Up the Organization: How to Stop the Corporation from Stifling People and Strangling Profits (J-B Warren Bennis Series)

All decisions should be made as low as possible in the organization. The Charge of the Light Brigade was ordered by an officer who wasn’t there looking at the territory.

If they can’t release their spare energies toward your goals, they’ll moonlight for somebody who doesn’t have job descriptions and policy manuals.

It’s for those who have the courage, the humor, and the energy to make a non-monster company, or a non-monster piece of a monster company, operate as if people were human.

I suppose the best way to tell a leader is, if you find a place where people are coming to work enthusiastically and they are excited to come to work and would rather work there than anywhere else, you can bet you have got a leader. Well, there’s

manufacturing of men is about as effective as Dr. Frankenstein was. As McGregor points out, the sounder approach is agricultural. Provide the climate and proper nourishment and let the people grow themselves.They’ll amaze you.

Gordon Forward, CEO of Chapparal Steel, introduced a Townsendian “management by adultery” (a previously X-rated concept in which Forward treated his employees like adults and then got out of the way as they set productivity records);

POLAROID POWER. If you’re responsible for a group of hamburger stands, service stations, banks, nursing homes or supermarkets, where appearance is critical, take a Polaroid camera along on your trips. If you see an obsolete sign, a dirty counter or a slovenly employee, take a picture. Show it to the manager.Tell him it will

PROMISES Keep them. If asked when you can deliver something, ask for time to think. Build in a margin of safety. Name a date. Then deliver it earlier than you promised.

INCENTIVE COMPENSATION AND PROFIT SHARING