Steve Jobs, the entrepreneurial genius who co-founded the Apple Corp., is a very charismatic leader of technical people. When his group was designing Apple’s new Macintosh computer, Jobs flew a pirate flag over his building. Its purpose was to signify his team’s determination to blow the competition out of the water. Rather creative motivation.
Good leaders and managers have creative ways to motivate their employees.
Robert Waterman Jr. wrote about Chiyoshi Misawa, founder and president of Misawa Homes — the largest homebuilder in Japan. At least once every decade he “dies” to arrest the momentum of out-of-date assumptions and policies. He sends a memo to his company that formally announces “the death of your president.”
This is his way of forcing the whole company to rethink everything. When employees resist change because they are used to the old way of doing things, Misawa declares: “That was the way things were done under Mr. Misawa. He is now dead. Now, how shall we proceed?” Read the rest of this entry »
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