Turn back now to the FOUR ELEMENTS OF SUCCESSFUL PLANNING as we set them down onpage 54. Try them out on any successful plan and assure yourself that not a point has been stretched. By using them we shall learn the constructive, creative KNACK OF PLANNING.
Stripped of the "clothes" which every plan wears—it's only in the clothing that plans differ—this KNACK OF PLANNING may be quite simply visualized by some such chart as the one shown on the opposite page.
There you see the PRIMARY FORCE—the INITIATIVE that sets the PLAN in action. Second, the POINT OF APPLICATION—where you must hit if you're going to win. Third, the various activities which bring about the SUCCESSFUL CONCLUSION. And fourth, all theseactivities headed up at the FOCUSING POINT.
It's just like the sailor off the whaler who picks up the wooden mallet, hits the plunger a resounding crack, sends the weight hurtling up the pole, rings the bell—and gets a good 5-cent cigar. Or like the golfer who, putter in hand, strokes the ball firmly "in the direction of least resistance and greatest accomplishment," sees it hit the back of the cup and drop in for a par four.
Watch these four essentials. Knowing them and using them continually will enable you to break down every job of PLANNING into its component parts—will enable you to develop that important side of your managing faculties—whether your work is merely the carrying out of a job or shouldering the responsibilities of a huge business.
Remember the production manager in the shoe factory? Rather sketchy was the story of the ANALYSIS he made. Let's go a bit more into the details of the PLAN which was based on the ANALYSIS. And, at the same time, examine it to see if it checks with our FOUR ELEMENTS.
You remember he was hired to find out why the so-and-so shoes didn't move out the door on time. And you'll remember that instead of clanking up and down from one department to another, he was seen one day picking out lasts from a bin in the assembly room. He had crept up quietlyon the POINT OF APPLICATION. The INITIATIVE, you see, or the PRIMARY MOVING FORCE, was the boss's order to get shoes to moving.
Here (in the lasting room) was his POINT OF APPLICATION. The biggest factor in slowing up shoes, he found, was failure to have lasts ready the instant the uppers came down cut and stitched from the fitting room.
The shoes were entered into work with almost entire disregard of this vital point. Oh, yes, they knew they once bought so many pairs of lasts on this style or that in such and such sizes. And in a vague sort of way they tried to regulate the number of pairs sent to the cutting room with the number of lasts which they thought should be available the day the shoes reached the assembly department where uppers, insoles, bottoms and lasts met together—or should have.
A single missing size could hold up a 36-pair lot which included a run of sizes all the way, say, from 7½ to 12.
Today it's all so different. A running inventory is kept of every active last. Each day the lasts which are released as shoes leave the finishing room are added to the supply on hand; at the same time, the lasts which are to be used that day in lasting incoming lots are subtracted.
A job? No, a good girl of moderate intelligence simply added it to a dozen other office chores which she finds time to do daily.
The running inventory, you see, is one of the various activities which, aimed at the focusing point—the moving of shoes out the door—are necessary to bring about a successful conclusion—the successful conclusion, in this particular instance, probably being the saving of the young man's scalp—for the boss was certainly out to get it the day he saw the young production manager pawing over the chunks of maple in the lasting room.
Other activities might be mentioned. Plenty of them. An automatic conveyor which brought back empty racks to the point where they were needed. Semi-automatic elevators which made possible the rapid moving of shoes from floor to floor. Twelve-pair lots which simplified the handling problem, made the job of picking out lasts an easier one—and all in all did much to take the weight off management's shoulders. All these and more are the activities which were needed to bring about a successful conclusion. They were all part of the PLAN.
Today, in that shoe factory, the production manager sits down for an hour in the forenoon and an hour in the afternoon and schedules the next half-day's work which will go to the cutting room. Two girls have been moderately busy getting him the information he needs. Sales have been brought up to date within half a day. He knows how many kid shoes he can cut, howmany calf. He knows which patterns can be cut by machine, which must be cut by hand. He knows that certain patterns take longer to go through the fitting room. There's extra stitching or fancy perforations. He must lay off those. And last of all, he knows what he can count on in the way of lasts when the shoes hit the lasting room.
With his two girls, the young production manager does all the work of scheduling.
Actually, there isn't much work. Management, you see, has done an awfully nice job of PLANNING.
