You can throw out most of the management ideas you find in colleges, graduate schools, company training programs, and the like if you'll do just one, incredibly simple thing:

PAY YOUR PEOPLE EXCEPTIONALLY WELL.

Management advocates have it backwards, you see.

Their pet saying is that the art of management is getting average people to perform exceptionally well.

What they leave off is a small tag line. Let me provide you with the entire phrase:

"The art of management is getting average people to perform exceptionally well, without paying them anything extra for their productivity."?

That's truly the tacit definition of a good manager, and most of the industrial psychology, job engineering, and yes, management consulting during the past 80 years has been dedicated to this goal.

"Make us more money without making us spend more money."?

But, alas, human nature and life itself don't work that way" ?for long, or without unleashing counter-forces such as unions, restrictive legislation, workers compensation claims, and lawsuits.

Somehow, business owners think it's "cheating"? or "dumb"? or self-defeating to pay people exceptionally well. They'd prefer to be clever, to invest in labor saving technologies, to cut out the human touch everywhere they can, instead of handing over living, and indeed, prospering wages.

But recall, if you will, that practical experiment undertaken by Henry Ford, by no means a soft touch.

Ford invented the "$5 Day."?

To attract and recruit the very best laborers in America to work on his modern assembly lines he offered that astonishingly high wage. From what I understand, this more than doubled the prevailing rates.

People thought Ford was crazy, and I'm sure he was vilified by his fellow captains of industry.

But his move paid off. He did get the best available people to work for him, and together, they made very, very good money.

From time to time there have been companies that have raised pay substantially, through salaries, profit-sharing, stock options, attractive retirement packages, and the like. And quite often, they've reaped a reward from their employees, by way of output and loyalty.

But nothing is as direct or as motivating as more money in that pay envelope.

Most of the silly stuff you hear about today, such as RESISTANCE TO CHANGE is easily overcome when we align people's interests and commit to sharing the goodies, all around.

Workers that are accused of being change-haters suspect, or actually know, that the "new and improved"? work processes that are often mandated by management result in money being removed from their pockets, through downsizing, job enlargement, team-building, and other devices.

Are you going to willingly support something that will make you work harder, longer, and for less?

"How can we pay people MORE?"? should be the question.

Answer that, and people will manage themselves and their peers, because they'll be only too happy to keep a good thing going!