Leadership and Business Wisdom.

• Position: Rules for staff people

Rules for Staff PeopleUnless staff people have proved themselves in operations, they will lack credibility among operating people and will be dismissed as "theoreticians."

Rules for staff people are just as important as rules for staff work. Don't ever put anyone into a staff job unless he or she has successfully help a number if operating jobs, preferably in more than one functional area. For if staff people lack operating experience, they will be arrogant about operations, which always look so simple to the "planner." But today, in government even more than in business, we put young people fresh out of business or law school into fairly senior staff jobs as analyst or planners or staff counsel. Their arrogance and their rejection by the operating organization practically guarantee that they will be totally unproductive.

With rare exceptions, staff work should not be a person's "career" but only be a part of his or her career. After five to seven years on a staff job, people ought to go back into operating work and not return to a staff assignment for five year or so. Otherwise, they will soon become behind-the-scene wire pullers, "gray eminences," "kingmakers," "brilliant mischief-makers."

ACTION POINT: Rotate staff people in and out of operating work.

Role of Public Relations"Public Relations" has acquired a connotation of ballyhoo, propaganda, and whitewashing.

To the general public, "public relations" means publicity - essentially an extension of advertising from advertising a product to advertising its producer. But, the emphasis should be on acquainting the broad public with the problems of the enterprise rather than on convincing it of the company's virtues and achievements. This leads to the realization that to public's problems first.

Every major decision of a great corporation affects the public somehow, as workers, consumers, citizens; hence the public will react consciously or subconsciously to every move the company make. On this reaction depends, however, the effectives of the company's decision - simply an-other way of saying that any corporation lives in society. Hence the effectiveness of the executive's decision depends not only on his understanding the problems of his business but also on his understanding the public attitude toward his problems. Hence the program of public relations is to give both central-office and divisional executives a knowledge of public attitudes and beliefs, and an understanding of the reasons...