Page 125 - The Bible On Leadership

Performance Management 111

result in ultimate reward, whether it is Jacob laboring an extra seven
years to win the hand of Rachel or David sparing the life of Saul in the
cave and eventually ascending to the throne himself.
Excellent performance management takes the patience of Job, cour-
age of David, wisdom of Solomon, and the compassion of Jesus. But
that doesn’t mean that today’s ‘‘merely human’’ leaders can’t aspire to
manage performance in ways that rival their biblical precursors. Many
of them are doing so already.

MOTIVATION AND GOAL SETTING

The first stage of performance management consists of helping people
set ambitious yet realistic goals and motivating them toward the
achievement of those goals. In 1 Thessalonians, Paul writes to the con-
verts in Thessalonica that, ‘‘as apostles of Christ, we certainly had a right
to make some demands of you, but we were gentle among you, like a
mother caring for her little children . . . encouraging, comforting, and
urging you . . .’’ Paul was a master of motivation, tailoring his urgency
and emotional tone to the readiness of the ‘‘employees.’’
Jack Stack of Springfield Re also tailored his motivational message to
the readiness of the ‘‘troops’’ when he took over the Melrose Park fac-
tory at International Harvester. He had 500 unionized workers, most of
whom operated in a culture of poor quality and low morale. Stack told
them, ‘‘If you beat your all-time high, I’ll buy you all a cup of coffee.’’
This doesn’t sound like high-level motivation (or a high-priced in-
centive). But keep in mind that production levels were so poor that
matching the all-time high was only worth a cup of coffee. Anything
more would have been overkill, inflated praise for a modest gain.
It was also symbolic motivation. Like Paul, Stack was caring for and
feeding his ‘‘children.’’ It was probably the most nurturing thing anyone
had done for them in years. And Stack succeeded. He ‘‘had’’ to buy
everyone in the plant a cup of coffee when they exceeded the previous
benchmark.
The second week, Stack upped the ante, offering the workers coffee