A Class with Drucker - Headway | Work on yourself

YOU MUST KNOW YOUR PEOPLE TO LEAD THEM ■ 157
duties in his company. Once a year the company and every organization in
it conducted a savings-bond drive. No one wanted the additional work of
persuading the organization’s employees to sign up for additional bond
deductions from their paychecks and keeping the records this effort
required. Since no one wanted the job, they assigned these duties to the
most junior engineer, or sometimes to a secretary. Most people assigned
this project did the minimum work possible and made no serious attempt
at convincing people to make additional investments. Predictably, results
were generally very poor.
However, this young man was different. Given the unwanted assignment,
he really took charge. He convinced every engineer and manager in
his department that was working on location to buy more bonds. But he
didn’t stop there. He called all over the country to talk to company engineers
who were traveling. He motivated them by telling them that they
could be the top organization in competing <strong>with</strong> other departments in the
company for bond purchases.
At first, many of the veteran engineers bought bonds because his enthusiasm
and sincerity amused them. Then, almost in spite of themselves, they
got caught up in the competition. No one had ever appealed to them in
this way before. Of course, this organization finished first in bond purchases
in the company by a large margin. That wasn’t the end of it. The
department head noticed that although savings bonds had very little to
do <strong>with</strong> engineering, the bond drive had helped to increase productivity.
People just seemed to feel better about themselves as members of
the organization and wanted to perform better. When they actually won
this competition, which no one had ever taken seriously before, they
really felt good!
The president of the company noticed the unusual bond drive results
and was impressed. He asked the engineering department manager about
them. Shortly thereafter, an opening for a junior manager of a small project
appeared. The department head remembered the young engineer’s success
at organizing the bond campaign and selling bonds. He knew that if
this engineer could accomplish so much <strong>with</strong> a bond drive, he probably
could do the same <strong>with</strong> a project in his own profession.
The young man was promoted over twenty other engineers who had
more seniority in the company for this small engineering project. He did
so well in this job that when the next opportunity came up, he was promoted
again. All of this was years ago. The young engineer went on to