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is needed. It also tells people someone cares how they are doing
and that what they do is important.
By the Numbers
The management of a large manufacturing unit was concerned
about increasing production and quality problems. They deter-
mined that the cause was a high level of both tardiness and absen-
teeism. Supervisory efforts to get people to show up for work were
largely ineffective. Punishing tardy employees caused them to not
come to work at all if they were going to be late. They would
rather turn around and go home than be punished.
A young supervisor, recently returned from ‘‘charm school’’
(a leadership class), asked his boss if he could try using a basic
feedback technique he had learned in class to reduce the absences.
The boss said yes, with the usual caveat, you can’t spend any
money.
The supervisor obtained some large sheets of chart paper. He
began to write two numbers on a chart taped to a support column
in his department. Each day the numbers changed. He said noth-
ing to the employees about the chart.
After a few days, an employee asked what the numbers meant.
The supervisor told him that one was the number of good parts
produced in the department the previous day and the other the
number of employees who showed up on time that day.
Word about what the numbers meant soon got around the
department. Employees were seen checking the chart. One em-
ployee observed, ‘‘Look, when more people are on time for work
our production and quality numbers go up.’’ Soon it became a
game for the employees. They encouraged one another to be on
time so they could see if they could continue to make the produc-

ration for the person who is giving you the gift of construc-
tive feedback. Join with the other person in a discussion
as to how the feedback can cause you to improve your
performance.
Who Helps Leaders?
Skilled golf coaches, such as Butch Harmon and David Leadbetter,
are able to help professional and amateur golfers through observa-
tion, feedback, and specific suggestions. The golfer must then
translate the suggestions into action. This is the process of ‘‘con-
tinuous improvement’’ that drives all avid golfers. Unfortunately,
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though untold amounts of time and money are spent in business,
industry, education, health care, and government on the continu-
ous improvement of processes, comparatively little emphasis is
placed on the continuous improvement of the leaders of the peo-
ple on the front line.
Who helps leaders in today’s organizations identify their fun-
damental leadership skill deficiencies? Sadly, there is not much
help available beyond descriptions of leadership style and/or per-
sonality. These are nice to know, or to have confirmed, and they
can be helpful. However, they are not a substitute for leadership
effectiveness feedback, which identifies how leaders are doing as
perceived by those whom they impact as leaders.
Performance evaluation, or performance appraisal, is adver-
tised in most organizations as an annual process designed among
other things as the tool for leadership effectiveness measurement.
This annual ‘‘feedback requirement’’ is not viewed as productive
by most employees and is a dreaded Human Resource Depart-

don’t understand our responsibility to the organization and its
hard-working, contributing members, or are more concerned
about someone’s self-esteem than their job performance. Yet it is
their job performance for which they are paid. Then one day we
are faced with the person who has the security of twenty years on
the job and literally refuses to meet our performance expectations.
Why not?! He or she has been taught that mediocre performance
is acceptable. And the organization develops the ‘‘M’’—for medi-
ocrity—disease.
What is needed is the application of the concept of ‘‘perform-
ance improvement for everyone’’ to the leadership development
process in organizations. What needs to be done is to brush away
the fuzz, the fluff, the political correctness, the ‘‘get a powerful
mentor’’ behavior, etc., and get down to basics. Everyone should
have a ‘‘Performance Improvement Plan’’ with clearly established
performance expectations, which are used to determine whether
the plan is being met. This will require regularly scheduled reviews
and the opportunity for unscheduled reviews as necessary. It will
require leaders to be coaches—what should be, but rarely is, their
number one priority. It will provide the genuine gift of construc-
tive feedback to organizational members. It will model the power
of constructive feedback present in the game of golf and enhance
the opportunity to significantly improve the effectiveness of orga-
nizational leadership just as application of feedback in the game
of golf can lead to lower scores.
When the golfer strikes the golf ball, and a ‘‘slice’’ or a ‘‘hook’’
or ‘‘straight down the middle’’ follows, the result is clearly observ-
able and measurable. When a follower knows what is expected,
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5
15
Accept Change: Adapt
I love golf. Every day’s a different day. Every shot’sa
different shot.
Greg Norman, CBS 60 Minutes, April 6, 1997
The game of golf is hundreds of years old. The game of leadership
is older. Both have changed considerably over the centuries. Yet
their essential elements remain.
Throughout history there have been games played with a ball
and a club, or reasonable facsimiles thereof. The golf ball has
changed considerably over time. The ‘‘feathery,’’ followed by the
‘‘rubber guttie,’’ then the ‘‘rubber core,’’ and now a choice of two-
or three-piece balls with solid or soft centers, have been the major
developments. Clubs also have changed. Shafts were made of
wood, usually hickory, for years. The first seamless steel shafts
were introduced in 1912, the first metal-headed driver in the
1890s. These innovations were followed by matched sets of clubs.
Now we have graphite shafts and space-age titanium club heads.
175
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Golf and the Game of Leadership
Improvements in golf equipment have made it easier for millions
to play the game.
The leadership game has also changed over centuries. The in-
dustrial revolution, the great depression, two world wars, space
and information technology, and social change have caused orga-
nizational restructuring in the drive to compete. Organizations
still have hierarchies but also networks, autocratic leadership is