Picture now the manufacturer of small electrical appliances who sought to lay out new avenues of growth. His was pretty much a seasonal business. Electric fans constituted most of his bread-and-butter production. Early in the year and well on into the spring his plant ran full blast getting out merchandise for sale during thewarm, muggy days when Sirius is in the ascendant.
And then along in the summer and fall his production curves went into a serious decline.
To level them out would have meant carrying a load of finished inventory which he could ill afford. Other appliances, such as hair curlers and driers which might conceivably find a ready sale during the holiday season, helped considerably—but not enough. The rough places were by no means made plane.
Why not, thought he, a line of toys which would enable him to utilize his present production set-up profitably during the slack summer and fall? Why not, indeed?
So he set out to chart a plan of action beginning, as you will see from the figure, with the furnishing of amusement as the PRIMARY FORCE. His POINT OF ATTACK was through the 15,000,000 American boys who love to build something. On he went to the various ways ofgetting parents interested as the ACTIVITIES WHICH SHOULD LEAD TO A SUCCESSFUL CONCLUSION—to the linking up of those activities with the retail store as the job of FOCUSING THEM on the final achievement—SALES.
Only the bare headings on the plan are shown in the chart. Nevertheless it shows clearly the same knack of using the FOUR ELEMENTS which we have been at such pains to discuss.
The chart proved helpful, not only in guiding the management in its efforts to enlarge the scope of manufacturing activities, but also in giving the office and the sales force a true picture of the business. So helpful, indeed, did it prove that it was blueprinted. And today every salesman has one pasted in his selling portfolio. It's the first thing the dealer sees. And it has gone far in arousing the latter's interest and confidence.
If you were a dealer, would you buyfrom a factory that was run by guess and by gob when you could give your business to a concern which you knew was functioning in accordance with a sound, well-formulated plan?
There, if you please, lies the answer.
It is not within the purpose of this chapter, incidentally, to play any favorites. Time must be taken out at this point, therefore, to return to the messenger boy who, when we left him, had just finished analyzing his job.
Let's see now how his plan of action is based upon what the analysis taught him. Let's examine this elementary job of managing, not because it may make better messengers of us, but because the examination will show how universal this thing called management is—because it will afford one more proof of our general axiom that the principles of management are ever the same, no matter what particular paraphernalia of business may be used to cover up its old bones.
Did, then, the messenger boy work out his plan in accordance with our FOUR BASIC ELEMENTS? He did, if he was really managing his job—and from the careful analysis he made, we may assume he was.
If his trip meant riding a street car, then going to the cashier for carfare is his primary force. If he can walk, then the primary force is simply getting under way. Hastening as directly as possible to the car line is applying the force at the easiest place to get results. Perhaps he might have to choose between a slow street car which would carry him right to his destination for seven cents, and a fast elevated which, for a dime, would make better time but leave several blocks to walk at the other end. Deciding between the two is directing the activities along lines of greatest accomplishment. And getting his transfer, leaving the car, and going straight tothe address on the message, are nothing more nor less than focusing his activities at the POINT OF ACHIEVEMENT.
You see? The Colonel's lady in her Parisian peignoir and Judy O'Grady in her sleazy slip were sisters under the skin. So, if we may stretch a physiological point, are our messenger boy and the man who made the toys.
The plans of both were built on the same foundation.
Or take the plan by which the new general manager of a tap and die concern rehabilitated his company's business.
"Why," he said, reaching for a pad of paper and roughly sketching something that looked like a funnel and must have been because he said it was, "our manufacturing plan looked about like this. Up here at the top we poured in a lot of orders and hoped to high heaven some of them would finally trickle through at the bottom.
"Some of them did drop through. Others dropped because we poked sticks up theflue. That is to say, an army of stock chasers did their level best to keep everyone happy.
"It was bedlam around the shop. It took three months on an average to complete an order.
"I found much of the delay was due to certain Victorian notions about set-up time. The prevailing idea was to give an operator a good big job to minimize that item of expense.
"Sometimes the job was so big it took 60 days to run it through a single operation.
"Oh, me! oh, my! the inventories of finished goods that piled up. The tote boxes full of work in process that cluttered up the scenery.
"And the complaints from customers who were waiting for orders!
"Funny thing about our business, you can't get a customer to accept a couple of ¼-in. taps in place of the ½-in. one he's ordered.
