The document discusses how fear erodes profits in organizations. It argues that common management practices like quotas, targets, and performance appraisals create fear among employees which damages productivity. Fear is an ineffective motivator and undermines trust within companies. The document provides examples of different types of fears employees may experience and how fear spreads through silence. It recommends that leaders identify and reduce fear to build trust, improve measures of success beyond numbers, and transform their organizations for long-term sustainability and profits.

1. FEAR ERODES PROFITS:
HOW TO TRANSFORM
YOUR WORKPLACE
FOR SUCCESS
SBODN
March 7, 2011
www.mdaszko.com
408-247-7757
md@mdaszko.com

2. FEAR!
So What?
Why are we here
today?

3. The Power of Purpose:
to learn how fear links to erosion of profit, etc.
Provoke Your Current
Thinking;
Raise a New Level of
Consciousness;
Invite a new awareness and
commitment at the end of this
hour: what will you do different
tomorrow?

4. Definition of Fear
• “An unpleasant, often strong emotion
caused by anticipation or awareness of
danger; anxious concern.”

5. What We Will Discover Together;
Be Aware:
• 100’s of kinds of Fear
• Fears’ Impact on People & Organizations;
• The Link Between Fear and Profits, the
Bottom Line, Results, and Survival;
• Fear Erodes Profits—and much more;
• Our Job is to Identify & Reduce Fear, & Build
Trust

6. Fear is not a rational topic
• People’s fears are real.
• Your fears are different
than mine—there’s
variation in everything!!
What are yours?

7. Can fear motivate?
Is fear an effective motivator?
• Self-imposed
• Threat of danger
Intrinsic
• Short-term (from within)
• Intrinsic vs. extrinsic
motivation Extrinsic
(from outside)

8. What kinds of fears do you feel?
• Losing a job
• Change
• The unknown
• Speaking up
• Saying “no” or “I don’t know”
• and hundreds of others

9. What happens to people?

10. How Does Fear Impact An Organization?

11. Examples
Fear?
Aim?
Reaction?

12. The Leadership System
that creates fear
is the same system that creates the
crisis and disasters in our world.

13. COST OF FEAR
Millions?
Billions?
Trillions of $$$?

14. Management Fads & “Best Practices” that
Create Fear and Destroy Profits & People
• Holding Individuals • Ranking & Rating
Accountable for the
Outcomes of the System • Unclear Purpose &
Direction
• Quotas, Targets
• Lack of Understanding
• Incentives about the strategies and
• Arbitrary Numerical Goals resources
• Performance Appraisals • Busy work that creates
• Pay for Performance complexity and waste
• “Motivating” Employees • Power Point Paralysis

15. Management Fads
and most “Best Practices”
create fear, internal competition, finger-
pointing and blaming, toxic work
environments . . .

16. “The most important measures are
unknown and unknowable.”
Dr. W. Edwards Deming
“If you can’t measure it,
you can’t manage it.”

17. Where is Fear?
• Fear also exists and thrives in the
silence of organizations.

18. Transform Your Organization:
leaders work to identify & reduce fear and build trust

19. Trust Creates Profits and more

20. Success? By what Measure?

21. Take-Away’s
• Build a new awareness of Fear and its Impact;
• Identify more kinds of fear;
• Work to reduce fear & create a plan to build trust;
• Personally identify your fears, create healthy
boundaries;
• Measure the cost of fear: quantitatively and
qualitatively where you can. Can you afford it?
Does it matter? Get rid of it!
• See the link of fear-causing systems and
behaviors that impact the bottom line, profits, and
your health.

22. References
• Drive by Daniel H. Pink
• Abolishing Performance Appraisals by Tom Coens
and Mary Jenkins
• Intrinsic Motivation at Work by Kenneth Thomas
• Power by Jeffrey Pfeffer
• Flash Foresight by Daniel Burrus
• Free, Perfect, and Now by Robert Rodin
• The New Economics by W. Edwards Deming

23. THANK YOU
md@mdaszko.com
408-247-7757
www.mdaszko.com