7. Set your boundaries

"It is unfortunate we can't buy many business executives for what they are worth and sell them for what they think they are worth." Malcolm Forbes, American publisher

You have to, right from day one, be totally on top of the discipline issue. Remember earlier we talked about how looking after your team can be a bit like being a parent? Well, as a parent you pretty well have to set boundaries and practise zero tolerance to survive. Give 'em an inch and they'll take the whole rope. If you are seen to be 'soft' they'll take advantage. The good thing with clear boundaries and zero tolerance is you have a finite line - a yardstick by which you can judge everything. All you have to do is ask, 'Is this a breach of the rules?' If it is, stop it. If you do allow it, where do you stop?

Say one of your clear boundaries is timekeeping (it might be dress or customer care or whatever, but just say it's timekeeping). If one minute late is fine, what about two? If two is fine, what about three? And so on until people are wandering in at whatever time they feel like. But if you don't allow it, then that's the end of the story. You don't have to think about that particular issue any more. Whereas if you do allow infringements, small breaches, you are forever having to consider, Is this a step too far?' 'Can I wrest control back?' 'How far am I prepared to go?'

This doesn't mean you need to have hundreds of rules and be ridiculously inflexible. It means that, you need to decide on your few key boundaries that are important to you and to the team and the business. Make them clear. And make them firm.

Remember you are dealing with a team - I will stress this again and again throughout this book - and not an individual. You might feel that for each and any person an exception can be made_: but you aren't dealing with individuals - you are dealing with a team. If you are seen to be soft on one individual, then you must be soft on all. If you allow one to wander in late, then all must be allowed to wander in late. If one person can get away with breaking the rules, then all must be allowed.

The good manager is firm on inappropriate behaviour because this sends out a clear message to all the team - the message that you are a good, firm, in-control sort of manager who sets more store by what the team can achieve collectively than by being thought of as an easy-going, laid-back, nice person. Yes, individ­ually some of the team may rate you as pretty cool if you let them get away with murder, but the team will collectively rubbish you.

8. Be ready to prune

"No one can whistle a symphony. It takes an orchestra to play it." H. E. Luccock, Christian preacher

OK, so you've got your orchestra and you get them to play You listen. Something wrong somewhere. Yep, that flute player is out of tune, off key and playing from a different hymn sheet. Now you have three choices:

put up with it ^s change it * end it.

Let's have a little look at these three because, as in all things - from relationships, to life, to work, to being a parent - these three choices are the same every single time.

So, you're going to put up with it. This makes your entire orchestra sound flat, out of tune and ill-fitted to do its job properly - that of supplying sweet music to the masses. Your listening public (your objective) will not listen and will accuse you, the orchestra leader, of being a nincompoop* - and they would be right.

OK, so you're going to try to change it. Flute player X gets some retraining. They get sent on a remedial flute course -residential of course. They come back with the right hymn sheet but have decided to switch to the bassoon as they were feeling creatively hemmed in by the flute. Problem sorted. Well done for tackling it.

However, what if their report says they are tone deaf and should never have been in the orchestra in the first place and should have taken up a career sounding the fire alarm somewhere? What you can't do is then embark on another course of action where you give them the triangle to play but they mess that up too and by now the rest of the orchestra has lost confidence in you and is beginning to mutiny

Time for the third course. You make them redundant. It is swift and kind. They can then go on to become a champion alarm ringer somewhere, somewhere else that is, and your orchestra recognizes you as decisive, knowing what you want, objective (you put the need of the many before the bad playing of one) and utterly in charge. Have an extra brownie point.

Always be ready to prune dead wood, straggly growth, lousy flute players (and any other team players who don't cut the mustard).