to buy a house An organization chart can point the way and a complex network of committees can be organized. But charts and committees are worthless if management posts are not filled by men and women who are seized with the fact that responsibility, to be effective, must be shared. It is the.man or woman at the head of an operation who must set the pace in the matter of coordination. He or she needs to appreciate that people working in a vacuum quickly get out of touch. 'Keeping people in the picture', for all the slightly comic associations of the phrase, is more than a question of communication : it is also the ability to arrange matters in such a way that overlapping of function is avoided and, equally important, that no management task is carried out in isolation. An earlier chapter has stressed that industrial management has to be concerned with three factors which are, broadly, production, marketing, and finance. This is a trinity of interests. That each should have its due and that there should be the strictest attention to ensuring that these basic functions are coordinated is the chief executive's priority. He will achieve his end in different ways and it is wrong to dogmatize. In some businesses, management by committee has been successful: in others some other coordinating machinery, less cumbersome and timeconsuming than the committee method, works better. This may consist of clear statements of policy and action by the Chief Executive and the top management team, distributed widely. The aim, however it is secured, must be to avoid purposeless effort because A is unaware of what В is doing. Coordination of effort, above all, needs to be thought through. A move to a new factory or office, or the launching of a product, two straightforward management problems taken as examples, can only be speedy and effective if, in advance of the operation, everybody's part in it is phased in, clearly stated, and understood in advance. 'The Business of Management' was an ambitious title for a chapter. It presupposed a kind of knowhow that can be captured in words and set down. In point of fact, managerial inspiration the driving force that really makes people do things and achieve objectives is transmitted by the determination and character of the manager. It is no good closing one's eyes to the fact. But management can undoubtedly derive much from a calm appreciation of possibly not more than four basic points which, if constantly borne in mind, can help towards the creation of the sort of conditions in which effective management can function. These are : first, the objectives must be clearly stated; secondly, responsibilities must be defined and accepted; thirdly, communication must be twoway or even threeway; fourthly, the chief executives in any enterprise, of whatever size, must always control and progress the operation. The words used in this chapter organization, delegation, control, decentralization, communications, coordination are potent factors in the business of management. Household