Self-management

“ Equality between all organs will be underscored for the ultimate benefit of the enterprise.
This will need an understanding of the individual ‘self’. You will have to forget the outer trappings and concentrate on your core. How do I see myself as an accounts manager/ personnel manager/ research manager in order to enhance my organisation? Once this belief in your self is established, then how to behave as a Manager, how to lead others will be easy to understand. Search of this self will lead to the individual's growth through transformation. ”

“ If you expand yourself, grow yourself, then you can accommodate others in your concept of self. Individual’s own bodily pain, pleasure, remorse, profit, loss, is least important from the perspective of the society. ”

“ When the boundaries on minds of the leaders and or the spectra of their imagination are expansive, then the followers enjoy a larger area for their own growth. For this reason any Manager or leader should undertake search of his self For this reasonthe leader's quality is tested by ability to keep a broader target before his or her followers. ”

“ Ask yourself, then, whether, since self-interest is the universal motive, it would not be wise for you to make some inquiry as to whether the persons intrusted by you with the management of your affairs are managing your affairs to your advantage or to their own. ”

“ The intelligent practice of self-control, quickly leads to a knowledge of one’s interior thought-forces, and, later on, to the acquisition of that power by which they are rightly employed and directed. ”

“ There is nothing, moreover, in the aspect of the management itself to lead the man to have a feeling of confidence either in himself, or in the management, and to have that moral poise which will make him wish to advance. ”

“ They try appearances upon themselves as well as upon the worlds and with at least as much success; and choose to manage so as to make their own minds easy with their faults, which can scarce be without management, rather than to mend them. ”

“ We may envy the leader whose men jump in response to his quiet firm tone of command. But do not imagine that he picked this ability ripe for the eating from any tree of knowledge or life. He has developed a strong character and a knowledge of human nature [Pg 158] in some practical school, learned that self-control is the first step in controlling others, and that men respond in kind to the treatment they receive. ”

“ In the present case, the course to be pursued is to exalt the aims, and strengthen the self-discipline of the whole of society, by each one being as good as he can make himself, and relying on his own efforts after self-perfection rather than on any fortunate arrangements of outward social circumstances. ”

“ Under Transitory Management, and most fully under Scientific Management, the spirit of individuality, far from being crowded out, is a basic principle, and everything possible is done to encourage the desire to be a personality. ”

“ I have urged upon them self-reliance, self-respect, industry, perseverance, and economy—to make the best of both worlds—but to make the best of this world first because it comes first, and that he who does not improve himself by the motives and opportunities afforded by this world gives the best evidence that he would not improve in any other world. ”

“ And just in that same fashion we human beings, all more or less of screws mentally and morally, need all kinds of management, on the part of our friends and on our own part, or we should go all wrong. ”

“ You are intelligent, and know that success does not as much depend on external help, as on self-reliance. Much, therefore, depends upon yourselves. As to the coal mines, I think I see the means available for your self-reliance. ”

“ Emulate the process by which it became his, depend on your self-reliance, pay the price for it, and equal power may be yours. The individual must look upon himself as an investment, of untold possibilities if rightly developed,--a mine whose resources can never be known but by going down into it and bringing out what is hidden.
Man can develop his self-reliance by seeking constantly to surpass himself. We try too much to surpass others. If we seek ever to surpass ourselves, we are moving on a uniform line of progress, that gives a harmonious unifying to our growth in all its parts. ”

“ Let him be so reared and trained that he may enter, if he will, upon some intellectual calling in the sustaining consciousness that he need not debase himself, nor do violence to his convictions, in order to achieve success therein, since he can live and thrive in another (if you choose, humbler) vocation, if driven from that of his choice. This buttress to integrity, this assurance of self-respect, is to be found in a universal training to efficiency in Productive Labor. ”

“ As a first step toward this, no matter what his business or profession, each leader should realize that in controlling the work of his men he is handling human tools—sentient human beings, like himself. Here is a craftsmanship worthy of study. One may not hope successfully to handle these tools, hit or miss, without special thought or training. Yet many have never thought of this, or considered what it means to them personally as leaders. If they would do this alone, they would find themselves self-prompted to such conduct of office as would give far better results. ”

“ And you who know your own mind and heart, know that there are some things of which you dare not think; thoughts on which your only safety is resolutely to turn your back. The management needful here is the management of utter avoidance. ”

“ He should strive in every way to raise it from one of the weakest qualities to one of the strongest. It would take but two or three minutes a day to rank ourselves in such a table by noting the exercise of each faculty for the day. If you have worked hard and faithfully, mark industry one hundred. If you have lost your temper, and, in consequence, lost your self-control, and made a fool of yourself, indicate it by a low mark. This will be an incentive to try to raise it the next day. ”

“ The greater our sense of responsibility—the more we emphasize personal control over our inner and outer affairs, the more we see ourselves as individualists whose individualism is based on strength of will, discipline, guts—the more we are trapped by the myth of self-sufficiency. ”

“ Bring your fine sensibilities to your work, be big morally, be deep mentally, and work with confident expectation. Put rules and system into your daily task. Exercise your self-control, your self-possession, self-mastery, march up to your task with efficiency backed up by a dominant will. ”

