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The following is a highlighted summary of the book, Maslow on Management, published by John
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Maslow On Management
By Abraham H. Maslow
Foreword by Warren Bennis

Additional Notes on Self-Actualization, Work, Duty, Mission
The test for any person is-that you want to find out whether he's an apple tree or not-Does
He Bear Apples? Does He Bear Fruit? That's the way you tell the difference between
fruitfulness and sterility, between talkers and doers, between the people who change the
world and the people who are helpless in it.

This business of self-actualization via a commitment to an important job and to worthwhile
work could also be said, then, to be the path to human happiness.

The only happy people I know are the ones who are working well at something they consider
important.

(A good question: Why do people not create or work? What has to be explained are the
inhibitions, the blocks, etc. What stops these motivations which are there in everyone?)
If you take into yourself something important from the world, then you yourself become
important thereby. You have made yourself important thereby, as important as that which
you have introjected and assimilated to yourself.

Become a part of something important.

This identification with important cause, or important jobs, this identifying with them and
taking them into the self thereby enlarging the self and making it important, this is a way of
overcoming also actual existential human shortcoming, e.g., shortcomings in I.Q., talent, in
skill, etc.

Any scientist must be treated with a certain respect, no matter how minor a contributor he
may be-because he is a member of a huge enterprise and he demands respect by
participation in this enterprise. He represents it, so to speak. He is an ambassador.

The same is true for a single soldier who is a member of a huge victorious army by contrast
with a single soldier who is a member of a defeated army. So all the scientists and
intellectuals and philosophers, etc., even though they are limited figures taken singly, taken
collectively they are very important. They represent a victorious army, they are
revolutionizing society; they are preparing the new world; they are constructing Euphychia.

Why Do People Not Create or Innovate?
Perhaps we should begin to seek out the creativity and innovation killers in our organizations
instead of trying to fix the people within? One step in the right direction might be to ask.

"Why do people not create or innovate in the current environment? The question reminds us
of a story told about Peter Drucker, the legendary author and tireless teacher. He was
speaking to a group of senior level executives and he asked them to raise their hands if there
was a lot of "dead wood" in their companies. Many in the audience raised their hands. He
then responded, "Were the people dead wood when you interviewed them and decided to hire
them or did they become dead wood?"

…one may be able to uncover procedures, policies, and mindsets that inhibit creativity and
innovation.

The Great Debates: Douglas McGregor and Abraham Maslow
Douglas McGregor wrote The Human Side of Enterprise in 1960. He quickly became know
as the father of Theory X and Theory Y-theories of managerial leadership that portrayed
managers as authoritarian (Theory X) or as collaborative and trustful of people (Theory Y).
1. Do you believe that people are trustworthy?
2. Do you believe that people seek responsibility and accountability?
3. Do you believe that people seek meaning in their work?
4. Do you believe that people naturally want to learn?
5. Do you believe that people don't resist change but they resist being changed?
6. Do you believe that people prefer work to being idle?

Real achievement means inevitably a worthy and virtuous task. To do some idiotic job very
well is certainly not real achievement. I like my phrasing, "What is not worth doing is not
worth doing well."

Enlightened Economics and Management
1. Assume everyone is to be trusted.
It assumes that the people selected for the particular plant are a fairly evolved type of person,
relatively mature, relatively healthy, relatively decent.

2. Assume everyone is to be informed as completely as possible of as many facts and
truths as possible.

3. Assume in all your people the impulse to achieve; assume that they are for good
workmanship, are against wasting time and inefficiency and want to do a good job,
etc.

4. Assume that there is no dominance-subordination hierarchy in the jungle sense or
authoritarian sense.
There must be an ability to identify with a fairly wide circle of human beings, ideally with
the whole human species. The ultimate authoritarian can identify with nobody or perhaps at
best with his own blood family. Authoritarians must be excluded or they must be
converted.

5. Assume that everyone will have the same ultimate managerial objectives and will
identify with them no matter where they are in the organization or in the hierarchy.
What is best for the solution of the problem or the effectuation of the goal rather than what is
best for my ego, or my own person?"

6. Enlightened economics must assume good will among all the members of the
organization rather than rivalry or jealousy.

Here use the example of sibling rivalry as a kind of evil or a psychopathology arising out of
perfectly good but immature impulses, i.e., the child who wants the love of his mother but is
not mature enough to recognize that she can give love to more than one.

Observe that the two- or three-year-old child would be dangerous to his own newborn sibling
but not to any other infant. That is, he is not against infants in general but only the one who
will steal his mother's love.

So the growing out of sibling rivalry in any team or organization must also demand this fairly
high level of personal maturity.

6a. Synergy is also assumed.
It is possible to set up organizations so that when I am pursuing my own self-interest, I
automatically benefit everyone else, whether I mean to or not. Under the same arrangement,
when I try to be altruistic and philanthropic, I cannot help benefiting myself or advancing my
own self-interest.

For a Blackfoot Indian to discover a gold mine would make everyone in the tribe happy
because everyone would share the benefit from it. Whereas in the modern society, finding a
gold mine is the surest way of alienating many people, even those who are close to us.
If I wished to destroy someone I can think of no better way of doing it than to give him a
million dollars suddenly.

…prerequisite synergic institutions set up in such a way that what benefits one benefits all.

Synergy Is Anything But Simple
Maslow defined synergy as a culture in which what is beneficial for the individual is
beneficial for everyone.

Maslow's organizational theories as he saw too many business cultures in which one's
success could only occur at the expense of others.

