June 7; Nice Guys Finish Last? Can A Nice Guy Fire Staff?
MANAGEMENT BY THE BOOK:
365 Daily Bible Verse &
One-Minute Management Lessons For The Busy Faithful

Chapter Six: Correction; 7 June

I do not understand what I do.

For what I want to do I do not do,

but what I hate I do.

Romans 7:15

Duality

The one word that describes ‘management’ is ‘relationships.’ The best managers nurture people and actions to accomplish organizational goals.

But what if there is not a fit between the goals of the company and a particular person. How can the manager who cares so much about his people then be able to fire them?

What compassionate person can fire — even the unfit?

***

Edward Roscoe Murrow is remembered as an intrepid reporter who got the objective truth. His was the voice that brought hard news to the USA from the European theater in Word War II. He was the best in his business. And naturally, in due course, he was promoted.

Early in his career Murrow was made a vice president and lasted only two short years. He couldn’t make the hard management decisions on budgets and he just couldn’t fire anyone.

(But he did know how to recruit talent. One of Murrow’s best decisions was to hire William L. Shirer who would go on to write the bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in 1960.)

Murrow went back to his expertise as an individual contributor. Washington State University named The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication after the acclaimed alumnus. Not all super stars want to make the hard decisions required by being a manager.

Roger Ailes, president of the Fox News Channel, and media/debate consultant to Ronald Reagan, tells of the burden. Years ago he assembled a winning company and a talented team. “But you know what happens when you have staff?” he said. “You feel guilty. I ended up staying in the business years beyond what I wanted because I didn’t want to fire anybody.”

***

Dr. Randy Yeager writes of this dual nature of the born again man in describing Saul, who became Paul. Managers, in a similar way, become different people,

Here are two natures in conflict, with the result that Paul confesses that he does not understand his actions. His actions…are in conflict with his regenerated will, which has the mind of Christ. Why should a Christian behave like an unbeliever?

His regenerated will, taking orders from his new nature, wants to do the will of God, but he admits that he does not obey it. On the contrary, his carnal will orders what this carnal mind approves and his carnal body obeys.

But his regenerate will disapproves because his action is out of harmony with his regenerate mind. His unregenerate body responds to his unregenerate will and intellect in a way that his entire regenerate personality deplores. Saul and Paul are at loggerheads.

This is not schizophrenia because neither the regenerate nor the unregenerate personalities are split. This is a split between two personalities, each of which must take order from the nature which produced it. These two natures, the result of two births, occupy the same body.

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. Romans 7:15

###