RULE 2 "Office shows the person." --PITTACUS Of all the many problems facing today''s business world none is more critical than the quality of the work environment. In the absence of an affable work setting, employee loyalties quickly dissolve. According to U.S. Department of Labor statistics, employees typically remain in their position for only about two years. Surveys designed to explain this remarkable mobility suggest that the number one reason for employee exit is a disagreeable workplace. The implications of this rapid turnover are clear: The organization forfeits the time, energy, and resources it invested in recruitment and suffers the effects of having employees who lack meaningful commitment to the organization.

How can organizations motivate staff members who are constantly seek- ing vocational alternatives? Negative work settings do not occur spontaneously. Almost without exception, this potentially lethal failure can be traced to managerial deficiency and more often than not, to the abusive misapplication of power on the part of the manager. Nothing will more rapidly disenchant and alienate workers than a manager who delights in resorting to the stick as opposed to the carrot. One of Thales'' colleagues on the list of Seven Sages was the ruler of Mytilene, a man named Pittacus (circa 600 BC). After governing his city for a decade, Pittacus voluntarily relinquished his power and retired. The ancient author Diogenes Laertius recorded a number of famous sayings traditionally attributed to Pittacus, the most famous being "office shows the man." Above all else, this maxim addresses the critical issue of power and its ef- fects. Implicitly it contains two premises.

First, that the investment of power--in other words, granting a leader meaningful authority-- is the trigger that will rapidly reveal that person''s inner qualities. Second, that power not only has a potential to disclose who a person really is; it also has the capacity to corrupt. We need to examine both of these ideas. Anyone who has been involved in hiring a new employee under- stands that the resume, the reference letters, the interviews, and so on provide at best only an opaque view of a candidate''s ac- tual identity. Throughout the various phases of the hiring process, the real person is easily concealed by a series of highly stylized rit- uals and procedures. In terms of getting at the core personality, the procedure remains as superficial as it is cosmetic, with the result that one never really knows the person behind the mask until the employee is "up and running." These points are particularly noteworthy in the case of senior personnel, the people who are assigned important leadership roles in an organization. For these individuals, the investment of power has an all-important diagnostic potential.

Power will invariably reflect what no resume ever does, namely the psychological and spiritual disposition of the person. And here, of course, we are brought back to the points made in the discussion of Rule 1. What is soon to be revealed in the newly hired "leader" is whether or not a process of honest self-discovery has taken place. If the battle to dispel self-induced fraud has been successfully waged, if indeed the individual has heeded Thales'' "know thyself," that achievement will be mirrored by the manner in which power is utilized.