Blackfoot culture stood in stark contrast to that of a modern organization

7. Assume that the individuals involved are health enough.

8. Assume that the organization is health enough.
There must be criteria for a healthy organization.

10. We must assume that the people in organizations are not fixated at the safety-need
level.

That is they must be relatively anxiety-free, they must not be fear-ridden, they must have
enough courage to overcome their fears, they must be able to go ahead in the face of
uncertainty, etc.

On the whole, where fear reigns, enlightened management is not possible.

11. Assume an active trend to self-actualization-freedom to effecuate one's own ideas.

12. Assume that everyone can enjoy good teamwork, friendship, good group spirit, good
group homonomy, good belongingness, and group love.

…espirit de corps. Talk about identification with the group, the kind of pride that a high
school boy can have in his own school's basketball team or the increased self-esteem that a
college student will have from the heightened prestige of his college.

13. Assume hostility to be primarily reactive rather than character-based, i.e., that it will
be for good, objective, present, here-now reasons and that it is therefore valuable
rather than evil, and that it is therefore not to be stifled and discouraged.

…the better the manager, the more freedom people will feel to express irritation,
disagreement, etc.

14. Assume that people can take it, that they are tough, stronger than most people give
them credit for.

15. Enlightened management assumes that people are improvable.
All it says is that people can be better than they are by a little bit at least.

16. Assume that everyone prefers to feel important, needed, useful, successful, proud,
respected, rather than unimportant, interchangeable, anonymous, wasted, unused,
expendable, disrespected.

17. That everyone prefers or perhaps even needs to love his boss (rather than hate him),
and that everyone prefers to respect his boss (rather than to disrespect him).

18. Assume that everyone dislikes fearing anyone (more than he likes fearing anyone),
but that he prefers fearing the boss to despising the boss.

We may not like the strong men, but we can't help respecting them, and in a pinch preferring
them, trusting them. The tough and hard but capable leader may be hated, but he is must
preferred to the soft and tender weaker leader who may be more lovable but who may also
bring about one's death.

19. Enlightened management assumes everyone prefers to be a prime mover rather than
a passive helper, a tool, a cork tossed about on the waves.

Interview with Mort Meyerson
Perhaps Meyerson is most famous, not for his corporate accomplishments, but for being
courageous enough to admit and smart enough to know, that the ways of the past will not
longer work in today's world.

Meyerson wrote entitled "Everything I Thought I Knew About Leadership Was Wrong."
Maslow stated that, " I must help these corporate types to understand that it is well to treat
working people as if they were high type Theory Y human beings not only because of the
Golden Rule and not only because of the Bible or religious precepts or anything like that, but
also because this is the path to success of any kind whatsoever, including financial success."

Accounting has become the way we measure business to find out whether we are indeed
making a profit or doing well. Most of these metrics are easy and quantifiable. From this
body of knowledge, we have developed management by objectives. Business is built upon
assumptions of analytical and metric-oriented work.

I think that most males are more comfortable in the world of metrics and measurements than
they are in a psychological or feeling world.

"What business are we in?" As I see it, we are in the business of forming teams of people to
do things for companies that create value for them. Without our people, we have no
business. We don't make anything tangible.

"I know that, but you are dealing in this solft stuff. People don't even want the creativity, the
freedom, and the things that you are trying to give them. They aren't trying to find meaning
in their work. People just want to come to work, do their job, and have a clear understanding
of what's expected from them. They want to be paid fairly that is all that they want."

I said, "You couldn't have stated more clearly everything that I don't believe about people
and work. It's just plan wrong. Those reasons are not the only reason people come to work.
People also come to work because it is community, because it is family, because work is an
important part of their identity, and because they are trying to do something for their
families. The money meets their needs, but it is not an exchange of service for money. It is
much more powerful than that. If you only deal on the level of a fair exchange of work for
money, you are missing the whole essence of what is happening in the work place."

Although the payback to the company is not easily measured, we can measure the
productivity of employees.

The assumption is one of giving credence to the underlying idea that one has to measure it to
create any value. I'm just not convinced we have to measure it. We have to start by trusting
that it will work and that later, it will show up.

It will show up in customer attitudes, employee attitudes, employee productivity. It will
show up eventually, but I am not sure we can measure the connection.

Business people like to say it's Wall Street because they say they need the ability to think
long-term. I heard that same argument 10 years ago from the Japanese. They were telling
me they had a better system because they could think longer term. Japan did not have the
quarter-to-quarter Wall Street pressure which they believed contributed to their superiority.

It appeared that they were superior 10 years ago. Now, it appears that they did not know
what the hell they were doing and the bubble burst! They artificially inflated real estate,
colluded with banks, did criminal things, and misled the public shareholder. I do not accept,
at first blush, the Wall Street argument.

I don't think the business can be transformed unless the leader and leadership is
transforming. This type of change cannot come from the bottom up. It is a leadership
issue. It must resonate with the leader.

You will not be successful with the power of one to convince. The power of one will not
work inside the company organization. The only time the power of one works is with the
aggregation of customers. Employees are not customers.

20. Assume a tendency to improve things, to straighten the crooked picture on the wall,
to clean up the dirty mess, to put things right, make things better, to do things better.

21. Assume that growth occurs through delight and through boredom.

22. Assume preference for being a whole person and not a part, not a thing or an
implement, or tool, or "hand."

23. Assume the preference for working rather than being idle.
Point out that to force people not to work is a cruel a punishment as could be devised.

