Leadership and motivation
The Success of the entire business depends on the most important resource of any organization which is certainly human resources. They are creators and makers of new technical, technological and organizational solutions, creators of new values, controllers of working process and development of business systems.
The key question is: who will manage human resources and motivate them so that the whole organization performs better. Leadership is one influence, one work of art and the process of impact on people, in sense that those who are affected are voluntarily and willingly participating in the creation of new values in the organization. Precisely, the role of a leader is to motivate its co-workers to their potential contribution in achieving the objectives of the organization. Leadership and motivation are key factors influencing the success of the organization, as well as employee satisfaction.
Therefore, the connection and interconnection of successful leadership and proper ways of motivating employees are essential for all organizations. In developed nations, it is also said that the democratic leadership style is one of the most effective. It assists employees feel valued, gives them a sense of ownership over their position, and motivates high productivity.
Pursuing Perfection
The greatest sculptor of ancient Greece, Phidias, around 440 bc made the statues that to this day, 2,400 years later, still stand on the roof of the Parthenon in Athens. When Phidias submitted his bill, the city accountant of Athens refused to pay it. “These statues stand on the roof of the temple, and on the highest hill in Athens. Nobody can see anything but their fronts. Yet, you have charged us for sculpturing them in the round, that is, for doing their backsides, which nobody can see.” “You are wrong,” Phidias retorted. “The Gods can see them.”
Whenever people ask me which of my books 1 consider the best, I smile and say, “The next.” I do not, however, mean it as a joke. 1 mean it the way Verdi meant it when he talked of writing an opera at eighty in the pursuit of a perfection that had always eluded him. Though I am older now than Verdi was when he wrote Falstaff, I am still thinking and working on two additional books, each of which, I hope, will be better than any of my earlier ones, will be more important, and will come a little closer to excellence.
Decision Objectives
A decision process requires clear specifications as to what the decision has to accomplish. What are the objectives the decision has to reach? In science these are known as “boundary conditions.” A decision, to be effective, needs to be adequate to its purpose. The more concisely and clearly boundary conditions are stated, the greater the likelihood that the decision will indeed be an effective one and will accomplish what it set out to do. Conversely, any serious shortfall in defining these boundary conditions is almost certain to make a decision ineffectual, no matter how brilliant it may seem.
“What is the minimum needed to resolve this problem?” is the form in which the boundary conditions are usually probed. “Can our needs be satisfied,” Alfred P. Sloan presumably asked himself when he took command of General Motors in 1922, “by removing the autonomy of the division heads?” His answer was clearly in the negative. The boundary conditions of his problem demanded strength and responsibility in the chief operating positions. This was needed as much as control at the center and unity. The boundary conditions demanded a solution to a problem of structure, rather than an accommodation among personalities. And this, in turn, made his solution last.