Contents

Chapter 1 Positive Management, Strategy, and Productivity . . . . . . 1

Chapter 2 Rethinking Productivity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Chapter 3 Why Does Negative Management Exist,
and Can It Be Reduced?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Chapter 4 The Emergence of Positive Management . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Chapter 5 Why Is Positive Management Needed?. . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Chapter 6 Positive Management and Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Chapter 7 Positive Management and Organizational Culture . . . . 75
Chapter 8 Straight Talk About Positive Management . . . . . . . . . . 81
Chapter 9 Positive Management and the
Day-to-Day Business of Managing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Chapter 10 Creating a Positive Work Environment in Your
Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Chapter 11 Organizational Strategy and Positive Management . . . 115

Notes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

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 CHAPTER 1

Positive Management,
Strategy, and Productivity
We may be at a point of major change in how we manage organizations.
Two powerful new insights have emerged:

1. It is recognized that the path to future prosperity for the developed

world must come through different business models and strategies
than have been used in the past.
2. The primary discipline underlying management is changing, and
it may be necessary for the practice and study of management to
change with it.

This book deals with the idea of building productivity in organi-

zations (certainly not a new topic) but approaches it from a direction
not thoroughly investigated in the past. Historically we have thought of
productivity gains as being extracted from our workforces in the same
way that we extract diamonds or oil from the ground. This approach
presumes a tension between managers (representing owners) and the
nonmanager employees hired to carry out the owners’ wishes. In this con-
ceptualization, employees “give up” productivity because managers devise
ways to get it out of them, just as they devise ways to get minerals out
of the ground or more units of product from the same-size batch of raw
materials. This view of productivity does not assume that employees are
unwilling to be productive, but there is no presumption that they are
willing, either. This book proposes an organizational strategy that treats
employees more like partners than subordinates. The goal of this strategy
is to increase commitment, effort, and focus in the organization and to
increase productivity by leveraging those human resources.

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 2 POSITIVE MANAGEMENT

Productivity and Sustainability

For first-world economies, the key to sustaining employment and stan-
dards of living in this century will lie along one of two paths. The first path
is already known: the creation of new businesses and industries that can-
not be quickly duplicated by countries with significantly lower labor costs.
The second path was revealed to us by the financial debacle during the
first decade of the 21st century: Organizations must sustain themselves by
increasing efficiency. Productivity is integral to both paths. It is crucial for
nascent industries and the central issue in survival of mature organizations.
To sustain an income base that will maintain our current standard of liv-
ing and support our businesses, we must find a way to keep wages high and
unemployment low. Keeping production of goods and services inside first-
world economies—not allowing them to migrate simply because of lower
wage structures—is one way to do this, but it is not nearly enough. The larg-
est part of the equation is increasing productivity in existing organizations to
limit inflationary pressure on product and service prices. There is no magic
wand that will protect first-world businesses from being outsourced to sec-
ond- and third-world economies, but sustained high productivity probably
offers the best opportunity to slow or prevent that transition.
Though business productivity is an important focus of this book, we
will not ignore not-for-profit and public-sector organizations. The out-
sourcing issue is not significant for these parts of our economy, but the
relationship between productivity and sustainability is likely to be just
as important as it is in for-profit organizations. Now is not the time to
resignedly tussle with ever-increasing costs. If our organizations are to
prosper, be it in making profits or better serving stakeholders, they must
get better at what they do. If we are to sustain the lifestyles to which we
have become accustomed and offer our quality of life to our children,
we need to perform many organizational tasks more cheaply than they
are done now, and these savings need to be created within our borders.
We have found ways to maintain or even lower prices over the last 20
years, but we are now discovering that, in doing so, we have hollowed
out some of the highest value-added sectors of our economy. The only
way to level prices and maintain profitability without further weakening
our economy is to increase productivity—to produce more outputs with
equal or fewer inputs.

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 POSITIVE MANAGEMENT, STRATEGY, AND PRODUCTIVITY 3

Inflation- and dividend-adjusted stock performance showed approxi-

mately 0% change in value during the first decade of the 21st century.
The weak performance of equities can be attributed, at least in part, to a
loss of energy and focus within organizations. That loss of ability is par-
tially due to organizations signaling (for decades) that loyalty and com-
mitment are unimportant. As the gears of demographics and economics
entangle society in their mesh, we are realizing that building disloyalty
into our organizations’ social fabric was not a good idea. The challenge
for managers is to get loyalty and commitment back.
For employees to perform well day in and day out, they need to
want to perform well. This, too, is challenging because median house-
hold income is also stagnant, with practically no change between 1998
and 2008.1 In fact, the inflation-adjusted median household income was
lower during the majority of that period than it was for 1998.
With company performance and household incomes stagnant, some-
thing fundamental must change to again allow sustained wealth and
income creation from sources other than natural resources, importation
of goods produced elsewhere, and financial manipulation.

