July 10; When Balancing Compliance to the Boss Conflicts with Protecting the Same
MANAGEMENT BY THE BOOK:
365 Daily Bible Verse &
One-Minute Management Lessons For The Busy Faithful

Chapter Seven: Power; 10 July

All who are under the yoke of slavery

should consider their masters worthy of full respect,

so that God’s name and our teaching may not be slandered.

1 Timothy 6:1

Priorities

“Becoming a manager is not about becoming a boss; it’s about becoming a hostage” said a new manager to professor Linda Hill of Harvard Business School.

John E. Mulford, Ph.D., from the Regent University College of Administration and Management, reminds us about word usage such as ‘slave’ and perhaps ‘hostage,’

The Scriptures refer to workers as slaves. Many managers and employees today ignore the passages because slaves are not common in the modern world.

However, during the period of time in which the Scriptures were recorded, slaves performed most manual, clerical and household labor. The scriptural references to particular groups of people: slaves, masters, landowners, etc. can, today, be substituted with: employees, supervisors, company owners and CEOs.

Managers would often complain to Your Business Professor that they, as the boss, would have the bigger office and bigger compensation.

But that these managers also felt that they were in less control, that the “troops have all the fun…” While the managers have all the headaches.

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Academics and consultants echo writer Peter Drucker, “One does not ‘manage’ people… the task is to lead them.” Simple and true. A manager develops his people, if–

If we can determine who is really in charge; who is training whom.

The manager and his direct reports must remember: the boss sets the priorities. The manager will anticipate what his superior needs and what must be done to advance the organization’s goals.

The good manager wants recommendations from his staff but sets the agenda. “If you are working from your inbox, you are working on other people’s priorities,” says Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense under President Bush from 2001 to 2006.

But the role of the ideal worker is to throw himself on hand grenades rolling down the hall. And worse: protect the boss from himself and self-inflicted wounds. Sacrifice and restraining orders.

In his book Rumsfeld Rules: Leadership Lessons in Business, Politics, War and Life, Rumsfeld shows us what the hostage taking can look like as professor Linda Hill revealed. In addition to SECDEF, Rumsfeld also served as Chief of Staff to President Jerry Ford from 1974 to 1975. The two got into a vigorous “debate” over whither or not Ford should be attending a birthday party for Congressman Tip O’Neill. A celebration that was being funded from questionable sources.

Ford says, “I am going.”

Rumsfeld says, “Well then you are going to have to walk. I’m not going to have the President’s armored limousine pull up to a party bought and paid for by a foreign lobbyist who may well be under investigation.” Ford folded under the weight of Rumsfeld’s argument. The Chief of Staff was indeed looking out for the good of the president. But.

But as Nixon said of Rumsfeld in 1971, “He’s a ruthless little bastard. You can be sure of that.”

Rumsfeld was nobody’s slave.

All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God’s name and our teaching may not be slandered. 1 Timothy 6:1.

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