"So I had to revamp the whole shootingmatch. First on the program was to find out what was made and what was making. Then we withdrew from the shop all work in process except what actually applied on orders in the house or what was needed to fill out our stock on an item on which we had no order, but on which past experience had taught us we'd get one in the course of the next 30 days.
"You should have seen the pile of tote boxes we stuck under the boilers.
"Well, the next job was to figure out the most economical lots to send through the works. That figure was arrived at simply by choosing such a size that no single operation could possibly take more than a day. In a word, I made sure that every single lot would move every single day.
"Do you get the picture? A steady flow of manufacturing. No funnel. No poking around with sticks. Today there aren't any stock chasers. None is needed. Work reaches the stockroom on time. Orders are filled complete the same day they come in.Inventories are lower. Oh, heck, need I go on?"
No, he needn't. For already he has shown us how the motive force was applied at the right point to get results. Take this plan apart—or any other plan that really works—and you will see that it is built upon the FOUR ELEMENTS OF PLANNING.
They make the PLANNING wheels go round.
Now it's time to take your own job of planning to pieces and see if it, too, does not meet the test.
Here, again, as when the ANALYSIS was made, it helps to set things down on paper. In charting, you will find that by painstaking application of our four principles along the lines diagrammed in the figure onpage 65, you can LAY OUT A WORKING PLAN depending for its approach to perfection only upon the amount of thoughtput into it, and upon the degree of accuracy with which the analysis of the job was made.
The chart you make may be only a guide to the complete plan. Some plans require details which utterly preclude any form of expression so simple as a chart. Other plans can be laid out on the actual chart shown.
In any event, the very attempt to put your plan into diagrammatic form will develop PRACTICABILITY AND ACCURACY OF ARRANGEMENT. The very necessity of having to indicate and to select the primary force back of your job or business; having to trace that force through the various activities necessary to completed work; and then having visibly and physically to concentrate all these activities at one point—those very acts which making a chart compels you to perform, enforce a mastery of the essential details of your business and a grasp of their relations which every manager should have.
Perhaps the plan you have isn't as hot as you think it is.
An office manager friend of ours was pretty proud of his system until one day he charted it.
His company was famous for the quality of work turned out. But the service it gave was wretched. Special instructions were often ignored. Delivery dates were overlooked. All that sort of thing.
The system looked good enough. The office manager said the mistakes were due to carelessness. And it looked as if he were right. So when something went wrong, the nearest employee got a handsome bawling out.
At last the sales force jumped on him with both feet. Too many promises had been broken.
So the office manager was forced to do something about it. And, quite by accident, made a chart of the ACTUAL PLAN OF WORK.
Hello, what was this? Half a dozenresponsibilities were standing around absolutely unchaperoned, you might say. Someone might come along and pick them up, or then again——
For example, if a customer on the West Coast ordered a bill of goods, and then, while the order was in work, decided he wanted half the goods shipped by boat through the canal and the other half by fast freight, maybe he'd get his shipments that way and maybe he wouldn't. Under the prevailing "plan" that particular sort of job didn't fall inside any one man's bailiwick. No one man was responsible for seeing that such orders were executed. No "machinery" had therefore been provided for taking care of them.
That's only a sample of some of the duties which landed—in his diagrammatic representation of the actual plan of work—somewhere off the map. For all the action they got, they might as well have been painted ships upon a painted ocean.
Methods in general, you see, were prettymuch all right. But there was no recognized initiative back of the plan. Activities were set in motion more or less spontaneously. As a result, certain parts of the business were left without managerial supervision.
Nothing is surer to expose such a condition than actually to chart a plan. In this instance, it was simple to recognize "following customers' instructions"—no matter when, why, or how they came—as the logical primary force. Then the whole trouble was taken care of by centering the responsibility upon the chief of the order department. From then on, all instructions regarding any order cleared through him.
Thus it will be seen that the idea back of charting a plan is not to get something you can work to as an ideal in carrying on a job, but rather to get a PRACTICAL FRAMEWORK on which the work can actually be done. Then it is at once evident whether the "clothes" of the business are hanging on the right limb or whetherthey have been hung up somewhere on the ground where, like as not, nobody will bother to pick them up.
Too often the plan turns out to be a "sketch."
The builder waits until the architect's first sketch has become a plan.