New Thinking About the Psychology of Management

Changes in the underlying field of psychology have led to the develop-
ment of a new subfield in management focused on the construction
and maintenance of positive relationships in the workplace. Generally
this subfield aims to create a better balance between positive and nega-
tive actions in work environments. It operates on the (quite reasonable)
assumption that negative information currently commands the majority
of management attention in organizations. Positive management (PM)
focuses new and much-needed attention on the role of happy, confident,
and secure employees in the overall performance of the organization. By
using an economic (as opposed to accounting) definition of productivity,
we can link increases in productivity to positive work relationships.

Can This Really Work?

Skepticism about positive management (PM) is understandable, espe-
cially if one adheres to the simplistic view that it is just being “soft” on

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 4 POSITIVE MANAGEMENT

employees. If one holds that view, reactions to PM might include the

following:

• Nobody coddled me in my career.

• If you go too easy on people, they’ll slack off.
• Sometimes bad things happen, and it is foolish to act like they
don’t.
• If competition is intense and becoming more so, why is now a
good time to use positive approaches?
• Things have tanked in the past few years. Now is not the time
to preach about being nice.

PM does not mean that anybody is “soft” on employees. It does, how-

ever, require that managers exercise higher degrees of professionalism and
self-discipline. Tough times don’t last. Economic history has proven this
time and again. As this century rolls forward, normal strategy issues will
dominate our agendas:

• How to build competitive advantages through people and

capital investments
• How to deal with changes in industry and global economic
conditions
• How to plan for the very long term

The biggest challenge will come from looming shortages in educated

employees, who are necessary to sustain first-world economies. From an
organizational perspective, one solution to this problem is to use super-
visory techniques that increase commitment and effort, thus reducing
turnover and slowing the need to expand staff. Perhaps most important,
correctly applied PM techniques can leverage the creativity of educated
workers, providing an opportunity for large gains in productivity.

Positive Management and the Ethics of Managing

It is good to be a positive and uplifting leader. It is good to avoid excessive
negativity and appropriate to question negative approaches used now and
in the past. But I want to make it clear that I would not write this book

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 POSITIVE MANAGEMENT, STRATEGY, AND PRODUCTIVITY 5

if those were my only reasons for advocating PM. As people interested in

strategy, we have to be focused on what is best for the organization in the
intermediate to long term. I am writing this book because PM can help
you build and sustain competitive advantage.
Many aspects of PM would be well received by religious and social
service organizations because they emphasize fairness and empathy. While
that framework is worthy and appropriate, it is not the basis on which
this book is written. This book’s embrace of PM is based on the idea that
effectiveness, efficiency, profitability, and sustainability can be linked to
the use of positive techniques. Negativity, which is deeply embedded in
our business culture, is a problem that needs to be reduced or, in a best-
case scenario, eliminated.
The terms “methods” and “techniques” are used throughout this book
because they efficiently convey important information. It is very impor-
tant, however, to realize that the actions recommended by this book can-
not work simply as “performed” behaviors. One must accept them as a
better way of managing and be willing to replace current practices with
them. Some managers simply will not be able to accept these more trust-
ing and egalitarian approaches as workable and will never be comfortable
enough to stay with them over time. However, for those who are willing
to embrace a new human resources strategy, PM can alter the culture to
create a more committed and sustainable organization.

Assessing the Positive and Negative

Conditions of the Organization
Some who read this book may say, “Great idea. We’re already doing
it.” Their interests may be limited to checking on whether their orga-
nizations’ successful positive culture building meets or exceeds what is
suggested here. Others may be in a very different cultural situation and
may be considering making significant changes. To assist in determining
where an organization is in terms of implementing PM, consider this list
of questions:

• Does the organization have an anonymous suggestion box?

• Are employee suggestions given serious consideration?

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 6 POSITIVE MANAGEMENT

• Is there an employee reward for continuous quality

improvement?
• Is there an employee reward for product or process innovation?
• Do employees have a mechanism for discussing complaints and
problems about supervision?
• Is that mechanism insulated from employees’ chains of
command?
• Does the organization have a stated policy about preserving
respect and dignity for employees?
• Is compliance with that policy routinely measured?
• Are managers’ compensation and incentives tied to mainte-
nance of a positive work environment?
• Are grievances about supervisory practices frequent?
• Are surveys of employee attitudes routinely conducted?
• Are the results of those surveys used in senior-level decision
making?
• Are the results of those surveys shared with employees?
• Are employees who participate in surveys generally satisfied
with the organizational climate?
• Have scores on the surveys recently changed?
• Can observed changes be tied logically to events or specific
employees?
• Is the work environment an issue discussed among senior
managers?

The purpose of this list is to stimulate thinking and discussion about

the overall PM condition of an organization. If the answers to most of
these questions are negative, then so is the organizational environment.
Implementing the practices listed here is a step in the right direction,
but it will not create a positive workplace. Implementation depends on
underlying psychological and leadership principles that can allow imple-
mentation not just by an individual but also by a coordinated network of
managers. Before a work environment can be shaped to be more positive,
a clear mental image of what it will look like and how it will be accom-
plished must exist in the minds of key managers. The focus of this book
is on helping managers to construct that image.

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