Few executives link their responsibility as leaders to fear in themselves, their organization, and the erosion of profits. Many leaders are unaware of the hundreds of kinds of fear that exist and the debilitating impact fear has on individuals, their organization and its success, and society. Often when leaders become aware of fear, they rationalize it and accept it-and that is a recipe for disaster, both culturally and financially. Other leaders become aware of fear and its impact and quickly and courageously begin to lead and eradicate the disease of fear from their work environments. It is a hard and necessary journey.
 

"How could they know? How could they know they have anything to learn?" management guru and statistician W.E. Deming asked at his 4-day seminars. We suffer from evil styles of management, such
as ranking people. Divisions, plants (creating competition between people), management by results, failure to understand cooperation in a system in which everybody wins. Transformation is required: not mere change. Transformation requires Profound Knowledge. The 14 Points for Management follow naturally as application of the system of profound knowledge, for transformation from the present style of
management to one of optimization. The 14 points constitute a theory of management . . . unfortunately, deadly diseases stand in the way of transformation.

(Management) squeezes out from an individual, over his lifetime, his innate intrinsic motivation, self esteem, dignity, and build into him fear, self-defense, extrinsic motivation. We have been destroying our
people, from toddlers on through the university, and on the job. Deming's point number 8 requires leaders to drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company. Organizations today are driven to do more with less, be lean, cut costs, chase management fads and "best practices," and drive to meet the numbers, targets and arbitrary numerical quotas. The more that executives focus on doing these wrong things, the more toxic organizations become. Lack of leadership produces more fear and less care and trust. Fear has been elevated to unhealthy levels and produces toxic people and cultures.

Fear is a destroyer of healthy interaction, productivity and performance (individually and as a system) and impacts many organizations' measures of success. For some, it's the bottom line, the profits, the stock price! Those measures are only partial, financial, and short-term measures. They do not measure learning, improvement, quality, innovation, helping customers, joy in work or leaving a legacy.

Marcia follows with this perspective,

 Over recent decades a critical measure of success, particularly in corporations, has been the bottom line, the stock price, the ranking in the Fortune 500, the revenues or profits. Make the numbers, by any means. The myopic focus on the number has and will continue to destroy corporations that were once well-respected. These corporations will self-destruct. They will blame outside forces and the competition and government regulations and unfair trade practices, but the reality is: look in the mirror.

Organizations most often do not survive because they lack leadership with the profound knowledge they need, the ability to differentiate leadership with management fads and "best practices, and courage. For those who want to lead successfully, it requires continual learning, planning, adapting, improving and innovating. It requires breaking down barriers and obstacles to quality and serving employees and
customers.