The management of people is a “marketing job.”
The key to maintaining leadership in the economy and the technologies that are emerging is likely to be the social position of the knowledge professionals and social acceptance of their values. Today, however, we are trying to straddle the fence—to maintain the traditional mind-set, in which capital is the key resource and the financier is the boss, while bribing knowledge workers to be content to remain employees by giving them bonuses and stock options. But this, if it can work at all, can work only as long as the emerging industries enjoy a stock-market boom, as did the Internet companies.
The management of knowledge workers is a “marketing job.” And in marketing one does not begin with the question: “What do we want?” One begins with the questions: “What does the other party want? What are its values? What are its goals? What does it consider results?” What motivates knowledge workers is what motivates volunteers. Volunteers have to get more satisfaction from their work than paid employees, precisely because they don’t get a paycheck. They need, above all, challenges.
ACTION POINT: Provide your best employees with satisfying challenges.
Management Challenges for the 21st Century
Managing in the Next Society
* Source: The Daily Drucker by Peter F. Drucker