homemoney to purchasehow At the beginning of the chapter which follows, and which has the more general heading 'The Business of Management', it has been necessary to proclaim once again the belief that all the formulae in the worl3~can be of little use if human qualities, crystallizing into leadership, are lacking in the manager himself. But that can be no excuse for shirking the task of setting down, quite factually, something of the proven experiencof managers who have done and are doing a testing job successfully. In this matter of qualities of management there are no golden rules, Anyone who tries to dogmatize about this question is asking for certain trouble, because management circumstances are seldom, if ever, duplicated; indeed, the management challenge lies precisely in the ability to measure such circumstances against an everchanging background of problems and personalities. An inflexible attitude (or, for that matter, a too flexible one) to the task of managing can be disastrous. Even so, there is no excuse for managers and managed not to try to think out those qualities which should be offered and sought in various conditions. What no writer on management subjects, however wellintentioned, can hope to do is to supply easy answers to a question which is largely intangible and personal. In an ideal world the manager would possess all those qualities in abundant measure which are always considered in relation to managers. Able to think with crystal clarity, he would combine a thorough technical knowledge of the goods or services with which he is concerned with shining integrity, shrewdness, an enterprising and humane outlook, high intelligence, and considerable powers of leadership. And what an impossible bore such a manager would be! Too good to be true, he would be a man whose virtues were so daunting that all those in contact with him would be shamed. Such a person exists only in fiction; the truth is that imperfections and shortcomings, so long as they are known and disciplined by their possessor, make a manager the more real to those he is trying to manage. In other words, the manager must be a man, and no one would deny that mankind is imperfect. Compassion, for example the ability to understand with both head and heart the personal problems of the man or woman who comes for counsel: this is a quality that is compounded of humility and inner strength. Rarely does one meet cases of managers of high calibre who are not possessed of this gift of compassion to a high degree. When adjectives like 'ruthless' or 'hardhearted' or phrases like 'won't suffer fools gladly' are applied to a manager it is preity certain that, however successful in the short term may be the operation he manages, in the long term no really sound edifice is being built. The management atmosphere under thesecbndi tions is one of stress and strain, of shocks and uncertainties: in a word, of insecurity. And it is this question of insecurity which underlines so much of what is important to effective management. personal finance