24. all human beings prefer meaningful work to meaningless work
If work is meaningless, then life comes close to being meaningless
…anhedonia (loss of zest and pleasure in life.

25. Assume the preference for personhood, uniqueness as a person, identity (in contrast
to being anonymous or interchangeable).

26. We must make the assumption that the person is courageous enough for enlightened
processes.

He can endure anxiety.

27. We must make the specific assumptions of non-psychopathy.
He must be able to identify with other human beings and to know what they feel like.

28. We must assume the wisdom and the efficacy of self-choice.

29. We must assume that everyone likes to be justly and fairly appreciated, preferably in
public.

30. We must assume the defense and growth dialectic for all these positive trends that we
have already listed above. Every time we talk about a good trend in human nature,
we must assume that there is also a counter trend.

31. Assume that everyone but especially the more developed persons prefer
responsibility to dependency and passivity most of the time.
Too much responsibility can crush the person just as too little responsibility can make him
flabby.

32. The general assumption that people will get more pleasure out of loving than they
will out of hating (although the pleasures of hating are real and should not be
overlooked).

It can be said in another way that for fairly well-developed people, the pleasures of loving, of
friendship, of teamwork, of being a part of a well-functioning organization, that these
pleasures are real and strong and furthermore are greater than the pleasures of disruption,
destruction, antagonism, etc.

33. Assume that fairly well-developed people would rather create than destroy.

34. Assume that fairly well-developed people would rather be interested than be bored.

35. We must ultimately assume at the highest theoretical levels of enlightened
management theory, a preference or a tendency to identify with more and more of the
world, moving toward the ultimate of mysticism, a fusion with the world, or peak
experience, cosmic consciousness, etc.

36. Finally, we shall have to work out the assumption of the metamotives and the
metapathologies, of the yearning for the "B-values," i.e., truth, beauty, justice,
perfection, and so on.

The Balance of the Forces Toward Growth and Regression.
…what do we mean by "good conditions" and "bad conditions," what forces, what changes
in our society could change the dynamic balance toward regression instead of toward
growth? What would simple economic scarcity do, for instance?

Memorandum on the Goals and Directives of Enlightened Management and of
Organizational Theory

Its perfectly true that we can forget about the far goals in our discussions and think
only about the immediate goals of an enterprise-that is, to make a profit, to be a
healthy organism, to have some insurance for the future, etc., But this is not enough.
The managers of any enterprise want it to continue, and they don't mean for two or
three years, they mean for fifty years or a hundred years. And not only do they want it
to continue for a hundred years (which makes necessary, then, the profoundest
discussion of human motives and human far goals), but they would also like their
organism, the group or the enterprise, or the organization to grow in a healthy way.

…the whole eupsychain growth…
It seems very clear to me that in an enterprise, if everybody concerned is absolutely clear
about the goals and directives and far purposes of the organization, practically all other
questions then become simple technical questions of fitting means to the ends.

As if Lewin anticipated the skepticism of the finding, he and his team went a stp further,
using statistical techniques to identify casual relationships between human resource practices
and bottom-line performance.

The 1990 Brookings Institution conference on pay and productivity also demonstrated
Maslow's words in its investigation of the relationship between pay and bottom line
performance. When all of the results were in, Conference chairman Alan S. Blinder
concluded from the data that "changing the way workers are treated may boost productivity
more than changing the way they are paid.

The purpose of a business firm is not simply to make a profit, but is to be found in its very
existence as a community of persons who in various ways are endeavoring to satisfy their
basic needs and who form a particular group at the service of the whole of society. Profit is a
regulator of the life of a business, but it is not the only one; other human and moral factors
must also be considered, which in the long term are at least equally important for the life of a
business…Pope J. Paul II in "The Hundredth year: An Essay".

The fact is that a certain proportion of the population cannot take responsibility well and are
frightened by freedom, which tends to throw them into anxiety, etc.

The fact is that an unstructured situation, a free situation, a situation in which people
are thrown back on their own resources will sometimes show their lack of resources.
They may bet by in the ordinary authoritarian, conventional structure situation, but in
the free and open and self-responsible situation, they discover that they are, e.g., not
really interested in working, or that they mistrust their intelligence, or that they may
become overwhelmed by depression which they have been strongly repressing, etc.

…where you try to move over from a strictly authoritarian managerial style to a more
participative style, the first consequence of lifting the rigid restrictions of authority may
well be some chaos, some release of hostility, some destructiveness, and the like.
Authoritarians may be converted and re-trained, but this is apt to take some time, and
they are apt to go through a transitional period of taking advantage of what they
consider to be the weakness of the managers.

Once people have a sense of security, once they are no longer hungry, all they want to do , no
matter what job or level, is to learn and grow.

Who could argue with the notion that people should be able to grow and to learn and to selfactualize
in their work?
…making it a reality is a whole different ballgame.

It is important to remember that corporations are a large collection of human beings
connecting with each other. It is all very personal. We are people talking to
people-human beings sitting next to one another trying to accomplish a goal. When
the alignment we speak of works, the human part of the organization is very well
connected. This also changes the role of the leader. The leader has to believe in these
concepts. It has to be dripping from his or her pores or people will know (and they
always do) that it is nothing more than talk.

And the charisma of the leader is not what it's about.
…its leading by example, meaning what you say, standing for something, and being
willing to take action when what the company stands for is violated.
If alignment really exists throughout the organization, when the company runs into
hardship, you don't have to look to that one visionary leader for the strategy or the
answers. In the world we live in today, it is almost ludicrous for us to believe that the
answers or the direction or the vision will come from the leader.

