The Lean CEO: Leading the Way to World-Class Excellence

CHAPTER 6

A REALISTIC APPROACH TO WORKER MOTIVATION

One of the most common marching orders for new leaders is to address a situation that is being presented as a workforce motivation problem. Often a new hire walks into an us-versus-them environment in which managers and employees are pitted against one another in a zero-sum game. The symptoms may include poor morale, low productivity, quality issues, lack of teamwork, or even outright hostility toward the company’s management.

 Conventional wisdom in the early 1900s was that the manager-worker relationship was inherently adversarial and that the key weapons for ensuring a productive workforce ...