One Foot Out the Door: How to Combat the Psychological Recession That’s Alienating Employees and Hurting American Business

Chapter Four. Bad Management Is (Really) Expensive

THIS CHAPTER IS ABOUT NUMBERS—numbers that speak largely to failure.

Failure or success can be measured in many different ways. For example, is there a high level of energy and innovation, or do large numbers of people come to work only to read the paper, gossip, and complain? This chapter measures failure in terms of emotions. How do people feel about their jobs (mostly negative, it turns out) and how are they likely to act when they feel (as most do) that they’re being treated badly?

What most executives fail to recognize is the link between feelings (both employees and customers) and the organization’s bottom line. In this chapter, I’ve elected to make the case for the importance of feelings ...