Charlie saw himself as a great manager-and for good reason. He spent many a waking hour reading everything he could find on the art of management. He subscribed to every magazine devoted to management. He read every book he could find on the subject. He attended every seminar covering any aspect of management. He read hundreds of case studies. And, of course, he took in a slew of university courses.
All of these are tools, he would tell you. Tools, he said, make the man. They distinguish man from beast. And it would be plain silly, he felt, to neglect the tools that were available to make a great manager.
Charlie took courses in business communications because he knew communications was an important business tool. He had read many a case study where a project was bungled because an inept manager had failed to communicate properly with his staff and had failed to make certain that his requirements were understood. He recalled too many cases where just a few casual words reversed an intended meaning. He wasn't going to fall into that trap.
He put everything in writing because that left little room for misunderstanding-as long as the writing was clear and unambiguous, which his messages always were.
Though he wasn't yet in their league, Charlie pictured himself one day in the company of legendary managers like General Electric's Jack Welch or Hewlett-Packard's late Dave Packard. All he had to do was apply the tools.
When Frank was consistently late with his projects, Charlie knew what to do. He remembered reading of just such a situation in one of his case studies. He gave Frank a lecture on the competitive importance of time-to-market and how the first company to market with an important product could capture a major part of that market and earn the best profits.
When Sally kept neglecting to make entries in her notebook, Charlie chastised her and reminded her of the case where a patent dispute was lost because an engineer had failed to make properly dated entries in his notebook. He demanded that Sally show him her notebook every week so that he could be certain she had made proper entries.
So Charlie was content. He knew that everything was going along smoothly, largely because of his management skills.
Only one aspect of his life disturbed him and led to a great deal of discontent. Fred always whipped him in their weekly tennis matches. However hard Charlie worked to improve his tennis skills, Fred always beat him.
Fortunately, he knew how to overcome that problem. He bought Fred's tennis racket.
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