Discipline is very important in organizations as it is for organizing you personal life. If you want to achieve something in sports or any other area you cannot without. But what is it exactly?

According to the free dictionary, the verb discipline may be used to express four actions: to train (a specific pattern of behaviour) ; to teach (a branch of knowledge or teaching) ; to punish (in order to correct) or to impose order (by a set of rules or methods). http://www.thefreedictionary.com/discipline

In fact all four are centered around order; order in the frequency of activities (training), order in subjects (knowledge), order in the class (with or without punishment).

I remember a quote from Evelyn Waugh, which I cannot retrieve, but what say’s about the following – A teacher with a wig will not be able to keep order in the classroom (“Mr Prendergast, an elderly teacher who made the mistake of wearing a wig on his first day and could not take it off without incurring more laughter from the boys,” which is an online review from Decline and Fall on Amazon I looked it up – Internet is a great source of information, now I understand Why Google wants to scan and archive literature).

This classroom incident speaks for itself. And it is not about the laughter of the boys in the class. It is about being credible. “Why would you wear a wig,’ the boys must have asked. “Do you pretend to be different than what you are?” Unfortunately we see organizations pretending to be different than what they really are. They focus on business transaction that are way out of their profile.

No wonder that you have a hard time getting disciplined.

If discipline is taken seriously, credibility should have been dealt with first. Make sure that activities are credible and the discipline will follow.

© 2006 Hans Bool

Hans Bool is the founder of Astor White a traditional management consulting company that offers online management advice. Astor Online solves issues in hours what normally would take days. You can apply for a free demo account

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