…in a crisis situation there would be two areas we would focus on first. They are the
security levels of Maslow's pyramid. For example, if you have a company in turmoil, I think
the leadership would need to take steps to make sure the company could survive. These steps
involve cost cutting. They involve cost cutting. They involve getting employees to focus on
short-term projects that will help the financial picture, such as writing new software, forging
alliances and partnership, things of that nature. However, you have to realize that those
actions threaten the basic security of employees. So important to realize that those exact
steps, on an organizational level, create uncertainty, fear, and a threat to the security of
people. Yet, you need those people to be performing at a higher level in the hierarchy of
needs or you stand no chance of surviving in the long term.

I think you can successfully take this step in times of crisis as long as people within the
organization know the vision. The vision is so important , that if people understand the big
picture, they will bleed with you. They will sacrifice, work harder, and even create in times
of great uncertainty. However, if you lose the alignment and the vision of the company,
people begin to question why they are continuing to work in an organization with such
insecurity.

That vision allowed people to know the direction of the company, where their departments
were going, how their work made a contribution to the end goal.

When Steve Jobs came back, even Wall Street responded with a 2 percent increase in their
stock price. Why? The company was still bleeding but he embodied the original vision.
That is how powerful these concepts can be.

The exploiter comes to take for granted the exploiter almost as a kind of character. The
wolf expects that the lamb will continue to behave like a lamb. If suddenly the lamb
turns around and bites the wolf, then I can understand that the wolf would get not only
surprised but also get very indignant. Lambs aren't supposed to behave that way.

Lambs must lie quietly and get eaten up. Just so I have seen human wolves get very
angry when their victims finally turn around and strike back.

We don't know how many people or what proportion of the working population would
actually prefer to participate in management decisions, and how many would prefer not
to have anything to do with them. What proportion of the population take a job as
simply any old kind of a job which they must do in order to earn a living, while their
interests are very definitely centered outside of the job.

What proportion of the population is reduced to the concrete and so finds planning for the
future totally incomprehensible and boring?

Maslow's Theory Z
Theory Z presupposed that people, once having reached a level of economic security,
would strive for a life steeped in values, a work life where the person would be able to
create and produce.

The March 1998 cover story in FORTUNE magazine is but one example of Maslow's
Theory Z in action. Entitled Yo,Corporate America-I'm the New Organization Man,
the article depicted the wants and needs of the new "gold collar worker." Expecting to
be well paid, this generation also believes they are entitled to a job "that fun, a job
that's cool, a job that lets them discover who they really are." Work is not about paying
the rent anymore-it's about self-fulfillment.

"Work is not work. It's a hobby you happen to get paid for."

Interview with George McCown
3000 Sand Hill road in Menlo Park, California, is synonymous with power, prestige, and the
art of the deal. Home to the venture capitalists, this address houses the people who fuel a
large portion of America's economy through funding, acquisitions, and buyouts of
companies. Always in search of the next profitable business. San Hill road has become a
legend in the archives of corporate American history. In the midst of this financial mecca
sits George McCown, who with his partner, David De Leeuw, founded McCown and De
Leeuw & Co in 1984. the firm is a private venture banking firm that invests in high quality
ventures in partnership with management. Yet, as we discovered, their goal is simply to
build great companies where people can self-actualize.

When there is a wrong owner, it's like having the wrong boss. It has a massive impact on the
organization. The "wrong owner syndrome" can be found in private and publicly held
companies.

Things we couldn't make work at all because of past policies and procedures magically
became terrific companies in the hands of an entrepreneurial environment with adequate
financing where the single focus of the enterprise was the business as opposed to being
spread across a number of businesses or egos.

Our business is about setting up the right owner, becoming the right owner, usually in
partnership with management. In fact always in partnership with management.
…we attempt to provide a completely focused and congruent set of objectives so that
everybody is lines up, everybody is on the same side of the table.

Let's talk about vision, Its is each individual's mental picture of what that organization could
be like in its highest and best self-actualized mode.

…the thing that you think about that give you job.

It's that thing which touches our highest and best part. It the part that is inspirational and
aspirational.

We wanted to define what making a difference was through the idea of the
stakeholders' circle. That is we wanted to build companies that took into account and
tried to balance over time, as appropriate, all the interests of these folks.

An organization that is self-actualized because the people in it are self-actualized is
when its really fun. That's when you get the fantastic results. When people get up in
the morning and want to go to work.

The ego system has a lot of characteristics and one of them is tremendous competition
between people. How can you build a team when the fundamental precept is to compete with
each other? But that's really what we tend to do in organizations. It's why teams don't work
very well. They become internally competitive and we don't understand why they 're that
way, we just think that's the way it is. What we are missing is that we don't know that
there's another way of being.

Business is where the rubber meet the road-where people spend most of their lives going to
work. We and the non-for-profits have a much greater role to play in shaping the good
society than any institution I can think of.

Enlightened Management as a Form of Patriotism

…in a brotherhood situation of this sort, every person is transformed into a partner rather
than an employee.

…democracy needs absolutely for its very existence people who can think for themselves,
make their own judgments, and finally, who can vote for themselves-
authoritarian enterprises do just the opposite of this; democracies do exactly just this.

…enlightened management was a way of limited human beings trying the best way they
could to produce the good life on earth or to make a heavenly society on earth.

Spirituality in the Workplace
The dialogue and debates inside of companies help us to answer important questions about
who we are collectively and individually. What we stand for. How we will do business.

