Friday, January 1, 2010

External Control vs. Self Control

Studies show that self-control comes in limited quantities.  People can exercise so much willpower before it's exhausted.  This can be a decidedly bad thing for the workplace.  Workers are constantly tempted to chat with their co-workers, show up late, leave early, take long lunches, surf the internet, call their buddies on the office phone, etc.  There are just too many distractions that the hordes of underlings apparently can't resist.  From my own experience, most of my employees have pathetic willpower.  I ask them to work a mere 10-12 hours (not even half the hours in a day!), and they never make it.  They always make excuses of being tired, hungry, and burned out and start wavering in their duties.

But just because employees have limited self-control doesn't mean they can't have external will forced upon them.  If you learn to micromanage effectively, you can prevent your underlings from partaking in the distractions and keep them focused on working.  Where worker self control is lacking, external control can be imposed.

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Joseph M. Scandura, incompetent moron, idiot, pompous, stupid, failure, asshole, arrogant, bullshit, micromanager of the year, technologically clueless, ignorant, condescending, senile, dementia

scandura@scandura.com
mailto:joescandura@comcast.net