It’s the assholes who are focused on people—on controlling people—who make work miserable. Real assholes always make it personal. Their motivation is their ego, not the work. As long as they’re winning, they don’t give a shit about what’s happening to the product or what the customer has to deal with. These are the assholes who make it progressively more difficult to create something you’re proud of.

A former managing partner at McKinsey & Company expressed this view when he advised executives to focus their attention on the “2 percent [of employees] who are really going to drive [results.]” “It’s a very small proportion of people,” he argued, “who drive a lot of value.” When pressed, he admitted his assertion had “no regression analysis or analytics behind it.” It was, in other words, an untested assumption or, to be more accurate, a prejudice.

This sort of disdain for the average employee mirrors the hauteur of eighteenth-century aristocrats—and has the same stifling effect on creativity and initiative. Stunted freedom and upside yield stunted commitment and performance.

If the greatest rewards are given for behavior contrary to that which the new course of action requires, then everyone will conclude that this contrary behavior is what the people at the top really want and are going to reward.

Not everyone can do what Vail did and build the execution of his decisions into the decision itself. But everyone can think what action commitments a specific decision requires, what work assignments follow from it, and what people are available to carry it out.

If the greatest rewards are given for behavior contrary to that which the new course of action requires, then everyone will conclude that this contrary behavior is what the people at the top really want and are going to reward.

Not everyone can do what Vail did and build the execution of his decisions into the decision itself. But everyone can think what action commitments a specific decision requires, what work assignments follow from it, and what people are available to carry it out.

That transformation has enhanced many aspects of our lives, but too many companies have left the human behind. They’ve been so focused on products, they’ve forgotten about people. And while it may be impossible to quantify in financial terms the impact of making someone feel good, don’t think for a second that it doesn’t matter. In fact, it matters more.