In business it's like that, too.
When finally you know, from ANALYSIS,what you want to accomplish, it is not difficult to plan the procedure if you start right and forget nothing. You start right if you take time to figure out the primary initiative. You forget nothing if you take the trouble to set things down in black and white.
And finding the motive force and figuring out where to hit with it, is nothing more nor less than charting the moves of the game until you find a succession of activities moving along without back-tracking, without duplication, without wasted effort or supervision.
Thus cultivating the KNACK OFPLANNING is a long step in the direction of becoming a good manager. If you were going to try to tell someone else how to cultivate the knack of planning, the story of the two men shaving in the Pullman washroom serves to illustrate the point.
Both men seemed to be in a hurry. The first hustled over to one of the wash basins, scrubbed his face and hands, dried them on a towel. Then he began to shave. That finished, he washed the lather from his face, dried himself again on another towel, and put away his razor. Next came his teeth. He brushed them, washed away the traces of tooth paste, and dried himself on a third towel.
All this time the other fellow was going through the same motions—but in a much different order.
He began with his teeth. After he had brushed them, he lathered his face. After he had shaved, a single wash was enough and a single towel did the drying job. He had finished his canteloupe and was wellalong with his eggs before his companion reached the diner. Number two didn't do a better job of brushing his teeth, of shaving, of washing. But hediddo a better job of PLANNING.
He started where each operation would lead directly and naturally into the next, performing each at the proper time.
After all, isn't that precisely what you do in planning any part of your business?
Remember Psmith and Pbrown? One could analyze, but didn't know what to do with his analysis after he got it. The other was an expert planner, but alas! his plans were never based upon the solid foundation of actual necessity. He planned to do something before he knew what had to be done.
Psmith and Pbrown, together, looked like a grand pair when we introduced them in the chapter on PLANNING. Now, after taking particular pains to give that impression, we shall have to break right down and confess in open meeting that they are but two numbers of the MANAGEMENT TEAM. Probinson is the third.
Probinson ORGANIZES THE WORK. Psmith may analyze to a fare-you-well;Pbrown may plan till he's blue in the face—their best efforts are as of nothing worth unless Probinson is on hand to organize the work of the business. For as surely as there is a knack of analyzing and a knack of planning, just so surely is there a knack of organizing the work.
Thus we approach the third phase of the job of managing.
So far we have seen how the successful manager starts from the top, working backward, to chart his job—and then, having found out what has to be done, builds his plan for doing it. Analysis and planning, however, will carry him just so far. Unless he acquires the knack of organization, he will never make a howling success of his job—he will fall just short of being an outstanding manager.
The office manager for an Eastern concern affords the needed illustration.
P. C.—those aren't his initials—knew office management from A to Izzard. First to arrive in the morning, last to leave atnight, he had a tremendous capacity for hard labor. But he never seemed to make a hole in the pile of work on his desk. It grew no smaller fast. Why? Because he never, in all his years of managing, learned to arrange the division of his work. He never learned to deputize it. When his mind should have been free for the more or less important decisions which crop out now and then even in an office manager's life, it was all bound around in the necessity of performing some silly little routine job which any girl of moderate intelligence could have done.
His idea of organizing his job was to try to do everything himself. And within his physical limitations he was a valuable man to the company. But how much more he'd have been worth had he, at some time in his career, acquired the KNACK OF ORGANIZATION!
Don't jump to the conclusion, now, that the successful organizer is one who merely divides up his work and parcels it outamong a flock of assistants. Don't think for a moment that it is nothing but deputization.
Effective organization is far more than that.
It is the distribution of work, according to its character or urgency, among the facilities at hand for doing it according to their capacities or cost. And it makes no difference whether those facilities happen to be men, money, or machines—or simply your own available time.
You deputize work when you use an adding machine instead of your head to total last month's sales—when you turn the job of packaging breakfast food over to an automatic machine—when you jot down in your notebook information which would otherwise tax your memory—when you telephone the purchasing agent instead of making your legs take you to his office—when, instead of using your own funds, you do something on borrowed capital.
Deputization may be any one of thesejust as easily as it may be asking your assistant to find out why So-and-so's order for boys' pants wasn't shipped on time, or making him responsible for working out a new prospect list.
