GREED IN PANAMA
Many years ago, a major American company had trouble keeping employees working in their assembly plant in Panama. The laborers lived in a generally agrarian, barter economy, but the company paid them in cash. After a week’s work, the average employee would have more cash than he’d ever seen--so many of the workers were quitting--completely satisfied with what they had already made.
What was the solution? Company executives gave all their employees a Sears catalog. No one quit then, because they all wanted the previously unimagined things they saw inside that book.
Their focus changed – and so did their priorities.