“ We can sum it all up in just about this: that you begin to think seriously about yourself in your job, and determine that you are going to be natural, genuine, fair and self-controlled; that you realize that your instruments are human beings and that you have got to control them through your own personality; and that therefore you determine to study your personality and your tools so you may use them intelligently. Observation and personal application of its results are the great things.
No two leaders may act exactly alike, for each must use his own personality. ”

“ In the measure that you master self, that you control your mental forces instead of being controlled by them, in just such measure will you master affairs and outward circumstances.
Show me a man under whose touch everything crumbles away, and who cannot retain success even when it is placed in his hands, and I will show you a man who dwells continually in those conditions of mind which are the very negation of power. ”

“ But see how he guards his proclamation of self-reliance as the guide of mankind.
"Truly it demands something god-like in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity and has ventured to trust himself for a task-master. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others!" ”

“ Having had their self-control decreased by social arrangements which lessened the need for self-control, other social arrangements are devised which will make self-control still less needful: and it is hoped so to make self-control greater. ”

“ Successful organization begins with yourself. Therefore, a careful and honest study of yourself is essential. This will tell you where you are strong and where you are weak and thus enable you to make the weak points strong. If you lack the power of concentration, find it difficult to commit to memory, to. judge accurately, if you are inclined to postpone, your work, if you allow yourself to be turned from your purpose by little things, self-analysis will reveal these weaknesses and show you the way to overcome them. ”

“ It is knowing how, generally, to make the most of yourself and of your opportunities, and have a nice world to live in, a thrifty, self-helpful, disciplined world. Is education giving us this? And then we think that organization will do it, organization instead of self-development. ”

“ Few men can truthfully make this statement of themselves. While working my way through the institution where I received my education, I learned one useful lesson—self reliance. I learned to depend upon my own efforts for success. ”

“ That there exists such a power of self-regulation is a fact recognized in every department of social intercourse—in the attribution of praise or blame, in the teachings of the moralist, in the eye of the law, and in the process of education. ”

“ Self-respect, self-help, application, industry, integrity—all are of the nature of habits, not beliefs. Principles, in fact, are but the names which we assign to habits; for the principles are words, but the habits are the things themselves: benefactors or tyrants, according as they are good or evil. It thus happens that as we grow older, a portion of our free activity and individuality becomes suspended in habit; our actions become of the nature of fate; and we are bound by the chains which we have woven around ourselves. ”

“ If by nature you are gentle and tactful, thank God, and do not try to be a bear, because you have seen and admired some big burly man who was a successful leader. The genuineness and earnestness of your personal efforts to do the right thing will go further than the best possible imitation of some other, be he ever so good.
Self-Control.—You are probably shrinking from the thought of taking yourself in hand in preparation for leadership. But it is quite natural that you should thus train yourselves, for self-control is [Pg 60] the one first step toward ability to control others. ”

“ It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association ”

“ He can be driven to a certain extent by fear and economic want; but better results, and the best social condition generally, can be expected from such management as enlists the individual's own will. He must be made to feel that the enterprise is his, after all. He must feel that he is fairly treated, and that he receives a just share of the proceeds. ”

“ The man of business also must needs be subject to strict rule and system. Business, like life, is managed by moral leverage; success in both depending in no small degree upon that regulation of temper and careful self-discipline, which give a wise man not only a command over himself, but over others. ”

“ Indeed, the instinct of self-preservation in each institution soon becomes dominant over every thing else; and maintains it when it performs some quite other function than that intended, or no function at all. ”

“ Perfect discipline is the foundation upon which the organization is built, and the recruit must learn discipline and subordination to authority first of all. But he must learn those things without losing his self-reliance, for he will be constantly called on to act on his own responsibility. ”

“ Indeed, it may be questioned whether we enlightened ones would become equally competent workers as the result of similar tactics and organization, and equally worthy of admiration as the result of self mastery, indefatigable industry and devotion. ”

“ Let us commit to proxy that work which is pleasant and easy, and betake ourselves in person to those kinds of labor that are more self-denying, and to those posts that are likely to be deserted. This is the only principle of action that will secure success in any enterprise within the range of human efforts. Suppose the opposite principle is acted upon—that every one seeks for himself the most easy and pleasant work, and the most delightful and honorable station, and leaves for others the most obscure, the most self-denying, and the most perilous. ”

“ In systematic self-control in the thousand and one claims and demands of life there is genuine heroism. Cultivate that virtue of self-control, not only in physical irregularities, but also in mental excesses and moral aberrations; that thus your growth might be all-round. Let each of you tell himself, 'I shall endeavour to subdue this excess or that exuberance, even because any excess and any exuberance in one direction tells against, retards, the growth in some other direction.' Be balanced ”

“ The second quality that distinguishes them as good citizens is their self-control. Every preventive measure in normal individuals implies a certain amount of self-restraint, and in proportion as prudential motives are strong is the self-imposed restraint easy and effective.
The existence of these two qualities, prudence and self-control, is a very important factor in human character, and upon their presence and prevalence in its units depend the progress and stability of society. ”