How to Lead Now

To turn the operation around, Pelaez believed that he had to break some rules. "Managers are not supposed to get involved with the personal problems of their employees, but I take the opposite view," he says. "Any problem that affects the employee will eventually affect your account. If you take care of the employees, they will take care of you and your customer."

That is exactly what he did. Besides the typical "Employee of the Month" recognition programs, he did the extraordinary things: He brought in an English-language teacher to tutor employees twice a week on their own time. He added Friday citizenship classes to help employees become U.S. citizens. To keep single mothers showing up for work, Pelaez arranged for certified baby-sitters subsidized by government programs.

To help his employees take advantage of the earned income tax credit for low-income earners, Pelaez invited a representative from the IRS to come in and give free tax advice. He brought in another government representative to tell the employees how to get free health insurance for their children. And he even created a small computer lab with three used computers so that employees could get free training in word processing and spreadsheets from their fellow plane cleaners. "All of these things are important, because we want employees who really feel connected to the company," says Pelaez.

Employees who had perfect attendance over a six-month period or who turned in a wallet or pocketbook filled with cash and credit cards got a day off with pay. Workers in the "Top Crew of the Month" were rewarded with movie passes, telephone calling cards, or "burger bucks." The upshot? Turnover fell to 12% per year -- an astonishing level for jobs that pay only $6 an hour to start. And crews started to recover large amounts of money off of the airplanes, returning some 250 wallets with more than $50,000 in cash to passengers who had left them on board. Meanwhile, Pelaez increased the company's revenue in his area to $14 million annually, from just $5 million in 1998. "He's created a group of people who will do anything in the world for him," believes Katzenbach's Canner.

Pride is a powerful motivator not only for low-income or factory workers, but also for white-collar employees at some of the most successful and most admired corporations. Pfizer, the leading pharmaceutical maker, had a problem common to lots of organizations: Many of its most senior sales reps -- some who had been in the field as long as 30 years -- were feeling somewhat disenfranchised. "Sometimes it's low motivation or burnout or the lack of opportunity for career advancement," says James Shumsky, a longtime Pfizer sales rep. "Most companies look toward younger people for middle-management positions." In fact, most senior reps reported to less experienced district managers, and they were surrounded by younger go-getters who sometimes treated them as relics. One result: Pfizer's most experienced people in the field were underperforming the sales force in the early- to mid-1990s.

"If you take care of the employees, they will take care of you and your customer."

Roy Pelaez

Shumsky, now 64, joined Pfizer as a sales rep in 1965, in Wichita Falls, Texas, with the job of selling antibiotics, tranquilizers, and vitamins to doctors in 25 counties. Over the years, he noticed that the veteran reps were becoming increasingly frustrated on the job. The vast growth of the company and of the industry brought many opportunities, but it also brought many new and younger staffers who were eager for promotion. Many of the most experienced reps were less motivated and had even become socially isolated in settings with younger district managers. In 1994, Shumsky joined a pilot program, initially called "The Second Wind," that had been designed to change that dynamic. At first, the program didn't work all that well, in part because the younger district managers didn't buy into it. But then, Shumsky says, "some incredible things happened. The sales of each person in the program just took off and accelerated dramatically. Many times, the veterans led the nation in sales of certain drugs."

Rick Burch, a senior vice president, saw the program as a powerful way to reengage the older members of the sales staff. The idea was to create self-reinforcing peer groups of four to seven senior reps throughout the company, connect them via email and phone calls, and then have all of the teams compete with each other and with the rest of the sales force. The program was more than a competition, however. The veteran sales reps were regularly asked to give talks to groups of new management trainees and to speak at conferences of district managers. They were also assigned mentoring roles with the younger staffers. "It means so much when you're a younger rep and you get advice from a more experienced peer rather than from a manager," says Burch.