“I Am Your Work God!†was the colorful title for this section of the book. It was pretty familiar advice I thought in terms of taking the more no nonsense and non emotional approach to running a business. It revolved around handling employees and that you need to make sure that everyone follows orders. It’s that mentality too where people don’t have to like you but they should respect you.
The way Cloutier gives this advice though is a little surprising. Example, he says things like turnover is usually good as you can in a sense constantly get more motivated workers that way. As well, it seems like he thinks the whole notion of a friendly and nurturing environment is garbage as fear is the best motivator. He doesn’t like it when workers think, such as having different ideas on how to do things, as he just wants them to obey.
Another way he puts it is that he feels a business is not a democracy as you should be the end all decision maker. If you are too light then people will make all the excuses in the world costing you time and money where you need to get rid of them. I suppose you can say it’s more of an army commander type of mentality he encourages.