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Intimidation snuffs out creativity. Back when industrial manufacturing dominated the United States economy, companies were founded by a visionary genius and a few of his closest scientific or engineering peers. They had a lock on corporate creativity. Once the product went into the manufacturing phase, consistency and conformity were the most valued traits both in the product and in the workers who churned out hundreds and thousands of the product. The next Model T was supposed to be exactly like the previous one. The CEO did not want creativity—he (and it was a he) wanted efficiency, output, and uniformity. Tyrants are very good at getting that.
What they are not good at is getting innovation out of their employees. Today, with an increasingly service-oriented and decentralized workforce, creativity is now important at almost all levels of most organizations. In a tyrannical atmosphere no one dares to suggest anything out of the ordinary. Consequently, there is no product improvement, no increase in efficiency, and no adaptation to the changing strategies of competitors. That is why the management tyrants are going the way of the dinosaurs.
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