Handling your post contains an element which is easily overlooked but without which you may have many troubles hard to trace.

IN ESSENCE YOU ARE WEARING MY ADMINISTRATIVE HAT FOR THAT POST.

You may wear the hat letter perfect and yet have a miss. As it is my hat really, no matter how small the post is, it has to be worn as I would wear it. The air and attitude of how it’s worn is important.

Many an HCO Sec in the old days successfully got out of a tough problem by asking, “What would Ron do in this situation?” And did it and all worked out.

Therefore it is worthwhile to know how I would go about things.

I could detail for hours the admin indicators and admin technology I use. But you’ve got the bulk of it already in org policy letters.

There are only a few things I might add that would help.

One is that I work exclusively on the “Greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics.”

I believe that to command is to serve and only gives one the right to serve.

I have to be, above all things, effective and cannot fall short of being effective or explain ineffectiveness away.

I never compromise with a situation to be agreeable.

In handling something I figure out if 1 want to play that game or not and if I don’t I won’t. And if I don’t I will do anything needful to disconnect from it and if I do I will do anything I can to win it.

There is at least one, however, that is wildly out in many executives. And that is how I handle other posts.

My entire concentration is to put the person on a given post that possibly can handle it and then let him or her get on with it.

The difference is this: others put a person on a post and then hammer and pound him with orders as to how to handle it. If the appointee gets in trouble, others give him streams of orders and directions.

I don’t. If a person has been trusted with a post I also trust him to handle it.

If he or she obviously can’t, I find another person who possibly can.

I give a person on a post a lot of chances. I know posts are hard to handle. But if the statistic goes down and down and stays down, and no admin or tech advice has

been of any avail, I don’t hammer away with streams of orders. 1 just find another person.

This I know is a greater plus and minus than people easily tolerate. The plus is that I extend complete trust to an appointee. The minus is that, if the stat is down and WON’T come up, I find another person. There is no in between streams of directions or nagging.

Also, after a time, I grant that people can change and give a removed person another chance. I don’t consider they will be bad forever. When I handle a situation that is bad I handle it according to the greatest good for the majority of dynamics. Then, when it IS handled, I usually try to pick up individuals who have had to be shot in the handling. I don’t forget them.

You will see me handle situations ruthlessly and bring it all off and then you may not see that 1 try afterwards to patch up whoever had to be shot.

People also try to teach me that it is useless to try to salvage a gone dog, a low stat failure who had his chance. I refuse to learn it. I still try.

As time goes on 1 even love my enemies but after I have rendered them powerless to stop us.

1 put a person on a job and let him or her get on with it. I don’t act unless it is obvious the roof is falling in. Then I find somebody else who possibly can hold it. And also I patch up the fellow I had to remove and some day give him another chance. Evidence of this is all around.

I don’t try to force a job to be held by streams of detailed instructions once failure is apparent. From the moment I see it isn’t being held to the moment I appoint somebody new I will myself act to hold the post in any way 1 can, no matter how distant it is. But my attention is really on finding a new person to appoint and when that’s done I get off the line and let him get on with it.

It makes a far more forceful organization to handle things this way and a far happier one in the long run.

A person always knows, with me, if his job is secure. If his stat is up, it is. I’ll not admonish or permit him to be pushed about.

This may seem to be a brutal way to go about things but remember this: We are a few and we have an enormous area to salvage that long ago went down for the third time. If we fail it is improbable the job will ever again be done as, on evidence that the problem still exists, it has never before been solved in all the past long ages. So we can’t really take chances. Not with the whole human race. So we do our jobs and see that our jobs are done. We have a trust which, if we fail it, condemns ourselves, our friends, our future to continued oblivion. So we mustn’t fail. Or permit others to fail. And that is how and why we ARE getting the job done.