Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

With so much of the media focused upon technology companies as those that innovate the best, here is a company story that is as Rust Belt as you can get, that has provided a 387% return over the last five years that is first on the Standard & Poors index.

Businessweek.com reports:

"In an industry as Rust Belt as they come, Nucor (NUE) has nurtured one of the most dynamic and engaged workforces around. The 11,300 nonunion employees at the Charlotte (N.C.) company don't see themselves as worker bees waiting for instructions from above. Nucor's flattened hierarchy and emphasis on pushing power to the front line lead its employees to adopt the mindset of owner-operators. It's a profitable formula: Nucor's 387% return to shareholders over the past five years handily beats almost all other companies in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, including New Economy icons Amazon.com (AMZN), Starbucks (SBUX), and eBay (EBAY). And the company has become more profitable as it has grown: Margins, which were 7% in 2000, reached 10% last year.

"Nucor gained renown in the late 1980s for its radical pay practices, which base the vast majority of most workers' income on their performance. An upstart nipping at the heels of the integrated steel giants, Nucor had a close-knit culture that was the natural outgrowth of its underdog identity. Legendary leader F. Kenneth Iverson's radical insight: that employees, even hourly clock-punchers, will make an extraordinary effort if you reward them richly, treat them with respect, and give them real power.

"Nucor is an upstart no more, and the untold story of how it has clung to that core philosophy even as it has grown into the largest steel company in the U.S. is in many ways as compelling as the celebrated tale of its brash youth. Iverson retired in 1999. Under CEO Daniel R. DiMicco, a 23-year veteran, Nucor has snapped up 13 plants over the past five years while managing to instill its unique culture in all of the facilities it has bought, an achievement that makes him a more than worthy successor to Iverson."

This just shows that those that seriously take employee empowerment, input, respect and reward can rise to great heights no matter what industry they are involved in. Who would think that a steel company would be the best performer in the Standard & Poor's 500 over the last five-year period?