Mary Kay on People Management
Founder's own account of recruiting and holding a commissioned sales force.
Summary
Mary Kay Ash founded Mary Kay Cosmetics in 1963 and built it into a large direct-selling organisation staffed almost entirely by independent women contractors. This book sets out the management principles she used, written for managers generally rather than for her own sales force.
The principles are stated simply and repeated. She instructs managers to imagine an invisible sign around every person's neck reading make me feel important, and to act accordingly. She advocates praising people to success, on the argument that recognition produces more improvement than correction does. She sets out the sandwich technique for criticism, placing a specific correction between two genuine pieces of praise. She insists on an open-door policy and on the principle that people come before profit. She describes the recognition system that made the company famous, including the pink Cadillacs, and argues that public recognition motivates more durably than money because it cannot be spent and forgotten.
The context is important and the book does not examine it. Mary Kay's sales force were independent contractors who bought inventory, bore their own costs, and mostly earned little; the recognition system operated on a population where a small number succeeded conspicuously. Readers should treat the management advice as tested in a specific setting where the motivational structure had to substitute for wages and job security. The advice on recognition and on how to deliver criticism has been independently supported since.
Key takeaways 7
- Recognition motivates more durably than money because it cannot be spent and then forgotten.
- Public recognition of specific individuals for specific achievements works better than general appreciation of a group.
- Criticism should be delivered between two pieces of genuine praise and should address the act rather than the person.
- Ash argues that managers should treat every person as the most important person in the room, and that this is a discipline rather than a sentiment.
- An organisation of independent contractors must supply through recognition what an employer supplies through salary and security.
- People should be praised toward the behaviour wanted rather than corrected away from the behaviour observed.
- Ash held that family and faith should rank above work, and built company practices that made that ordering visible.
Who should read it
Managers of sales organisations and of volunteer or contractor workforces who need motivation systems that do not rest on compensation alone.
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