Winning - Jack Welch [37]
She had to quit to find out how much she was valued. When she handed in her resignation, her boss was shocked.
“But why are you leaving?” she asked. “You have a great future here!”
“It’s so draining—no one ever tells me I’m doing a good job.”
“No one ever tells me I’m doing a good job,” her boss shot back. “That’s just the way it goes here. You’ve got to get a thick skin.”*
Retail is a notoriously tough working environment. But the practice of not rewarding performance is commonplace in plenty of industries and one of the main reasons good people leave.
A winning company does not let good people walk out the door for lack of recognition, financial or otherwise.
Another key way to motivate and retain is through training.
If you’ve hired the right people, they will want to grow. They will be bursting with the desire to learn and do more. A good machinist will want to know how to operate more machines and eventually how to run the shop. A good manufacturing engineer will want to travel to Japan to visit companies using advanced techniques that he has only read about. A good PR person will want to learn how to communicate more effectively on the Web.
Good people never think they have reached the top of their game. But they’re dying to get there!
A company that manages people well helps make that happen. If it can afford it, it has in-house training led by its own executives, who serve not only as teachers but as role models. A company with fewer resources can facilitate training outside at any number of good programs. In either case, it makes sure that training is seen as a reward for performance, not a sop for time served.
Companies cannot promise their people lifetime employment. Global competition is too fierce and economic cycles too frequent for any such guarantees.
But they can promise to give their people every chance for employability—skills that will make them more attractive if they are forced to part ways.
Like rewards and recognition, training does that. It motivates people by showing them a way to grow, that the company cares, and that they have a future.
If you are doing it right, they will want to make that future with you.
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PRACTICE 4: Face straight into charged relationships—with unions, stars, sliders, and disrupters.
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Like families, companies have relationships filled with history or fraught with tension.
But managing people well means paying special attention to these hard relationships, not just letting them fester or float into neglect—approaches that are entirely human but often end in a mess.
Good people management requires companies to confront their charged relationships with candor and action.
Let’s start with unions. When I was at GE, it was well known that I was not a fan of unions. I thought they created conditions that made the company less competitive, and they drove an unnecessary wedge between management and employees.
I use the word “unnecessary” because in my experience, unions arise only when a plant or an office is being managed by someone who is abusive, remote, or indifferent, and whose actions have taken away the voice and dignity of employees. Without a doubt, that boss needs to be reformed or removed because unionization is an excessive response with negative long-term consequences—really for everyone.
We did have several longtime unions at GE during my time as CEO. I always felt our relationship was candid and respectful, and we never had a national strike. I can think of two reasons why.
First, we always stated our principles and stuck to them, and second, we never started our relationship at the negotiating table.
Principles first.
The most important thing to remember about unions is that they are made up of your own people. You work together, reside in the same towns, and oftentimes your kids go to school or play together. Your lives and futures are intertwined.
That is why all you have with unions is your integrity—your word. You can fight about issues, and