate that you care about people in ways that matter to them by recognizing the little things they accomplish without being phony, and by creating realistic images (i.e., stories) of how they will feel when performance improves.
W.W.: Do you have a real-world example?
J.K.: A General Motors plant manager and his counterpart union leader led a significant turnaround in plant performance over a two-year period by focusing attention primarily on improving work force safety. Workers quickly recognized that someone actually cared about their well being --
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