The office manager of a shoe concern found, right after the war, that much of his day was spent telling dealers in Kalamazoo and Keokuk to be patient, please, and they'd get their shoes.
Those were the halcyon days, you'll remember, when salesmen went out twice a year and told their customers how many shoes or ships or sewing machines they could have—and when they could have them.
As a result, this particular shoe factory was loaded to the guards with orders. Orders were shipped when, as and if they struggled from cutting room to fitting room—and from then on down to the packing department.
Complaints were numerous. They weren't exactly complaints, either. Queries, rather. Where are my shoes? Can't you ship March 15 instead of April 1? And so on—until, as we started to say, the sales manager was spending a great part of his time dictating replies to his stenographer. And she didn't have time for any of her other duties.
Analysis proved that the letters were, in the main, of three types. Three letters were therefore prepared, and each day the sales manager went through the inquiries and indicated which letter should go to which customer. In that way the latter got a prompt and courteous reply, as well as certain vague information explaining why he'd have to wait another month for his shoes.
And he was moderately happy. Personal attention from the sales manager could have accomplished no more. Thus a certain part of an executive's and hisstenographer's time was deputized to a system.
Could the sales manager have gone a step further and had his letter mimeographed, he would have been DEPUTIZING TO A MACHINE the same amount of his own and a much larger part of the stenographer's time. But, while the customers accepted plausible excuses in place of shoes, it is doubtful whether the cleverest imitation would have taken the place of a real typewritten letter.
With the manufacturer of a proprietary medicine, however, things are different. Women from every part of the country write in describing their ailments. It is not difficult to classify these letters into a dozen groups. And form letters, done in skillful imitation of real typing, do the trick quite nicely.
That is DEPUTIZING—just as it is DEPUTIZING when the "big boss" calls in his assistant and says: "You run thisshebang from now on. I've got to see if I can't get the K. C. plant out of the red."
And it's DEPUTIZING when a manufacturer, forced to increase the size of his plant, goes to a real estate operator and gets him to buy a piece of land, put up a building and rent it to him at a certain figure, while he uses his own capital to equip and operate the new plant, because he can make 15 per cent, say, on his capital himself, whereas he has to pay out as rent only an amount equal to 8 per cent of what land, building, insurance, and so on, would tie up.
Fundamentally, then, DEPUTIZING is taking something away from the "principal" of the job or business and assigning it to a "deputy." Principal and deputy may be a manager and his stenographer, a department head and a filing system, or a corporation's capital and a bond issue.
The first stumbling step toward organization, therefore, is to RECOGNIZE andDEFINE the PRINCIPAL and the DEPUTIES in a given task.
A good manager, though, can't simply go and deputize every detail of his job. That might be nothing more than the trick of a lazy man.
Yet a rising young executive (on our list of casual acquaintances) has done exactly that. He has carried it to such a fine point that he is able to spend three afternoons a week with Col. Bogie. He is still rising, although some of us have abiding faith in the old adage that what goes up must come down. In other words, he's rising to a fall.
No, organizing is not deputizing in that sense of the word.
In EFFECTIVE ORGANIZING, it will be noted from the examples cited, work is deputizedonly when the "principal" is left free to do something else more important or more profitable.
The "big boss" didn't hand the plant over to his assistant until he knew his undivided attention was needed elsewhere—until he knew he could spend his time more profitably in another phase of the business.
Analyze the conditions under which the sales manager delegated part of his dictation to a system, and part of his stenographer's typing to a duplicating machine. You will see that the work deputized fulfilled two conditions:
It was work the system and the machine could do to advantage—
And work which he and his stenographer could do only at the expense of more important work.
Wherever there is delegation of responsibility in any true job of managing, the same two fundamentals will be seen.
Too often a manager says: "Never do anything your subordinate can do for you." But it is not good management when turning a job over to a subordinate leaves the manager idle and unproductive—with nothing on his mind except his hat.
The good manager, whatever may be his particular job of managing, follows tworules when he deputizes or distributes work to man, money or machine. Such work, he knows, should be:
1. Work which that other person or other thing can do to good advantage.
2. Work which the manager would do himself only at the expense of something more important.
Deputizing your work so that your days are free for golfing or yachting is far from the spirit of true organization. When a Schwab deputizes, another job profits by the increased time he is able to give to it. Every time he passes on a bit more responsibility, the whole enterprise profits through his greater freedom for the big sweep of the business. And when a manager fails because he has never learned to share responsibilities, we shudder at his folly—never stopping to think that the sole reason it was folly was because there was a bigger job for him to do. Deputizing his work would have left him free to exercisebig, broad judgment in a way that only leisure and calmness could afford.
