Why Pride Matters More Than Money
The Power of the World's Greatest Motivational Force
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
The book that turns our understanding of motivation on its head . . . and shows why most companies get it wrong.
There are few people with more experience and accumulated wisdom about the inner workings of business and how people can work together more effectively than Jon Katzenbach. His groundbreaking research has resulted in several important books, including The Wisdom of Teams and Real Change Leaders. Over the past several years he has turned his attention to one of the perennial questions of leaders everywhere: How do I motivate my employees?
Most everyone frets about how to devise schemes that will keep the troops revved up. Conventional wisdom—or at least the practice at most companies—often centers on money as the primary motivating force. Many also rely on intimidation, which like money generally has a short-term impact. But what Katzenbach has found in his research at many organizations is that both of these practices do little to build the long-term sustainability of an organization. For that you need a powerful force that has been—until this point—understood by few managers and implemented by fewer still: pride.
From the front lines to the executive suite, most people are motivated by feelings of accomplishment, approval, and camaraderie. It’s why the best employees strive well beyond performance levels that will yield them higher pay and why most true professionals relentlessly avoid retirement.
Why does Southwest Airlines consistently turn in the highest levels of performance and profitability of any company in the airline business? What can the U.S. Marines teach us about individual commitment that can be used in the for-profit world? How is General Motors overcoming its history of labor-management enmity through the efforts of “pride-builders” from both the union and the management side? By drawing on what he has learned from these and many other organizations, Jon Katzenbach provides a practical program for understanding the role of pride:
• Money is not the motivator most people think it is: Katzenbach shows why pay-for-performance programs by themselves result in employees who focus on self-serving behavior and skin-deep organizational commitment.
• Money tends to be a short-term motivational device and works best during times of growth, but pride works in bad times as well as good.
• Cultivating pride is an investment that yields high returns on workforce performance over time and is not nearly as costly as relying solely on monetary compensation and the turnover risks that accompany a “show me the money” culture.
Katzenbach shares unique insights and specifics about how the best mid-level pride-builders take advantage of the world’s greatest motivational force even in environments as challenging as General Motors and Aetna. He shows how managers at every level are missing a powerful lever if they are not instilling pride as a primary force for building their organization.
Also available as an eBook.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When people learn they're capable of much more than they thought possible, anticipatory pride becomes their driving motivational force, according to Katzenbach, the director of an eponymous consulting firm. The author of Peak Performance and The Wisdom of Teams gears his latest book towards companies and institutions wanting to inspire their employees, members or participants with primarily non-financial incentives (team spirit, camaraderie and excitement, for example)."Money by itself is likely to produce self-serving behavior and skin-deep organizational commitment rather than...institution-building behavior," Katzenbach asserts. Citing specific case studies, Katzenbach considers companies and institutions such as General Motors and its diverse management programs and the U.S. Marine Corps' emphasis on honor and courage. Employee recognition, he says, is a crucial element of any campaign to bolster group morale. A Microsoft employee, for example, likes to tell people that"we work on products that everyone is likely to use, and I mean everyone. More than one hundred million people use Office, my product. People will stop me in the middle of a conversation and say, 'You worked on that feature?' It's instant respect." The lure of monetary reward may always be a primary motivation for employees, but in clear and persuasive prose, Katzenbach cautions that because most of the rank and file cannot hope to compete with those at the top, other, less tangible motivations must propel group successes.