How we will treat one another.

…the more we immerse ourselves in the human side of the enterprise, the more spiritual we
become.

Any one of them, for instance, if he saw a fire breaking out would without taking votes
about it or anything of the sort immediately go to the put out the fire; he would
immediately respond to the objective requirements of the situation, to the demand
character of the facts, without thinking of mutual exclusiveness of interests, and
whether his contract said that he should do this, etc.

Every person is transformed into a partner rather than into an employee. He tends to think
like a partner and to act like a partner. He tend to take upon his own shoulders all the
responsibilities of the whole enterprise. He tends voluntarily and automatically to assume
responsibility for any of the various functions of an enterprise which an emergency might
call for. Partnership is the same as synergy, which is the same as recognizing that the
interests of the other and one's own interests merge and pool and unite instead of remaining
separate or opposed or mutually exclusive.

You can trust people according to Theory Y in a wealthy society in which there is plenty
of money, plenty of goods, plenty of food, but obviously you cannot trust people with a
key to the pantry when most people are starving, or when there is not enough food to go
around. What I than do under such circumstances/ Well, I'm very clear about it in my
own mind. If there were one hundred people and there was food for ten, and ninety of
these hundred had to die, then I would make might goddamned sure that I would not be
one of those ninety, and I'm quite sure that my morals and ethics and so on would
change very radically to fit the jungle situation rather than the previous situation of
wealth in which these principles once had worked well.

Management policy or any other kind of policy is best which best fits the objective
requirements of the objective situation.

The best kind of thinking, the best kind of problem solution, clearly depends on a good
viewing of the problem situation itself, of being able to see it objectively, without
expectations, without presuppositions, without a priori thinking of any kind but simply in the
purest sense of the word, objectively, the way a god presumably would be able to see it
without being determined by prejudices or fears or hopes or wishes or personal advantage or
anything of the sort. This is the best way to see any situation. This is the best way certainly
to see any problem which is calling for a solution. The problem to be solved is the problem
out there in front of our noses.

"fitting to the objective requirements of the objective situation."

Further Notes on the relationship between Psychological health and the characteristics
of Superior managers (Notes from Likert)

Most of the experiments that Likert reports compare good American managers with poor
American managers, with the terms good and poor being defined pragmatically in terms of
productivity, worker satisfaction, low turnover, low sickness, low absence, low labor trouble,
etc.

1. The best managers under the American research conditions seem to be psychologically
healthier people than the poorer managers in the same researches.

2. The best managers increase health of the workers whom they manager. They do this in
two ways: one is via the gratification of basic needs for safety, for belongingness, for
affectionate relationships and friendly relationships with their informal groups, prestige
needs, needs for self-respect, etc.: the other is via the gratification of the meta-motivations or
the meta-needs for truth and beauty and goodness and justice and perfection and law, etc.

That is, once granted a sufficiently high level of worker health to begin with, enlightened
management increases worker health in these two ways of gratification of the basic needs and
of the meta-needs (89).

4. As we move toward enlightened management policies, enlightened managers, enlightened
workers, and an enlightened organization, so also do we move toward synergy.

7. …a better individual person tends to make a better group out of the group in which he is.
But also the better a group is, the more it tends to improve the person within the group. The
same is true for the group in the larger society. The influence each other. Goethe: "If
everybody in the world cleaned his front yard, then the whole world would be clean." Or
another way of saying it is that every person is a psycholotheraupeutic influence or a
psychopathogenic influence on everybody he has any contact with at all.

8. …who are healthier are more apt to hold to theory Y in their spontaneous and instinctive
management policies. And those who are sicker are more apt to express Theory X in their
management policies. Contrariwise, those persons who are found to function by Theory Y
will be found upon examination to be psychologically healthier than those persons who
function by Theory X.

10. Here, also we have a network of interrelations. The better the organization the
better the society, the better the productivity; the better the managers, the more
psychologically healthy the individual men; the better the leaders, the better the
managers; the better the individual men, and so on, the better the enterprise.

Memorandum on Enlightened Management
It was found, for instance, in Jim Clark's studies or in many of the studies quoted in the
Likert book that one department was doing better economically than another department, that
is, it had a higher production rate or it had less turnover or it had better morale or something
of this sort, and the experiment was made in order to find out what factors were responsible
for this economic superiority. What was found in practically all of these cases was that a
particular kind of foreman or supervisor-manager was responsible for the economic
superiority of the working group. And the qualities of the superior managers have been
worked out, i.e., they are more democratic, more compassionate, more friendly, more helpful,
more loyal, etc. That is, the whole thing has been done pragmatically, rather than on a priori,
moral, or ethical or political grounds.

A certain kind of democratic manager makes more profit for the firm as well as making
everybody happier and healthier.

…what is true of the behavior and attitudes of these pragmatically superior supervisors
should be copied or forced upon the pragmatically inferior supervisors, even if this is not
their spontaneous self-choice.

By-Products of Enlightened Management
…the supervisor who takes all sorts of courses and reads all sorts of books and is
trained in various ways to who agrees with the data and who honestly tries to behave
like a superior supervisor, may not be able to get the same results if he does not deeply
feel democratic, parental, affectionate, etc.

This brings up the profound existential question of the difference between being
something, and trying to be something.

There is no way for an authoritarian supervisor to become a democratic supervisor
except by passing through the transitional stage of consciously, artificially, voluntarily
trying to be a democratic supervisor. This man who is trying to be a democratic
supervisor is obviously quite different from the person who is spontaneously a
democratic supervisor.

