Contented Cows Give Better Milk

Contented Cows Give Better Milk
by Bill Catlette and Richard Hadden

Here we have another cute title designed to grab our attention in order to deliver a “simple as dirt” concept: A person’s degree of satisfaction with their work situation is entirely and directly related to their output. If this concept is so simple, why aren’t more leaders taking advantage of it? Business bookshelves and boardrooms are cluttered with the all too predictable and easy prescriptions for empowerment, restructuring, and the like. Consultants are readily available to assist you in this all important undertaking. It really comes down to a personal decision. You either act or you don’t.

This book provides you with inspiring examples of companies that have made the decision to act … and a few that haven’t.

Learn just what it is that permits one organization to achieve unprecedented levels of success over a substantial period of time while a nearly identical competitor is going down the tube. How, for example, could Southwest Airlines achieve 23 consecutive years of record revenues and profits while TWA, Continental, Pan Am, Eastern, Braniff and others all around them were hemorrhaging red ink?

It’s no accident that the organizations consistently identified as winners also happen to be some of the best places on earth to work. This occurs not as an afterthought, but as a vital, premeditated element of business strategy.

It’s a message that would doubtless be echoed by generations of dairy farmers. Contented cows give better milk!

(This book review was originally published in 2001 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 7.)