Call To
Excellence
If the resources of the country are to be well used, executives and professionals must become, to a greater degree masters of their own time. Time is a limited and valuable resource that must be allocated among competing objectives — natural, institutional and personal. The needs of each organization and the well-being and development of key personnel, can be advanced or retarded significantly, depending on how well time is planned and used.
— Paul J. Gordon
Problems or opportunities ... it's all in how you view them! Looking back we see that many problems have been dealt with which are faced daily by managers. We have also seen the possibility of becoming too "problem-oriented." Opportunities seem to pass by those who are
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buried in their problems. Another way of looking at this is that problems may be opportunities, depending upon our perspective.
First of all, if it weren't for a few problems, why would managers like you be needed? So problems do provide an opportunity for management, don't they? Failure is both the manager's greatest fear... and best teacher. Where are you going to place your emphasis? Tension has been viewed as an ulcer-builder and as a tonic for progress. Will you turn it into a constructive asset? Decision-making has been seen as the ultimate risk, but also as the pivotal management skill. Will you abdicate on the quicksand of indecision or welcome this golden opportunity to share in shaping the course of future events? Disagreement has within it the seeds of destructive conflict or dynamic growth and vitality. Will you cover it up... pretend it doesn't exist... hope it will go away — or welcome it immediately as a positive force and manage it into a contributive element in your organization?
Efficiency has been presented as the Christian imperative of responsible stewardship, but distorted at times into a threat to fellowship. Will you permit this contortion of two basic principles or insist upon their separate contributions to life, vitality and purposefulness within your organization? Loneliness has been portrayed as the characteristic of top management. Will you pity yourself for having no one with whom to share your deepest problems? Or will you see yourself as a partner with Christ and with His body — your fellowmen — and view the solitude of ultimate decisions as an opportunity for contemplation of His divine purpose for your organization and for you? We have viewed objectives and their priority as something overlooked till now, but imperative for managerial effectiveness.
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In Part One a perspective on work and time was proposed that called for an answer to the question why we work; we viewed use of time as a matter of responsible stewardship which led to the conclusion that the problem isn't time, but ourselves. In Part Two we talked about managing ourselves — since management of time ultimately got down to that. We took inventory of our personal resources (God-given talents); our opportunities implicit in our jobs; and our time (to determine what we were actually accomplishing in terms of results with our time). We selected a strategy for matching our resources with our opportunities for maximum results; assessed the time-robbers stealing our most precious asset; learned how others "make the time they need"; discussed managerial self-development; answered the question of why executives choose to work long hours; and reflected on a philosophy of leisure.
In Path Three we reviewed the management of others. After a look at the biblical basis of authority we reviewed philosophies, definitions and principles of management. We then saw what managers do when they are managing: planning, organizing, leading and controlling.
Since management of time is basically a question of how we do what we do, all of the time — we see that wasted effort is wasted time. So what we do and how we do it are ultimate questions which determine the responsibility of your stewardship.
Senator Mark Hatfield summed it up when he said:
Our first responsibility is to utilize and mobilize the resources, the capacity, the intellect, the drive, the ambitions and all that God has given us, and to use them to the fullest. That comes first in whatever endeavor to which we are committed. If you are a student or professor in an educational institution, your first responsibility is to perform with the highest degree of
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excellence as a part of that institution. In this particular time in history, we have the greatest opportunity as well as the gravest responsibility to live our lives in a committed manner in order to make the greatest possible impact upon our associates, our institutions, upon all men!1
If we are committed to live for God the life that He gave to us, we will conclude that in all we do with our time as managers nothing less than the best is good enough. Since our entire lifetime is a gift from God, let us manage it for Him!
REFERENCE:
1. Hatfield, Mark, "Excellence: The Christian Standard," Collegiate Challenge, May, 1965.