capability for the future. The engineering planning process was
adapted to include initiating a new engine design and develop-
ment project every five years. These projects were not focused on
the need for a new engine but on the need to improve the capabil-
ity to design one. The company went back to the basics, as we
discussed on hole ࠻6. Management focused on the situation: The
issue of ‘‘engineering staff capability’’ was placed front and center.
The necessary steps were taken to build a competitive design and
development group. Poorly focused leadership had gotten them
in trouble. Properly focused leadership was going to get them back
on track.
No Prize for Coming in Second
An office-supply company periodically ran sales contests to ‘‘mo-
tivate’’ its salespeople. The same two people consistently won the
contests and took home the prizes. Company management even-
tually recognized that the rest of the sales force did little better
during the contests than they did in normal circumstances. Man-
agement’s assessment was that ‘‘those people just aren’t moti-
vated.’’
The nonwinners, when asked, said they gave up competing
because they knew they couldn’t beat the two staff superstars,
‘‘there are no rewards for second place.’’
The inevitable management consultant was called in to look
at the ‘‘motivation’’ problem. After some discussion and analysis,
the consultant suggested some changes in the scoring of the con-
tests. In addition to overall winners, awards should go to those
who improved their individual performance numbers by the high-
est percentage. In that way, the salespeople would be competing
against themselves (just like in golf) and not against the super-
stars.

for many years at the University of Michigan, taught his quality/
acceptance theory of decision making at the university and as an
international consultant to numerous organizations. His theory,
in summary, holds that a decision consists of two parts: quality
and acceptance. Quality refers to the objective value of the deci-
sion, i.e., is it substantively the best choice. Acceptance refers to
the willingness of those affected by the decision to accept it. Obvi-
ously the best match is high quality and high acceptance. The
second shift operation made their decision based on the high
quality and high acceptance of the ‘‘gravity feed system over the
conveyor belt’’ in our example. When the high quality decision
was met by the low acceptance of the first shift, the change was
not accepted.
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Accept Change: Adapt
The other decision option involves low quality and high ac-
ceptance. This is the option the first shift decided upon and con-
tinued with until many months later when the ‘‘gravity feed
system’’ was put in place on both shifts. The example illustrates
Dr. Maier’s point concerning the importance of both acceptance
and quality in the decision-making process, and their impact on
implementation of a decision. Acceptance by those affected can
overcome some deficiencies in quality, but quality will not over-
come deficiencies in acceptance. This is an important concept for
the leader to remember, and consider, especially when attempting
to implement organizational change.
What? Me, Adapt?!
Groups and teams have difficulty accepting and adapting to
change. Individuals also have a hard time doing what the outsider