Rules for Staff People
Unless staff people have proved themselves in operations, they will lack credibility among operating people and will be dismissed as “theoreticians.”
Rules for staff people are just as important as rules for staff work. Don’t ever put anyone into a staff job unless he or she has successfully help a number if operating jobs, preferably in more than one functional area. For if staff people lack operating experience, they will be arrogant about operations, which always look so simple to the “planner.” But today, in government even more than in business, we put young people fresh out of business or law school into fairly senior staff jobs as analyst or planners or staff counsel. Their arrogance and their rejection by the operating organization practically guarantee that they will be totally unproductive.
With rare exceptions, staff work should not be a person’s “career” but only be a part of his or her career. After five to seven years on a staff job, people ought to go back into operating work and not return to a staff assignment for five year or so. Otherwise, they will soon become behind-the-scene wire pullers, “gray eminences,” “kingmakers,” “brilliant mischief-makers.”
ACTION POINT: Rotate staff people in and out of operating work.
Role of Public Relations
“Public Relations” has acquired a connotation of ballyhoo, propaganda, and whitewashing.
To the general public, “public relations” means publicity – essentially an extension of advertising from advertising a product to advertising its producer. But, the emphasis should be on acquainting the broad public with the problems of the enterprise rather than on convincing it of the company’s virtues and achievements. This leads to the realization that to public’s problems first.
Every major decision of a great corporation affects the public somehow, as workers, consumers, citizens; hence the public will react consciously or subconsciously to every move the company make. On this reaction depends, however, the effectives of the company’s decision – simply an-other way of saying that any corporation lives in society. Hence the effectiveness of the executive’s decision depends not only on his understanding the problems of his business but also on his understanding the public attitude toward his problems. Hence the program of public relations is to give both central-office and divisional executives a knowledge of public attitudes and beliefs, and an understanding of the reasons behind them.
ACTION POINT: Understand public reaction to company decisions. Understand public attitudes toward the firm, and evaluate these attitudes. Recognize that an enterprise exists at the will of the public.
“Cell phones are so convenient that they’re an inconvenience.”
Haruki Murakami
“The more time we spend interconnected via a myriad of devices, the less time we have left to develop true friendships in the real world.”
Alex Morritt
“To be honest, I think cell phones were invented by the devil.”
Joe Hill
“It’s easier for a rich man to ride that camel through the eye of a needle directly into the Kingdom of Heaven, than for some of us to give up our cell phone.”
Vera Nazarian
“Right, my phone. When these things first appeared, they were so cool. Only when it was too late did people realize they are as cool as electronic tags on remand prisoners.”
David Mitchell
“Technology offers us a unique opportunity, though rarely welcome, to practice patience.”
Allan Lokos
“Look at the world and think about a catastrophic disaster where the cell phone towers went dead. How would you ever be able to ‘TEXT” your next door neighbor to see if they were okay”
Stanley Victor Paskavich
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“HOME is where the heart is, but today, the PHONE is where the Heart is!!!”
Rachitha Cabral
“To my surprise, Brooke smiled, and I realized that even though two of the other teams had managed to bug their marks’ cell phones, the information Tara and I had received might just prove it self to be even more useful.
Take that Chloe!”
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
“As long as you have a Cell Phone you’re never alone”
Stanley Victor Paskavich
“All this electromagnetic pollution in the air from the Internet and cell phones, it cuts you off from God.”
Thomm Quackenbush
“Nature’s what it’s all about, but our people have been brainwashed into thinking that life is a cell phone against your head and the TV on a beer commercial with hot chicks.”
Tim Dorsey
“We inculcate in our children the sensibilities of raccoons, a fascination with shiny objects and an appetite for garbage, and then carp about ‘the texting generation’ as if thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds who couldn’t boil an egg are capable of creating a culture. They grow on what we feed them. It has never been otherwise. The only thing that changes is the food.”
Garret Keizer
“I would be utterly embarrassed to have others around me hear my half of what can only be described as pedestrian. “Yes, the elevator has just pulled up to the 16th floor.” Do these people have the ability to go, for say, an eight- or ten-minute stretch without being in contact with someone else? What are they afraid of? Confronting their own thoughts?”
Jeff Davidson
“Mum’s mobile was the most immobile cell phone in the world. It often lived on the top of the bookshelf closest to the front door. It was there so she’d see it before she left the house. The trouble was, Mum was always leaving the house in a mad rush and the mobile stayed put.”
Catherine Bateson
“It’s not that you can’t get things done with the use of a cell phone; indeed you can get a lot of things done. However, the nature of what you get done is highly skewed. Just as the man with only a hammer sees everything as nails, the incessant cell phone user accomplishes a variety of tasks, understandably enough, that accrue directly to having a cell phone.”
Jeff Davidson
“You know, a cell phone’s like a guy; if you don’t plug him in every night, charge him good, you got nothing at all.”
Catherine Coulter
“Cell phones are so convenient that they’re an inconvenience.”
Haruki Murakami
“The more time we spend interconnected via a myriad of devices, the less time we have left to develop true friendships in the real world.”
Alex Morritt