Overcoming Employee Apathy
Sometimes this is confused with "getting the buggers to behave," but that's more classroom stuff or management stuff if you like if you can only manage to get the adults to sit quietly with their legs crossed until home time you really haven't achiev
Overcoming Employee Apathy
By Max McKeown (The Truth About Innovation)
A quick search on Amazon reveals not one single business book or pamphlet about overcoming apathy. And yet anyone who's been a manager for more than a week must surely recognise that this is the essence of leadership: Getting the buggers to care. Isn't it?
Sometimes this is confused with "getting the buggers to behave," but that's more classroom stuff or management stuff if you like – if you can only manage to get the adults to sit quietly with their legs crossed until home time you really haven't achieved much, have you?
The manager has to justify his own existence first. So ask yourself: Does your presence at work increase the profits of the company by at least five times your salary?
It's easy to ask the question of other managers you have to deal with first (your manager for instance, or his manager's manager, or the whole board if you have the time in between confiscating mobile phones and deleting pointless e-mails) since it's not hard to doubt the benefit they bring (or why you should be paid more and why they should have to sacrifice their jobs to make the required funds available).
Once that is done—and the general principle established—consider the ways you could increase profitability. Could your people do the same job without you? Would they work harder or slower in your absence? Do you organize them better than they would organize themselves? Do they lack key technical abilities or knowledge that you alone possess? How did they cope before you got the job? Does your existence at work overcome apathy or add to it?