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242 PART 4: THE LEADER AS A RELATIONSHIP BUILDER
Managers’ difficulty getting people to cooperate and share knowledge at

Blackmer/Dover Resources Inc. illustrates some of the problems associated with
carrot-and-stick approaches.

IN THE LEAD Blackmer/Dover Inc.
Bill Fowler is one of the fastest and most accurate workers at the Blackmer/Dover fac-
tory in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the 24-year plant veteran cuts metal shafts for
heavy-duty industrial pumps. It’s a precision task that requires a high level of skill, and
managers would love to know Fowler’s secrets so they could improve other workers and
the manufacturing process. But Fowler refuses to share his tricks of the trade, even with
his closest fellow workers. According to another employee, machinist Steve Guikema,
Fowler “has hardly ever made a suggestion for an improvement” in the plant.
One reason is that Fowler believes managers could use his ideas and shortcuts
to speed production and ultimately make his job harder. Another is that his knowl-
edge has given him power, increased status, and a bigger paycheck. Until recently,
workers could earn a premium on top of their hourly wage based on the number
of pumps or pump parts they produced. That practice gave people a strong incen-
tive to keep their output-enhancing tricks secret from fellow workers. A revised
compensation system has done away with such incentives, but a long tradition of
hoarding knowledge means there are still an estimated 10 to 20 percent of workers
who refuse to cooperate with either managers or fellow employees. The culture of
competition and hoarding knowledge is too entrenched.
These workers, like Fowler, see their expertise and accumulated experience as
their only source of power. If other workers gained the same knowledge, they would
no longer enjoy a superior status. New leaders at Blackmer/Dover Resources are
looking for motivational tools that will encourage another kind of behavior: greater
cooperation, knowledge sharing, and collaboration between workers and manage-
ment to improve the plant and help it weather the economic slump. Revising com-

pensation is the first step in establishing a system that will focus on meeting higher
as well as lower-level needs. 46

Incentive programs can be successful, especially when people are actually moti-
vated by money and lower needs. However, individual incentives are rarely enough
to motivate behaviors that benefit the organization as a whole. One

Action Memo
way for leaders to address the carrot-and-stick controversy is to
understand a program’s strengths and weaknesses and acknowledge
the positive but limited effects of extrinsic motivators. A leader also
As a leader, you can avoid total reliance on
carrot-and-stick motivational techniques.
appeals to people’s higher needs, and no subordinate should have
You can acknowledge the limited effects
work that does not offer some self-satisfaction as well as a yearly pay
raise. Furthermore, rewards can be directly linked to behavior promot-
of extrinsic rewards and appeal to people’s
higher needs for intrinsic satisfaction.
ing the higher needs of both individuals and the organization, such as
rewarding quality, long-term growth, or a collaborative culture. 47
Empowering People to Meet Higher Needs

A significant way in which leaders can meet the higher motivational needs of sub-

ordinates is to shift power down from the top of the organizational hierarchy and
share it with subordinates. They can decrease the emphasis on incentives designed
to affect and control subordinate behavior and instead attempt to share power
with organizational members to achieve shared goals. One of the problems at the
Blackmer/Dover factory, for example, is that workers are accustomed to hoarding