Positive Management

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Positive Management
Increasing Employee Productivity
Jack H. Walters

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Positive Management: Increasing Employee Productivity

Copyright Business Expert Press, LLC, 2010.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other
except for brief quotations, not to exceed 400 words, without the prior
permission of the publisher.
First published in 2010 by
Business Expert Press, LLC
222 East 46th Street, New York, NY 10017
www.businessexpertpress.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-60649-052-5 (paperback)
ISBN-10: 1-60649-052-4 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-1-60649-053-2 (e-book)
ISBN-10: 1-60649-053-2 (e-book)
DOI 10.4128/9781606490532
A publication in the Business Expert Press Strategic Management collection
Collection ISSN: 2150-9611 (print)
Collection ISSN: 2150-9646 (electronic)
Cover design by Jonathan Pennell
Interior design by Scribe, Inc.
First edition: May 2010
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America.

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I dedicate this book to Sirje Kiin, my wife and the best

writer I will ever know, and to Judy Walters, my sister
and lifesaver during the creation and preparation of this
manuscript.

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Abstract
There is a myth in American and other first-world business cultures
that being tough and unreasonable are keys to extracting high productivity from employees, but profound economic, demographic, and cultural change are creating a workplace where that myth can no longer be
believed. People who are hard to work for will face increasing difficulty
in finding top-quality employees, especially highly educated ones. If your
organization has this problem, it could seriously hamper the accomplishment of strategic objectives. This book explains how to use positive management (PM) as an organization-wide strategy to motivate employees,
increase productivity, and accomplish organizational goals by creating
upbeat and dignified relationships in the workplace. It covers the use of
PM in a variety of situations, including difficult and negative ones, to
achieve higher employee commitment and motivation, to lower communication inefficiencies, and to reduce absenteeism and turnover.
The following is an overview of the books contents:
Chapter 1: Why PM is needed, productivity and sustainability,
and PM needs assessment
Chapter 2: Organizational productivity broadly defined,
including its relationships to employee satisfaction and
happiness
Chapter 3: The many negatives of negative management and
why it must be removed from organizations
Chapter 4: What PM is and where it came from
Chapter 5: Why PM is needed, focusing on productivity and
value creation
Chapter 6: How and why PM motivates employees
Chapter 7: PMs relationship to organizational culture, focusing on the role of trust in the workplace
Chapter 8: Answers to tough questions about the implementation and practical use of PM
Chapter 9: PM and decision making

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 Chapter 10: Specific steps to increase positivity in the

workplace
Chapter 11: Examples of organizations with successful PM
strategies
The target audience for this book is experienced middle and upper
managers in larger organizations and owners/general managers of smaller
ones. It can be useful to students of management or those who are just
starting out, but its framework is best understood by those who have
firsthand experience with supervising managers and line employees over
an extended period.

Keywords
Management, productivity, human resources, human resource management, motivation, supervision, strategy, leadership, positive management, positive leadership, manager, subordinate, employee, organization,
psychology, organizational behavior

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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 organizations (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 conceptualization, 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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POSITIVE MANAGEMENT

Productivity and Sustainability

For first-world economies, the key to sustaining employment and standards 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 cannot 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 living and support our businesses, we must find a way to keep wages high and
unemployment low. Keeping production of goods and services inside firstworld economiesnot allowing them to migrate simply because of lower
wage structuresis one way to do this, but it is not nearly enough. The largest 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 second- 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 outsourcing 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 productivityto produce more outputs with
equal or fewer inputs.

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POSITIVE MANAGEMENT, STRATEGY, AND PRODUCTIVITY

Inflation- and dividend-adjusted stock performance showed approximately 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 partially due to organizations signaling (for decades) that loyalty and commitment 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 household 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, something 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 development 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 negative 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, especially if one adheres to the simplistic view that it is just being soft on

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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, theyll slack off.
Sometimes bad things happen, and it is foolish to act like they
dont.
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, however, require that managers exercise higher degrees of professionalism and
self-discipline. Tough times dont 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 supervisory 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

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 books 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 bestcase scenario, eliminated.
The terms methods and techniques are used throughout this book
because they efficiently convey important information. It is very important, however, to realize that the actions recommended by this book cannot 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 trusting 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. Were already doing
it. Their interests may be limited to checking on whether their organizations 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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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 maintenance 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 implementation 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 accomplished 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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Index

A
abnormal, 43, 96
absenteeism, 810, 14, 16, 17, 28,
72, 115
Academy of Management, 46
accounting productivity, 78
Acton, Lord, 41
administrative inefficiency, 1011
Administrative Science Quarterly, 98
adverse selection, 910
age groups, bachelors degree by, 31
American culture, 2325
American Psychological Association, 44
appreciative inquiry (AI), 4546
B
baby boomers, 30
bachelors degree by age group, 31
blame, 1079
bombastic boss syndrome, 33
bounded rationality, 9596
British culture, 2325
business models, 5153
C
Cameron, Kim, 45
Carter, Jimmy, 91
China, 49
Collins, Jim, 96
commitment
breaking behaviors, 17
and happiness, 1819
and satisfaction, 1617
competitiveness
advantage of human resources, 115
and positive management, 4953
Conference Board, 23
Cooperrider, David, 4546

