A World Waiting to Be Born by M. Scott Peck

Author:M. Scott Peck [Peck, M. Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-42582-9
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 1993-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

1Matthew 10:34-36.

2Matthew 8:21-22.

3Matthew 10:26.

Part Three

YOU GOTTA KNOW YOUR BUSINESS

CHAPTER 14

Who’s There?

Roles and Transference

The summer I was sixteen I worked for Lionel, a weatherworn New England farmer and gentle teacher. Whenever I made one of my frequent mistakes or expressed my admiration for his expertise, he would clap me on the shoulder with his giant hand and exclaim, “You gotta know your business.”

Lionel, who ran a one-man show, was referring to the technical expertise of farming: the proper way to lift a full milk can or to hold sheep for the shearing, the timing of mowing and planting, the methods for moving a boulder or constructing a root cellar. Very few people are one-man shows anymore. Most of us today exercise our technical expertise in the employ of large and complex organizations. But I have learned that Lionel’s motto remains more true than ever. For in such settings, “You gotta know your business” means you not only have to know the job for which you’ve been hired, but you had also better know the organization of the business in which you work.

From now on I will use the word business in its generic sense: that which keeps us busy. It has become customary in our specialized society to restrict the word business to a particular kind of commerce, so in our universities we have graduate schools of business separate from our schools of law, medicine, education, government, and so forth. Similarly, we divide the work world into the private, public, and nonprofit “sectors.” But for the purposes of this book, such separations are arbitrary and unnecessary. The principles of organizational behavior hold true across the board whether you are in the business of commerce, the business of government, the business of teaching, and even if your work is voluntary.

“You gotta know your business” does not actually mean you must know your business. While the vast majority of people are technically proficient, only a few know much about the organization for which they work. Our organizational consciousness is usually dramatically deficient, yet most of us get by. “You gotta know your business” means, among other things, that you’ve got to know the organization if you’re going to do more than get by—if you’re going to be as happy and effective as you’d like to be.

There are many textbooks and other excellent works on organizational behavior in business. It is not my purpose to duplicate or replace them. Rather, it is my intent to focus solely on the relationship between organizational issues and civility, with particular focus on those relevant issues other works have generally overlooked.

I have already touched upon some of the primary principles of organizational behavior in our consideration of families. For instance, myths, mottoes, norms, and often secrets and lies are common not only in families but also in virtually all businesses. Yet there is a basic principle that huge numbers of people in their lack of organizational consciousness need to learn: A business is not a family.

For one thing, businesses hire and fire.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.