The problem with many companies is that they judge employees on everything except "whether the job gets done and the customer is happy," write Brian M. Carney and Isaac Getz in Freedom, Inc., as excerpted in the Wall Street Journal (10/15/09). The authors draw from the philosophy of Jean-François Zobrist, a former chief executive, who observed that there are two kinds of companies -- "how" companies and "why" companies.

The "how" companies "spend their time telling workers how to do their jobs," while the "why" companies "replace all the 'hows' with a single question: Why are you doing what you're doing?" Where the "how" approach completely ignores customer happiness, the "why" question has only one answer, which is "to keep the customers happy." And if you're keeping the customer happy, the "how" is pretty much irrelevant.

The authors also write about "the hidden cost of top-down thinking," which refers to a failure to account for "disengaged, stressed out, ill, or even absent" employees. This hidden cost results in "turnover, workplace stress, conflict-ridden labor relations," as well as "a lack of innovation and slumping organic growth." They also call for a new kind of leadership, where leaders eschew status symbols and subordinate themselves to their employees. The key, they say, is to make your people feel like "human beings instead of human resources."