A few years ago, two young men went into business in a small Illinois town. They were honest, industrious, well liked. Austin was a born salesman; Black was a shrewd buyer. It looked like a good combination and the local banker gave them a line of credit.
One year went by. Two years. Austin and Black were just skinning by. A fair living was all they were getting out of the business. Volume—which was what they needed—was increasing, oh, so slowly.
A salesman came along about that time and told them some things they didn't know. A little more skill in watching the stock; cutting out lines which weren't paying; trimming purchases on slow-moving stocks; pushing specialties before they went bad on their hands—those were some of the methods which meant added profits.
It certainly looked like good business to hire another clerk so that the partners' time would be free for these new phases of the business.
The clerk was taken on—and things began to hum. Soon Austin and Black saw other steps they ought to take. More attention must be given to advertising. That meant another clerk. Next came a bookkeeper, an assistant bookkeeper.
Trade was increasing, you see, and net profits were increasing. Extra clerks were needed all right, but the proprietors went the whole hog and put on so many that they themselves no longer had to stand behind a counter. They were both badly bitten by the bug of supervision.
Finally the tide turned. It usually does.
And when Austin and Black went to the bank one day to get an extension of credit, the shrewd old retired farmer on the other side of the desk laid down the law.
They got the extension—but only on certain conditions.
The chief condition was that they do LESS MANAGING and MORE MERCHANDISING.
And that's what they are doing today.
There were two managers who organized their work, increased their profits. Up to a certain point, every time they deputizedtheir work, it was an advantage, because it left them more time for better merchandising.
But they weren't ORGANIZING according to our TWO FUNDAMENTALS. Literally, they weredeputizing all the work that others could do—and not confining the work deputized towork they themselves could do only at the expense of something more important.
How well the chart tells the story! The great big white piece of pie marked "IDLE" shows exactly where Austin and Black went wrong. The worst thing that ever happened to them was the day they went home from Chicago and tried to run their business the way they thought Mr. James W. Simpson runs his large retail emporium.
Somewhere along the line they tripped over the point of vanishing returns and kept right on going.
And thus we come to the Scylla and Charybdis of our job of ORGANIZING.Remember we are not interested in the mere knack of getting someone else to take over every last responsibility that can be borne by another. Perhaps that may be good management for a Schwab—in so far, at least, as it leaves his mind free for the exercise of the broad judgment we mentioned a while ago. Nor are we interested in the sheer industry and application involved in doing without assistance everything that can possibly be so done, although doing it may be equally good management for, say, a file clerk. Rather is our interest in the KNACK OF SENSING THE DIVIDING LINE between WORK to PERFORM and WORK to DEPUTIZE. It is that ability which is the mark of the successful manager.
Where is this DIVIDING LINE? How shall we know where to DEPUTIZE and when to PERFORM? What kind of work shall we turn over to subordinates? What shall we reserve for ourselves?
Again, whatever the job or business we are engaged in organizing, there are simple rules to follow.
But first an illustration which will help to make the point.
Consider the credit man for a large concern which sold machines on a monthly payment plan.
He was always in a jam with the sales department. It took too long, complained the sales manager, to get credit rulings. It was no fun to put a whole lot of work into selling the customer, only to have the order turned down by the house because of poor credit. Why couldn't the credit man give them a ruling before they attempted to close a sale? Sometimes it took so long to get an O.K. that the prospect got all cold and went somewhere else.
The treasurer of the company was drawn into the picture when the sales manager openly declared he'd "get" the credit man.
And it certainly looked as if the sales manager had a good case.
"But," protested the credit man, "I've made mighty few mistakes. As for delays—well, I don't know how I could work any harder."
"Maybe you work too hard," the treasurer ventured.
"Hm, if I didn't do what I do, I don't know who would."
"Hold on, now, let's get this thing straight. You're valuable to the company because of your long experience and good judgment on credits. When you have all the dope on a man, I'll bet my last dollar on your decision. The only mistakes you ever make are when you hurry your decisions.
