Here is a priceless quote on management from Stephen Covey’s best-seller leadership book:
I was in a group once when someone asked, “How do you shape up lazy and incompetent employees?” One man responded, “Drop hand grenades!” Several others cheered that kind of macho management talk, that “shape up or ship out” supervision approach.
But another person in the group asked, “Who picks up the pieces?”
“No pieces.”
“Well, why don’t you do that to your customers?” the other man replied. “Just say, ‘Listen, if you’re not interested in buying, you can just ship out of this place.’”
He said, “You can’t do that to customers.”
“Well, how come you can do it to employees?”
“Because they’re in your employ.”
“I see. Are your employees devoted to you? Do the work hard? How’s the turnover?”
“Are you kidding? You can’t find good people these days. There’s too much turnover, absenteeism, moonlighting. People just don’t care anymore.”
(Page 58)
Comments
Jim
Back to the book quote, basically, the "management by grenades" approach only works with people who succumb to that management style- those people tend to be very submissive, not creative, and will not go the extra yard for a customer for fear of doing something wrong or because their spirit has been destroyed by management to care anymore.