PAPERmaking! g FROM THE PUBLISHERS OF PAPER TECHNOLOGY Volume 2, Number 1, 2016
Another thing about subordinates is sometimes the subordinate fails. In the Army, he may lose a battle or do something wrong. Well, I have always found that it was not a good thing to rush to him and sack him on the spot; it was much wiser to find out why he had failed because sometimes, especially in war, men fail because things happen of which they could not possibly have any foreknowledge and in an attack somewhere there happened to be two enemy divisions that just arrived the night before, or the weather might suddenly have changed, and it was always a good thing, I found, to go down and find why he had failed. But, do not be in too big a hurry to sack a chap until you know why he went wrong. If he did it because he was clod-footed or plumb-stupid or something like that, well, you can't get him out quick enough. But give him a chance to find out why. Now, one of the most difficult things in leadership, especially in industrial leadership, is what I think we can call "communications", which means how you get the intention of the top man right to the boy with the oily rag, right down through the whole organisation. And it sounds stupidly simple but I have always found if you want to get people to understand something you want to tell them, the simplest thing is to go and tell them. Now, I have a belief that occasionally - not very often, but occasionally - the top man, he may be the top of a great organisation or he may be the manager in the factory, he ought to assemble the people. Now, of course, if you run an organisation with one hundred and twenty thousand workers in it, you can't do this all at once. You will have to split them up. But what I believe in very much is collecting the whole of one bloc, the managers, sub-managers, the foremen and workers, right down to the old boy who sweeps out the workshop floor, and get them all together in one place. There are advantages in that. It makes them feel a team. Then tell them what you are trying to do. You do not have to be an orator to do that. Only two things are required. One is to know what you are trying to do and the other is to believe in it yourself, because if you try to tell people things you do not believe in yourself, unless you are a very clever politician, you will be found out. I think that should be done sometimes. Another thing which sometimes I have noticed some firms - not any with which I am connected - the thing some firms are not very good at: they get a little bit confused on the channel by which you would pass down your instructions. You must, of course, keep your trade unions and your trade union representatives very closely in touch with you, well aware of what you are trying to do and of the effects it will have to pass your information down through what I would call the proper channel of command and let your foreman know about it at least as soon as your shop stewards. You know, sometimes in industry we are not very good in making what I would call the N.C.O.s of industry feel that they really are part of the management. In the Army, we have our non-commissioned officers, but you will notice that we call them "officers". They have something on their sleeve. I may have something on my shoulder, but we are both officers and if you have got any sense, when you are commanding a regiment, you impress very much on your N.C.O.s that they are non-commissioned "officers". I think very often in the lower ranks of the administration of industry we would be well advised to do that a little more than we do and make them realise that they really are a welcome part of the management. Now, industry gets more and more complicated and to me, a soldier, it grows more and more like a campaign and I think, looking at it as a soldier, on the many, many fronts of it at home and abroad, there are two or three to which we might possibly pay a little more attention or even look at the Army and see if there is anything there that we might pick up.
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Article 12 – Leadership (Field-Marshall Slim)
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