# Why the manager's code obliges you to look after yourself [Home](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en) › [Study](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study) › [Articles](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study/articles) author: [Axel Jedlitschka](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/about) published: 2026-10-13 updated: 2026-10-13 language: en reading time: 5 min topic: Personal source booklet: [Your Code](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/your-code) In a small business the manager is the scarcest resource there is. So the code obliges him to economize his effort and keep his head clear, in the same list that bans cliques and fear. The manager's code also covers the manager himself. One clause obliges him to let others serve him well, to economize his own effort, and to keep some comforts so that his thinking stays clear. It sits in the same list that bans forming cliques and driving people by fear. ## The clause people skip The eleventh clause is the one most owners skip on a first read. It says the manager must permit himself to be served well in his individual requirements, and practice an economy of his own efforts. Look at the words **permit himself**. The source frames this as a duty inside the code, in the same list as the other clauses. Nothing in it says he deserves it or that it would be pleasant. The reason is a practical one. In a business of ten people or fewer, nobody is scarcer than the manager. Effort he burns on something someone else could do is effort taken away from the decisions only he can make. Take an owner who keeps organizing the stockroom herself every Friday. That is four hours a week, and none of those hours goes to a decision only she could make. Or a clinic owner who answers every phone call herself because each one takes only a second. Over a month that is eighty calls. Now the stockroom owner again, after she hands the stockroom to an employee and pays him for two extra hours. It costs her less than her own time was worth. ## Service that is allowed, service that wears you down The source shows the other side too, which is what happens when a manager accepts a service that isn't his to accept. In its words, “Execs were persuaded to give personal outside service which knocked out their integrity.” The line between them is sharp. When an employee organizes the stockroom in your place, you are economizing effort. When you take a side job with one of your own suppliers, your integrity erodes. Both look like convenience, and only one of them is allowed. **Integrity**, according to the booklet, means wholeness: honesty, and also being one thing instead of two. ## Comfort for the sake of clear reasoning Why is any of this needed? The rest of the same clause answers it. The manager enjoys certain comforts to the end of keeping high his rationale. The comfort serves something else, which is the ability to think straight. A worn-out manager decides badly, and every bad decision costs him far more than the comfort he gave up. There is one more point. Because the clause is part of a code, it carries more weight than health advice would: if you hold yourself to the other clauses, you are bound to this one too. Suppose a contractor drives four hours each day to save on a hotel room. By the third project he makes a measurement error that costs more than every hotel night would have. Or an owner who decides she takes no calls between two and four, and finds that the hard decisions move into that window. Two partners can also agree that they never work the same weekend. It costs them one shift a month and saves them two arguments. ## Service, and the right to pride The chapter closes on two clauses, one from each code. The manager's code says he must put himself on the footing of service to the group. The group member's code gives every member a right to pride in his tasks, along with a right to judgment and to handling in them. Read together, they describe a balance that is easy to lose from either side. A manager who only serves vanishes, and a manager who only decides grows detached. The second clause hands that same right to everyone on the team: **pride** in what they do, and **judgment** in how they do it. Take an employee's judgment away and his pride goes with it. Then it is hard to be surprised that he cares less. Suppose a manager corrects every piece of his team's work himself before it leaves the building. Within a year nobody checks their own work, because there is no reason to. Or an owner who stops fixing the work herself and starts asking people whether they are happy with it. That same month two people bring work back for correction on their own initiative. And a designer who lets an employee sign off on a project of hers, directly with the client. The work gets better, and nobody had to say a word about quality. ## What the booklet has on this The chapter this article draws on includes two exercises, the scarce resource and the pride. It also has a self-check, and it belongs to a booklet that helps you write your own code in five to ten lines. Next time you are about to do something yourself that someone else could do, ask which decision, one that belongs only to you, is waiting in the meantime. - [Your Code](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/your-code): Five lines, a clear separation between what applies to you and what applies to the business, and one test that checks whether they hold. --- [עברית](https://theonlyaxelj.com/he/study/articles/manager-code-guard-your-own-effort) · [Español](https://theonlyaxelj.com/es/study/articles/manager-code-guard-your-own-effort)