Notes on Synergy
The more influence and power you give to someone else in the team situation, the more
you have for yourself.

Self-actualizing people get pleasure from the pleasures of other people. That is, they get
selfish pleasures from the pleasures of other people.

…what is good for my child is good for me, what is good for me is good for the child, what
give the child pleasure gives me pleasure, what gives me pleasure gives the child pleasure,
and all the line of difference fall and we can say now that these two persons are identified
and in certain functional theoretical ways have become a single unit.

The synergic doctrine of Unlimited Amount of good versus the Antisynergic doctrine of
Unlimited Amount of good

…there is a fixed quantify of influence in a company or plant. Consequently if subordinates
are permitted to exercise more influence as to what goes on in the organization, the superiors
have correspondingly less. The pie, so to speak, is thought to be just so big, and if some
people are given more, others must have less.

This better management system, while giving the men more influence, also gives the
high-producing managers more influence. The high -producing managers have
actually increased the size of the influence pie by means of the leadership processes
which they use.

The more influence and power you give to someone else in the team situation, the more you
have yourself.

Make every man a general instead of hanging just one single general. Under the
circumstances in which a general is in charge of a whole group of generals to whom he has
given high power, he will find to his amazement that he has far more power and influence
than he had before passing out power. The more he gives, the more he retains.
All one can steal is a product, a by-product of creativeness or of good management policy.

One cannot steal the creativeness or the good management policy.

…anybody who tries to learn the secret of making good voltmeters would eventually become
a non-copier and would discover that the best way to make them would be to become a
creative person, functioning with human beings in a particular way.

…what I discovered was that whenever they were stolen, it was by a person of such bad
tastes that he overlooked the good ideas and stole the poor one.

Interview with Andrew Kay
If work is meaningless then life comes close to being meaningless. -Abraham Maslow

The very process of talking about ideas helps the creativeness, and thereby makes it
more likely that there will be hundreds of ideas where there were only dozens before.
Copying or stealing is a little like stealing the egg, instead of the hen that lays the eggs.
In a word, money must be used; the mind must be used; creativeness must be used and
one must spend it and be prodigal with it rather than to hoard it and be stingy with it
and think that it can be used up or spent or decreased in quantity.

One thing about synergy is that you enjoy making other people happy or, to say it in the true
synergic fashion, that you can selfishly enjoy other people's happiness.

…with such an attitude there would be somewhat greater tendency toward an economic
system of unlimited production at lower prices rather than the anti-synergic principle of
limited production with high profit for each unit.

…what benefits one person benefits me, or benefits anybody else for that matter.

I believe that synergy is an actual perception of a higher truth, of a higher reality,
which actually exists and that the development over into synergy is like the
development from becoming blind to becoming seeing.

What is good for any scientist is good for me as scientist. What is good for my wife is
certainly good for me. What is good for me is good for my children. What is good for
the teacher can be demonstrated to be good for the students, most of to time, etc.

The more holistic a structure is operationally, that is, the more mutual interdependence that
is, the better the communications, etc., the more the team has to rely on each other-for
instance as in a basketball tem-the more synergic everything will be.
…once that's true, then there is no contrast between the good of the team and the good of the
person, and he can't tell the difference. It doesn't matter too much who makes the score.
The more teamwork there is, the more they rely on each other, the more they trust each other,
and so on; the more synergy there is.

If all this network of relationships is true, then anything that makes better managers also
makes better human beings in general and improves the whole society.

Whatever improves the society at any point tends to improve the rest of the society.

Training Kinder-Leaders
If our executive training programs look fifty years ahead then we should think about the
kindergartens being of the right sort in order to create the future bosses and generals and
managers and leaders that we will need in the next century-Abraham Maslow, 1961
We were delighted to learn that a group of volunteers from Oracle Corporation, a local
company, was participating in the local Junior Achievement project. The volunteers were
going to visit the classroom of our kindergarten. Through a series of classroom activities,
exercises, and discussion, the business executives hoped to impart good citizenship and
leadership skills to this group of 5 year-olds learners. We decided to learn more about Junior
Achievement as it seems to fit Maslow's vision for the future. We learned:

Volunteers share their life experiences through stimulating, age-appropriate activities.
These programs promote important life concepts that foster individual success.

Today's elementary school children are part of a rapidly changing and challenging world.

Through interactive, hands-on activities, students can better understand the relationship
between what they learn in school and success later in life. Students learn to value and
respect:

As we observed the business volunteers working with this group of kindergartners, we
understood the importance of training our youth to take their place as leaders in society.
Maslow's words echoed in our heads as we watched the 5-year-olds: "Whom among them
will change the world?" We truly understood Maslow's words that day.

Poor social or environmental conditions are those which set us against each other by
making our personal interests antagonistic to the group, to those of others.
The dichotomy between selfishness and altruism is resolved and transcended and
formed into a new higher unity: This is to be done by institutional arrangements so that
when I pursue my selfish gratifications I automatically help others, and when I try to be
altruistic I automatically help others, and when I try to be altruistic I automatically
reward and gratify myself.

Poor social or environmental conditions are those which set us against each other by
making our personal interests antagonistic to those of others, or mutually exclusive, or
are those in which the personal gratifications, are in short supply so that not all can
satisfy their needs except at the expense of others.

Under good conditions the successful person is loved rather than hated or feared or resented.

"Under what conditions does enlightened selfishness work for the good of the whole
society?"

