A Class with Drucker - Headway | Work on yourself

C H A P T E R E I G H T E E N
How to Motivate the
Knowledge <strong>Work</strong>er
D rucker
was very sensitive to the role and work of the worker.
As he saw it, companies were increasingly dependent on the “knowledge
worker,” a term he had created some years earlier to denote the new worker,
who worked not primarily physically <strong>with</strong> his body doing physical labor,
but <strong>with</strong> his mind. However, to Peter, all workers were of significant actual
and potential value to the firm. He resented it when management talked of
the cost of labor. And he didn’t like to think of managing workers, either,
although at times he used both of these terms. To Peter, labor was not an
expense; labor was added value, a resource, potentially the greatest resource
that an organization possessed. Managers didn’t “manage” workers, they
led them. Peter was the first person I had heard at the time to make the distinction
between management and leadership. Moreover, Peter took on
some of the leading researchers in motivation, whose theories are still discussed
and followed: McGregor, Maslow, and Herzberg.