558 PARKS 



is efficiently assigned, that proper sub-management exists and that similar 

 questions of office management are properly handled. It is fatal for a 

 manager to get lost in the details of his organization, losing sight of the one- 

 purpose aim and one-man personality of the department as a whole. In 

 fact, the manager is the department and the employees are his personal 

 functionaries. He has assigned no routine duties to himself except to coordi- 

 nate the functions of his subordinates as the brain coordinates actions of 

 arms, legs, fingers and body. 



It is likewise important for the one-man department to imagine him- 

 self broken up into functions as our office manager has been dissected, not 

 only that he may see how well rounded his own capabilities are, but that 

 he may acquire and maintain the point of view he must maintain if he is 

 to head any kind of an organization. Keeping this thought in mind, the 

 reader from large and small communities alike will find interest in the 

 further discussion of office management. 



2. Duties of employees. Every employee is entitled to a written state- 

 ment of what his duties are. The office manager is entitled to his. He may 

 have to obtain these duties from the park laws and ordinances or he may 

 be fortunate enough to have them given to him, but however he gets them 

 they will be very brief and very general and it will be necessary for him in 

 writing out duties for employees under him to analyze them carefully, reduce 

 the general terms to specific terms and consequently more voluminous 

 matter. These again will be carefully studied and assignments determined 

 according to functions to be performed. The manager is merely breaking 

 up his own duties and reassigning them to his subordinates. 



The following is cited as an example of how the duties of the secretary 

 are reduced from general terms to specific terms and transferred to his 

 employees. A certain city charter has this to say concerning the secretary 

 of the board of park commissioners: 



"Appoint annually a secretary who shall not be a power and is hereby authored to administer oaths in 



member of said board. The person elected as secretary all proceedings under this chapter and incident thereto, 



before entering upon the duties of this office, shall file It shall be the duty of the said secretary to submit 



with the comptroller of said city a bond in the penal to the said board, at the first meeting in January, a 



sum of ten thousand ($io,ooc) dollars, with at least report showing the transactions of his office and other 



three (3) good and sufficient sureties acceptable to said information necessary for the conduct of his business." 

 board of park commissioners. Said secretary shall have 



This charter also gives the board of park commissioners power to make 

 rules governing its own proceedings, and in its rules the board has enlarged 

 upon the duties of the secretary as follows: 



"The secretary shall perform the duties required by board may from time to time direct. He shall attend 



law, and all duties properly devolving upon such officer. all meetings of the board and of its committees when 



He shall have charge of and attend the office of the required. He shall keep a true and complete record of 



board when the board shall not be in session, as the the proceedings of said board, and of committees, and 



