The skill with which the excellent companies develop their people recalls that grim conflict we first mentioned in Chapter 3: our basic need for security versus the need to stick out, the “essential tension” that the psychoanalyst Ernest Becker described. Once again the paradox, as it is dealt with in the excellent companies, holds. By offering meaning as well as money, they give their employees a mission as well as a sense of feeling great. Every man becomes a pioneer, an experimenter, a leader. The institution provides guiding belief and creates a sense of excitement, a sense of being a part
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