"Under what conditions is it true that what is good for General Motors is good for the
United States?" Or, "What is good for me is necessarily good for you?"

Good management and good workers and good enterprises and good products and
good communities and good states are all conditions of one another and of good, mutual
relations. If an improvement in the community does not have an ultimate effect of the
goodness of the product, then something is wrong someplace.

Good management and good workers and good enterprises and good products and good
communities and good states are all conditions of one another and of good mutual relations.
If an improvement in the community does not have an ultimate effect on the goodness of the
product, then something is wrong someplace. The system is not integrated enough, the
communications are bad, or groups are set against each other instead of being synergic or
something of that sort.

Dr. Maslow's theory that people long for a shared sense of purpose, to be a part of something
larger than themselves and their search for meaning is often found in work.

The person who seeks power for power, is the one who is just exactly likely to be the one
who shouldn't have it. Such people are apt to use power very badly; to overcome,
overpower, use it for their own selfish gratifications.

The Blackfoot Indians tended not to have general leaders with general power, for instance,
like our President of the United States, but rather to have different leaders for different
functions. For instance, the leader in a war party was the one whom everybody thought to be
the best person to lead a war party, and the one most respected or the leader in raising stock
was the man best suited for that.

In truth we do have different capacities and powers and certainly in any group of hundreds of
people, we should not expect that the person who is best suited to arrange the Sun Dance
must be exactly the same person who is best suited to be the political representative to the

Canadian government, let us say.

This can be called functional leadership.

It corresponds to the objective requirements of the objective situation, of reality in general,
both natural and psychological reality.

Another aspect of this B-leadership in the Blackfoot was that the leader has absolutely
no power whatsoever that wasn't deliberately and voluntarily given to him ad hoc by
the particular people in the particular situation. Didn't really influence anyone or
order anyone about. There was a kind of a mutual give and take between the group
and the chosen leader because generally the chosen leader considered himself quite
objectively to be the best one for the job and the group considered him to be the best
one for the job. It was assumed that they all had the same purposes and that the leader
then was a kind of quarterback who called the signals and coordinated the group
toward common ends rather than one who gave orders, who used power, who tried to
influence them or control them in any way.

And by the way, the Blackfoot Indians didn't bother with leaders when there was no
necessity for any leader, and in some situations there were simply amorphous, unorganized
groups, quite unstructured, and this worked well too.

The person who seeks for power is the one who is just exactly likely to be the one who
shouldn't have it, because he neurotically and compulsively needs power. Such people are
apt to use power very badly.

They use it for their own selfish gratifications.

The task, the job, the objective requirements of the situation tend to be forgotten or lost in the
shuffle when such a person is the leader. He is essentially looking out for himself, for a kind
of self-cure of neurosis, for a self-gratification.

That is, the one who is best suited actually to solve the problem or to pursue the task
successfully, i.e., the one who is most perceptive about the objective requirements of the
situation, and who is therefore most selfless in the situation-just that person, because by
definition he is psychologically healthier, gets absolutely no kick out of being able to
order people around or to boss them. It simply doesn't give him kicks or gratification.
The safest person to give power to is the one who doesn't enjoy power. He is the least
likely to use it for selfish, neurotic, or sadistic purposes, or for showing-off purposes.

If a person struggles for leadership and for boss-hood, then this is one dangerous point
against him that should make us question his suitability.

B-Power is the power to do what needs doing, to do the job that ought to be done, to solve
the objective problem, to get the job done that needs to be done or to say it in a more flossy
way, B-power is the power to foster and protect and enhance all the B-values, of truth and
goodness, beauty, justice, perfection, order, etc., etc.

The B-leader in the work situation, if we follow the above objective type of analysis, can be
defined as the one who can get the job done best or who at least can help to organize things
in such a fashion that the job gets done best.

The B-leader doesn't want to twist anybody around anybody's finger, and while I'm at it, I
might as well talk about the B-follower.

As one who has introjected the goals or directives or objectives in the problematical situation
and who is so identified with them that he wants them done in the best possible way.

B-follower is presumably exactly as eager to have the B-leader become the leader as the Bleader
is himself.

B-leader would have to have the ability to give orders without feeling guilty about it, feeling
that he was taking advantage or getting into a tizzy about it in a way. Furthermore, if his job
is to give out life sentences or death sentences, then he must be able to do this too without
falling apart.

I think what I'm trying to say here is that there are many situations in which the boss ought to
be very strong and authoritative boss, although in large-scale industrial situations my guess is
that participative management and therefore participative managers are more often needed
objectively than the strong boss who can bark out an order and have it executed immediately
without any question.

Most leaders have to be able to withstand hostility, that is, to be unpopular, without falling
apart. The kind of person who must be loved by all probably will not make a good leader in
most situations.

He must not be ruled by fear. He must be courageous enough for the situation.

"Every man a general."
Every man in the ideal or perfect society or situation would be able to become a
functional leader wherever he was the most suitable one for the job.

Every man, then, ought to have broad enough shoulders so that he can enjoy taking on
responsibilities, rather than feeling burdened and overloaded by responsibilities.

The process of becoming a leader is analogous to that of a musical conductor. At the
start, you spend many years acquiring the knowledge and skill required to play an
instrument. Perhaps you learn several instruments. You begin by playing a solo where
you are the lone element. Before too long, you play with another person in a duet. The
duet is still rather easy because you are close to the other player, can look into his or
her eyes to keep the beat and create the harmony.

As your grasp of the music and your experience grows, you find yourself leading a
quartet, then a chamber orchestra. You learn how important each and every player is.