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creativity, 11
criticism, 100101
praise and, 8586
culture
American, 2325
British, 2325
organizational, 7580
positive organizations, 11520
quality and, 7778
trust and honesty, 7677
untrusting, 7880
customer relationships, 6162
D
day-to-day management, 9598
decentralization, 9798
demand, 90
Devon Energy, 11718
discretion, 111
Drucker, Peter, 73
dysfunction, 44, 46
E
economic productivity, 8
education levels, 3132
effectiveness versus negative management, 4042
ego
and negative management, 3638
perceived outcomes and, 3738
emergence, positive management, 4346
emergency mode, 33
employee
dissatisfaction, 1516
happy, 6162
job satisfaction, 23
lower level, 92
unhappy, 2223

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INDEX

employment, 1415
empowerment, 9798
ethics, 8485
and positive management, 45
extinction, 70
F
fear, 3334
fight, 2526
and organization, 26
free agency problems, 5762
G
gender terms, 1023
generalizations, 10910
Gen X, 3132
Gen Y, 3132
goal setting, 7374
Great Place to Work Institute
(GPTWI), 117
Green, Cecil, 118
H
happiness, 1719
commitment and, 1819
identification and, 1819
happy employees, 6162
Hawthorne studies, 15
Heckscher-Ohlin model, 55
Hells Kitchen (television series), 103
Herzberg, Frederic, 71
Hewlett-Packard, 100
hierarchy of needs, 6365
high-value-creation business models,
5152
Hinckley, John, Jr., 91
Hofstede, Geert, 109
honesty and culture, 7677
human resources as competitive
advantage, 115
hypercriticism, 38
I
identification and happiness, 1819
India, 49
individual differences, 62
intellectual property (IP), 5152, 54, 117

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K
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 25
L
language, negative, 1035
learned helplessness, 43
Leontief, Wassily, 55
lower level employees, 92
low-value-added business model, 5253
M
management
day-to-day, 9598
by objectives (MBO), 73
of psychology, 3
psychology transfer, 4445
by walking around (MBWA), 100
See also negative management (NM);
positive management (PM)
Maslow, Abraham, 6364
Mayo, Elton, 15
McClelland, David, 6566
McGregor, Douglas, 6869
monetary rewards, 1314
motivation, 6374
motivator-hygiene theory, 7172
N
names, political correctness and, 10111
National Transportation Safety Board
(NTSB), 87
need for achievement (nAch), 6567
need for affiliation (nAff ), 6667
need for power, 6768
negative-framework managers, 77
negative language, 1035
negative management (NM), 2142,
3840
ego and, 3638
negative reinforcement, 70
negative situation, 9697
negativity, 2123
advantages, 2627
disadvantages, 2729
myth, 3435
noise and, 2829
versus reality, 93

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INDEX

Network (film), 24
nicknames of individuals, 105
noise and negativity, 2829
noncreative goals, 73
nonmonetary rewards, 1314
normal value-creation business model,
52
O
organization, fight and, 26
organizational culture, 7580
role, 7678
why important, 75
organizational development (OD), 46
organizational strategy, 11520
Organizations In Action (Thompson),
97
outward focus, 17
P
Packard, David, 100101
passive-aggressive managers, 8687
Pavlov, Ivan, 69
perceived outcomes and ego, 3738
pet names, 1056
POB. See positive organizational
behavior (POB)
politeness, 112
political correctness, 10111
positive and negative conditions of
organization, 56
positive culture organizations, 11520
positive management (PM), 16
and competitiveness, 4953
difficulty, 8384
effectiveness problem solving,
4142
effectiveness versus negative management, 4042
emergence, 4346
ethics of managing and, 45
implementation undermining,
8283
motivation and, 6374
need for, 4962
skepticism about, 34
weaknesses, 8183

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131

positive organizational behavior

(POB), 4647
positive organizational scholarship
(POS), 4445
positive psychology, 4344
positive reinforcement, 70
positive work environment, 99113
positivity myth, 3536
possessive terms, 107
power, 65
praise, 8586
and criticism, 100101
problem solving, effective, 4142
production cascade, 5557
productivity, 16, 4953
defined, 714
rethinking, 719
and satisfaction, 1516
sustainability and, 23
value chain and, 55
psychology
management of, 3
positive psychology, 4344
transfer from management, 4445
punishment, 70
Q
quality and culture, 7778
R
rational compassion, 94
Reagan, Ronald, 9192
reality versus negativity, 93
reengineering economics, 5355
reinforcement theory, 6971
restraint, 113
rethinking productivity, 719
S
satisfaction, 1517
commitment and, 1617
productivity and, 1516
satisfice, 96
Schweitzer, Albert, 46
Seligman, Martin E. P., 4344, 45, 96
Simon, Herb, 9596
sincerity, 82, 9394

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INDEX

skepticism about positive management, 34

Skinner, B. F., 70
social capital, 9596
Southwest Airlines, 11517
strategy, 16
sustainability and productivity, 23
SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats), 58
T
TDIndustries, 11920
Texas Instruments, 11819
Theory X, 6869, 7879
Theory Y, 6869, 78
Thompson, James, 9798
Thorndike, E. L., 70
three-needs theory, 6568
titles for individuals, 1067
trust, 99100
and honesty, 7677
turnover, 89

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24 (television series), 24
U
Ultimate Software, 117
undermining postive management
implementation, 8283
unhappy workers, 2223
unionization, 8790
University of Michigan, 45
untrusting culture, 7880
V
value chain and productivity, 55
W
war, 2526
weaknesses of positive management,
8183
win-lose approach, 1114
Z
zero-sum game, 1114, 53

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