"But—and here's the point—you aren't any better at digging out the facts than either of your two assistants. Yet here's what you do. You divide salesmen's requests for credit rulings into two groups. You take those that run over $500; yourassistants get the others. Each of you does his own investigating and digging—and except in puzzling cases, you practically let your two men make their own decisions.
"Why, listen. You, the best man we have ondecisions, spend more than half your timedigging, while your assistantsspend much of their time making decisions. What's the result? Delay, the department in a jam, some decisions made in a hurry, some by your assistants.
"The trouble with you is, you haven't organized your department right." And the treasurer sketched the diagram reproduced in the upper chart onpage 105.
"Why, man, your job is to keepallbad credits off the books—not just the big ones. A bad risk—whether it's $5 or $5000—is a mistake. You're an expert credit man—but as a MANAGER, you're a WASHOUT.
"This," he added, "is the way you ought to set up your department. Then you, the best man on decisions, will do all the deciding. Your two assistants, who are just as good as you are at digging, will spend all their time getting you the facts." And as he spoke he sketched in the lower chart.
The credit man had erred in the other direction from the two retail merchants. He wasn't doingenoughmanaging. He waskeeping too much work for himself. And he wasdeputizing the wrong kind of work.
The merchants were deputizing work they should have done themselves—the general supervision of stocks, advertising and sales did not require their undivided attention—and the volume and profits of the business wouldn't stand so much unproductive expense.
Our credit man, on the other hand, was doing work which others could very well do for him—the time he spent on such work should have been devoted to other and more important responsibilities.
In the story of the credit man, however, another fundamental of good organization comes to light. Remember how the treasurer classified the character of the work to be done? Not only was the credit man trying to do too much work, but even when hedidassign work to his assistants, he assigned the wrong kind. He deputized, true enough—but he erred in regard to the KIND OF WORK HE DEPUTIZED. Hethought he could deputize small credits. It didn't take the treasurer long to show him that the amount made no difference—it was the character of the work that required consideration.
Plenty of managers make that same mistake. They judge the importance of the task by its physical bigness—or by the amount of money involved—instead of deciding according to the character of the work.
Before work can be safely deputized, then, it must be MORE INTELLIGENTLY CLASSIFIED. And the key to better classification is found by dividing the job or business into two elements.
One is ENTERPRISE. The other is ROUTINE.
Enterpriseis an arbitrary term which we shall choose to indicate those factors of work which involve the use of judgment, initiative, experiment or speculation.
Routinewe shall apply to those factors which follow settled precedents or rules orcome within the range of known ability to perform.
Analyze your own job with these two terms in mind. The various duties you perform will fall readily into one or the other of the two classifications.
The things which come under the head of routine you have a right to deputize if, when you chart both classifications—in as accurate a proportion as possible to the capacities of the "principal" and the "deputies"—you find you are not overloading the business with unproductive management. A simple rule of thumb works here about as well as anything: Base the division of work on how much or how little of the routine theprincipalcan afford to carry.
You may safely deputize only so long as, by so doing, you leave yourself free for the more important, more profitable decisions.
Don't forget for a moment, then—if youwould organize effectively—that there is a tremendous difference between enterprise and routine work. Don't waste energy on the one. DON'T DEPUTIZE THE OTHER—unless you can effectively organize a deputy's capacity for doing it, and then only if it pays.
Don't be like the manager who got a taste of the savings to be made through the application of mechanical handling equipment. He bought conveyors—and more conveyors. He was DEPUTIZING the handling job to machines. So far, so good. But the first thing you know he had a 50-ft. conveyor connecting two points in his shipping room. It took one man to load it, another to unload it. Previously one man with a hand truck had moved the packages very nicely, and had a lot of time left over for other duties. And here he needed an extra man—and owned a costly piece of equipment to boot. Under such circumstances the conveyor became very expensive scenery—not nearly so nice to look atas Yellowstone Park or the Riviera—and the money invested in it would have bought a trip to either.
Thus all savings through deputization don't pay. Many a machine will save time and labor, but the interest on the investment, and upkeep and the depreciation will more than eat up the saving—UNLESS THE TIME AND LABOR SAVED CAN BE PROFITABLY TURNED TO SOMETHING ELSE.
No attempted exposition of the KNACK OF ORGANIZING can be complete without something more than passing mention of a phase which may be all too easily slid over or completed.
