Book Review Zapp! The Lightning of Empowerment; How to Improve Quality, Productivity, and Employee Satisfaction by William D. Byham, Ph.D. with Jeff Cox
	If you have lost the loving feeling of where you work – what you do and whom you work for – you are not alone. The consequence of low employee satisfaction affects quality and productivity in a big way. What’s the solution? Zapp! The Lightning of Empowerment; How to Improve Quality, Productivity, and Employee Satisfaction by William D. Byham describes how to improve employee satisfaction, quality, and productivity using the “Normal Company” as the basis for study. The Normal Company is where the managers do the thinking, supervisors do the talking, and employees do the work. That was the way it had always been, ever since Mr. Normal invented the Normalator and founded the company, and everybody just assumed that was the way it should always be. Ralph Rosco is the central character of Zapp!. Ralph is not excited about his job; it’s a job and the pay is OK. One day, Ralph had an idea to improve the “Normalator” (pseudo name for a product). He discusses the idea with his supervisor, but his supervisor doesn’t want to listen. The corporate culture of the Normal Company is focussed on the competition, reducing costs, and increasing productivity. Management doesn’t want to know how to effectively communicate or motivate staff. The environment makes staff fearful of losing their job and they concentrate only on what needs to be done and nothing more. Ralph is disappointed. Byham uses Ralph and the personalities of Department N (with low performers and morale), Department Z (with high performers and high morale), and the 12th Dimension (a fictional place of castles, wizards, dragons, and magic) to compare and contrast how to motivate staff. Byham uses the notebook of Joe Mode (another fictional character) as his easel. Joe Mode is Ralph’s guide to the 12th Dimension. Byham’s model tormented me for 202 pages. I wished for him to abandon his fictional characters and explain his philosophy for improving quality, productivity, and employee satisfaction. The essence of Zapp! is that quality and productivity deteriorate when people are unhappy with their job. Byham calls this ‘Sapp’ – when motivation and ambition is removed. With so many companies downsizing, the first employees to leave are those who are least productive. They probably didn’t feel that way when they were first hired. What happened? It’s a result of a belief that: Your job belongs to the company, You are just taking orders, Your job doesn’t really matter, You don’t know how well you are doing, You always have to keep your mouth shut, Your job is something different from who you are, You have little or no control over your work. Byham advocates that the framework to improve quality, productivity, and employee satisfaction is as follows: Maintain or enhance self-esteem. Listen and respond to empathy. Share thoughts, feelings, and rationale for decisions. Ask for help and encourage involvement. Provide support without removing responsibility for action. However, Byham doesn’t explain why so many managers resort to methods that have the opposite affect on staff morale, quality, and productivity. Since written in 1988, Zapp! has sold more than 4.5 million copies and is available in ten languages, which does not explain the abundance of incompetent and ineffective management practices in the workplace today. All things considered, I recommend Zapp! because it’s a timeless book about the consequences of ineffective management and how to effectively overcome it.
	About the Reviewer: David Dick, a senior member of the Belgium Chapter, is a Senior Technical Writer with the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications in LaHulpe, Belgium. By his efforts, the department of Worldwide Networks earned ISO 9001 certification. Back to top