If you were to ask someone why people work, you might hear, "People work only because they must earn a living, and they will do everything possible to avoid it." In the early 1900's Henry Ford said, "The average man won't really do a day's work unless he is caught and cannot get out of it." For Ford and his early production line employees, that philosophy made sense. Is this the sales management philosophy which should be used today? Maybe it should be used in some cases, yet recent studies have clearly shown that people do not always hate their jobs and that they work for something beyond money and their "daily bread."
Managers, of course, differ greatly in their approaches to motivating their employees. This difference is often based on their past experiences and the assumptions they make about their team. Sitting in the manager's chair can lead to a dangerous distortion of perspective. The pressure of making sure your employees are on target to reach their production goals can cause you to become overly focused on "monitoring" their progress (or lack thereof). However, focusing exclusively on data can turn even the most gifted manager into nothing more than a "nagger" who is constantly riding employees to get those numbers up. As a manager, you must never lose sight of the fact that your success, and that of your entire team, does not rest on your ability to read production schedules and nag them if they are falling behind. Instead, your best hope for success is to.
