The staff call him ‘Slouch’ because his shirt is always hanging out and he drags his feet along as he walks. His most common personal habit is stretching and yawning in public. In private, his personal habits are even worse; the staff know this because they walk past his office every day. Nothing in his office appears to be arranged in an orderly fashion – not even the chairs for the visitors. Worse still, he always seems to be eating and there are always leftovers and crumbs lying round. And, to top it all, he has bad breath.

In addition to all of this, there are rumours that Slouch is incompetent, since things are not improving at his school. He does sometimes talk about the department needing some changes, but the personnel cannot see him communicating these needs effectively or doing something constructive about them. That is why the implementation of the new curriculum is such a disaster at his school. He only attends some of the training sessions and he takes too long after the sessions to take any action. He does not always arrive at school on time and he seems to have no pride in the fact that he is the manager of what is, in fact, a large school. He must be under a great deal of stress, because things do not seem to be working out well for him as a new manager. In fact, there is talk that he has started to drink heavily. One of the teachers has mentioned that he has some influential friends and family working in the department, so let's hope the rumour about his drinking habits does not spread too quickly.

Slouch needs to improve himself drastically. He cannot manage his school effectively because he cannot manage himself. Everybody can see that he does not make profitable use of the available time, has a bad public image, cannot manage work objectives and does not realise how important the manager's self-development is for the success of his school.