Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow

CHAPTER TWO

KARMIC CAPITALISM

Behind every managerial decision or action are assumptions about human nature and human behavior.

 

DOUGLAS MCGREGOR, The Human Side of Enterprise

 

 

 

Against all odds, my first hotel became a smash hit. In 1987, at the ripe old age of twenty-six, I bought a virtually out-of-business “no-tell motel” in San Francisco’s gritty Tenderloin district. My slightly delusional business plan was to turn The Phoenix into San Francisco’s official rock‘n’roll hotel so that I could rub elbows with famous musicians, build a business that would enable me to utilize my creativity, and design a workplace where I could live the “joy of life” every day.

Cheap Trick? Bad Company? While those were some of my favorite ...