If the first violin is off key, or the French horn is off beat, the entire musical piece is
affected. Instead of the audience focusing on the on the beauty of the music, they focus
on the one weak player or the one fault in the whole. At this point, you might be able to
fill in for one of the musicians, in a pinch.

Eventually you are in the position of conducting a full symphony orchestra. As you
look out, you know all of the musicians want to be there. They want to perform. After
all, nobody practices bass for years and doesn't want to play. You also know that as the
conductor, they are looking to you to bring them together. To bring the passion and
feeling of the music together. To make each musician a part of the whole. You realize
that not only can't you dash about playing each instrument yourself, don't even know
how to play many of them! So, you begin. You begin by pulling together everything
you know, everything you've learned, everything you are, and you lead.

As the music ends, the musicians take a large breath and say "WOW! I am so glad I
was a part of that magnificent piece." As you turn to the audience you see through
their applause that they are also thinking "WOW, I'm so glad I was a part of this
audience."

The good boss or the good leader in most situations must have a psychological
prerequisite the ability to take pleasure in the growth and self-actualization of other
people.

He must be strong in the above senses, he must enjoy responsibility, that is, of
supporting a wife and children; he must be able to mete out discipline as necessary, to
be stern as well as loving, he ought to be able to be a captain or a general; he ought to
be able to get great gratification out of watching his children grow up well and out of
watching his wife develop her personality well and grow on toward greater maturity
and self-actualization.

…good manager must also be able to be a good B-follower, that is, he must be able to
take the reins and be the boss in that situation where he has to and to do this well, but
he must also not need to be the boss in every conceivable situation, i.e., he must be able
to play second violin when there is a better first violinist and must be able to enjoy this
situation exactly as much as when he himself plays first violin or is the soloist.

The Superior Person-The "Aggridant"
No society can function unless the inferiors have the ability to admire the superiors, or at
least not to hate them nor attack them.

The leader in many situations ought not to be as expressive and open about himself as other
people are permitted and encouraged to be. Again here I think of the example of the captain
of the ship which is in danger, or the surgeon or the general in the army who may entertain
all sorts of dark suspicions and fears and so on but who had better keep their mouths shut
rather than open up freely about their anxieties.

…he must take upon his own shoulders the responsibility for the worry and the anxiety and
the tension that may be necessary.

B-leader enjoys and fosters the B-values, having his own way means the ability, the power to
set things right in the world that needs setting right, and of getting great personal pleasure
from this. If I'm to be the B-boss, then I must get a special kick out of doing a good job or
seeing a good job done.

…it would be obviously be very desirable, especially since each of these 300 people was a
general, to vote, I am sure, for setting up conditions under which they could enjoy their work,
that is to say, in which they could enjoy living, enjoy their lives.

That which is good for personal development is also good for turning out good
automobiles, in the long run at least. And that which is good for turning out good
automobiles in the long run, and for having a good functioning factory which is to last
for along time, then it turns out that this is good for personal development of the
workers.

…"who is best qualified to deal with this problem."

There are some situation which demand the highly directive leader as in a captain of a ship or
the commander of any army group or of a submarine; there are other situations which
demand realistically the team sharer. This is to say, we have to accept both of these variables
as realities and then try to fit the right manager to the right situation.

…the psychological makeup of the highly directive leader: is more irked than other people
are by lack of neatness, lack of order, lack of aesthetic rounding out, lack of completeness,
etc. This is the kind of person who simply has to straighten the crooked picture on the wall.

It just bothers him more than it bothers other people.

…it may be the main reward for having power.

…just so that he can retain in his own hand the power to get rid of irritating incompletions,
lack of neatness, lack of closure, and the like.

…we an assume that people are born different with respect to the qualities of need to be in
control, of need to defer, need to be passive or to be active, proneness to anger or to flight,
etc.

The Very Superior Boss
The objective requirements of the particular situation or problem should be the main
determinant of leadership policy and followership policy.

Another variable in this situation, then, would be time and the time span. Obviously,
where quick decisions are needed, the superior must make these decisions quickly and
directively, authoritatively, and without much discussion. Orders must be given,
without explanation if necessary. On the other hand, if the situation has a long time
span, as in building up a business which is to last for fifty or a hundred years, and
especially if it is to be stable enough to last past the death of the superior, then greater
patience is required and greater participative management, more explanations, more
giving out of facts, more discussion of the facts, and common agreement upon the
conclusions. This is the only way to train good managers and good leaders in the long
run.

…why it was that obviously borderline people like Hitler or Stalin or Senator
McCarthy or some of the Birchers or people of this sort can gather so many followers.

Because they were so decisive, so sure of themselves, so unwavering. So definite about
what they wanted and didn't want, so clear about right and wrong, etc. In a nature in
which most people do not have an identity, or real self, in which they are all confused
about right and wrong, about good and evil, in which they are basically uncertain about
what they want and what they don't want, then they are apt to admire and succumb to
and look for leadership to any person who seems to know definitely what he wants.

Since the democratic leader, the non-authoritarian person in general, is apt to be
marked by tolerance and by admission of ignorance, by willingness to admit that he
doesn't know everything, sometimes for less educated people the decisive paranoid
authoritarian then can look very attractive and relieve the follower of all anxiety.

Healthy people have no need for power over other people; they don't enjoy it, they
don't want it, and they will use it only when there is some factual need in the situation
for it.

…shift the whole center of organization of the theory from the person of the leader to
the objective requirements of the particular situation or problem. The lat