When work is deputized, the responsibility of the manager does not end with the act of deputization. It is the manager's responsibility to see that the work is done in the simplest and most effective manner.
A sales executive had allowed a bunch ofcall reports to accumulate. There were several hundred of them. So he called in a stenographer whose time was hanging fairly heavily on her hands, and asked her to put them into alphabetical order preparatory to filing.
Fifteen minutes later he happened by and was startled to see that she had covered two desks with the call reports and seemed to be making haste very slowly indeed.
She had made a pile for every last letter in the alphabet. And every time she picked up a report, she had to hunt for the proper pile to put it in.
So he showed her how to sort first in five major piles—A, B, C, D in one pile and so on. And then to sort each pile again into five piles, one for each letter—and finally to sort each individual pile alphabetically.
It sounded like more handling. And perhaps it was. But the job of classification was greatly simplified. There was no morehunting for the missing pile. The work proceeded quickly and accurately.
A rough illustration. He might have gone a step further and deputized part of the girl's task to a machine instead of to the primitive system described. That is to say, he might have seen that she was provided with one of the preliminary filing baskets which file clerks often use. Then the task of sorting alphabetically could have been done in a single handling of each report.
But whatever the method he made available for the girl's use, the illustration still serves to indicate that the manager's responsibility does not end when he turns a job over to a subordinate. It remains his care to see that the job is done by the most effective method—not necessarily the speediest, but the one which gets the best results for the effort involved.
To find this "one best" method, industry has evolved a complete technique of time and motion study. And merely to hint atwhat may be accomplished by breaking down an operation into its elementary operations and observing the time required to perform them, becomes part of our task in setting down the ways and means of organizing.
First we shall find that any job, simple or complex, may be divided into three parts: make ready, do and put away.
Shaving, for example. First we get everything ready—razor, brush, shaving cream, hot water. Then comes the actual operation of shaving. And last, cleaning up—rinsing the brush, wiping the razor, and putting things back where they belong.
Perhaps you're in the same boat as the old farmer who, approached by the subscription salesman of an agricultural magazine, allowed he wa'nt farmin' now half as good as he knew how.
Or perhaps you already hold speed records at giving your face the once-over. But, you see, the whole point in studying the job is not aimed at faster shaving, butat simplifying the "make ready" and "put away" phases of the operation.
For example, the next time you shave, try picking up the tube of shaving cream with one hand and unscrewing the cap while you're wetting your brush with the other. It will be awkward as the dickens the first time you try it. But try it again and again and again. It won't be long before you'll be an expert at doing the job that way. Finish up that part of the operation by screwing the cap back on while you are lathering your face with the right hand. Does it require a stop watch to point out the saving in time that you've made? Oh, it won't be easy the first few times, but before you know it, you'll have taught yourself good work habits.
Take a simple job like the assembly of a license bracket in an automobile factory. An analysis of this operation (see "Micromotion Technique," by F. J. Van Poppelen,Factory and Industrial Management, Nov., 1930) showed that the right hand was busyall the time, while the left did nothing most of the time except hold the piece.
At the risk of getting too technical—for after all we are interested, not so much in the details, as in certain broad principles of organizing the work—let us see how the operation was performed.
First the operator assembled a number of screws and leather washers by picking up a screw with the left hand, a washer with the right, putting them together and laying the assembly aside. Then he picked up a bracket with the left hand and a screw and washer assembly with the right, placing the screw through a slot in the bracket—continuing to hold assembled pieces in his left hand while the right was picking up a flat washer and assembling it to the screw; picking up lock washer, assembling it to the screw; picking up acorn nut and starting it on the screw; and finally picking up an open-end wrench and tightening the nut. Then he assembled screw, washers and nut to the other side of the bracket,whereupon wrench and bracket were laid aside, completing the cycle.
An analysis of these motions, by right and left hands, is given in the table onpage 120. It illustrates the important point that the right hand was busy all the time, but for a considerable part of the time the left was doing nothing but holding the piece.
On pages118and119are shown drawings of the old and the new assembly methods. Likewise, the lower table onpage 120analyzes, by right and left hands, the motions required by the new method. Note first that fewer elements—17 as against 26—are required. And note that both hands are productively employed with shorter distances to travel for stock and with decreased effort.