4 Start a luncheon club within the agency. It turns enemies into friends. 5 Discourage poaching. 6 Don’t play favorites. 7 Don’t play politics. If you practice the fiendish art of divide et impera, your agency will go up in smoke. Discipline works Insist that your people arrive on time, even if you have to pay them a bonus to do so. Insist that telephones are answered promptly. Be eternally vigilant about the security of your clients’ secrets; indiscretion in elevators and restaurants, the premature use of outside typesetters, and the display of forthcoming advertisements on notice boards can do grave damage to your clients. Sustain unremitting pressure on the professional standards of your staff. It is suicide to settle for second-rate performance. Above all, insist that due dates are kept, even if it means working all night and over the weekend. Hard work, says the Scottish proverb, never killed a man. People die of boredom and disease. There is nothing like an occasional all-night push to enliven morale – provided you are part of the push. Never leave the bridge in a storm. St Augustine had this to say about pressure: ‘To be under pressure is inescapable. Pressure takes place through all the world: war, siege, the worries of state. We all know men who grumble under these pressures, and complain. They are cowards. They lack splendor. But there is another sort of man who is under the same pressure, but does not complain. For it is the friction which polishes him. It is pressure which refines and makes him noble.’ I have to admit that I have sometimes found the pressure unbearable; my own fault for frittering away so much time on things which lead nowhere. It is a good idea to start the year by writing down exactly what