The Invisible Employee: Using Carrots to See the Hidden Potential in Everyone, Second Edition

INTRODUCTION

You can imagine how happy we were when The Invisible Employee: Realizing the Hidden Potential in Everyone was first published in 2006 and became a New York Times bestseller. We knew we had an important message to share about the potential of underappreciated employees. We were eager to show organizations how to transform themselves by engaging these assets into a juggernaut of accomplishment. We were thrilled that the book has been such a success. We continue to be pleased that several years later it was still being read.

Even more gratifying have been the conversations we've had with tens of thousands of managers around the globe. The Invisible Employee is helping them to discover the treasures hiding in their own offices: their employees. Showing appreciation is a simple concept and a powerful one. It is easy to implement and gets bottom-line results fast. That is what has made the book so successful.

But times, they are a-changin'. As we write this, the global economy is in such a precarious state that any reasonable person has to wonder whether it will all implode. Layoffs, bankruptcies, bail-outs, foreclosures and going-out-of-business signs have become the new landscape of business.

At your office, we can imagine the talk around the water cooler. The former hangout for sports pools, politics, and office gossip has now become a meeting place for misery: "Have you heard who's getting the axe next?"

Not a lot of work is getting done, is it?

The result is a team ...