Analysis of this assembly job shows ...Analysis of this assembly job shows ...
... that the right hand was busy all the time....... that the right hand was busy all the time....
Comparison with the old methodComparison with the old method
... shows both hands productively employed....... shows both hands productively employed....
LEFT HANDRIGHT HAND1.Pick up screwPick up leather washer2.AssembleAssemble3.IdleLay aside4.Pick up bracketPick up screw and washer assembled5.Hold bracketAssemble6.""Pick up flat washer7.""Assemble8.""Pick up lock washer9.""Assemble10.""Pick up nut11.""Start on thread12.""Pick up wrench13.""Tighten nut14.""Lay wrench aside15.""Pick up screw and washer assembled16.""Assemble to other side of bracket17.""Pick up flat washer18.""Assemble19.""Pick up lock washer20.""Assemble21.""Pick up nut22.""Start on thread23.""Pick up wrench24.""Tighten nut25.""Lay wrench aside26.IdleLay bracket aside
LEFT HANDRIGHT HAND1.Pick up screw and transportSame2.Position on blockSame3.Pick up leather washer and transportSame4.Position on screwSame5.Pick up new bracket and transportPick up assembled bracket; lay aside6.Position bracket on blockSame7.Pick up flat washer and transportSame8.Position on screwSame9.Pick up lock washer and transportSame10.Position on screwSame11.Pick up nut and transportSame12.Start nut on screwSame13.Position driverSame14.Tighten nutSame15.Position driver to 2nd nutSame16.Tighten nutSame17.Release driver and move assembled bracket 2 in. forward on blockSame
The new set-up consists of a hardwood block, shaped to fit one side of the bracket when assembled, and nailed to the bench. The open-end wrench was replaced by a screw-driver with a socket wrench to fit theacorn nut, suspended on a spring in front of the operator. The miscellaneous containers for holding the small parts were replaced by a supply of sheet-metal duplicate trays, so that the various parts could be located in the most convenient position. (This arrangement was not used in the accompanying illustrations because it obscured the view.)
In a word, then, the number of elements was decreased by one-third—and practically all of the elements in the new method require less time than the similar or corresponding element in the old method. The distance of travel for stock has been shortened, parts are grasped more easily, better and faster tools are provided, effort is decreased, and both hands are productively employed.
Need the imagination be stretched to the breaking point to see how a job involving the work not of one man, but of several, may be similarly organized and similarly improved?
A second illustration will serve to show the application to group work (see "Motion Study Applied to Group Work," by J. A. Piacitelli,Factory and Industrial Management, April, 1931, page 626).
The operation studied here involved cycles of approximately eleven seconds' duration, performed by a group of seven men. The material handled consisted of rolls of roofing weighing about 50 lbs. each. Many of the elements in the cycle were obviously fatiguing. The rolls had to be lifted, during transfers from one worker to another, and rolled along a horizontal runway. The trucker lifted the completed roll and placed it on his truck. While the rate of production was limited by process and speed of equipment, the chance to cut cost and fatigue prompted the study.
Examine the equipment layout before the study was made (it is shown onpage 124), and follow the operation. A roll of roofing paper approximately 8 in. in diameter and 36 in. long was wound about themandrel of a winding machine by one of the workers. The roll was taken off and passed to another worker who wrapped a sheet of paper about it and pasted it in place. When the roll was wrapped, he had to lift the roll, turn and deposit it on the runway. The next man inserted a bag of nails, a can of cement and an instruction sheet into the core of the roll. To do this, he was forced to turn and bend almost to floor level to get his supplies.
Next the roll was passed along to two men who, from opposite sides of the runway, placed protectors and muslin caps on the ends of the roll. It was then rolled along to another man who placed gummed paper bands about the ends and pushed the roll to the end of the runway where the trucker placed it on a truck and wheeled it into storage.
The movie camera, which is gradually finding wider industrial use in the search for the "one best" method, was used to record the work of this group. It suppliednot only a photographic record of the working place and surrounding conditions, but also a simultaneous record of time and method employed by each worker regardless of speed. It was then possible to study overlapping cycles and to analyze the methods to the desired degree of accuracy—and thus to transfer parts of the cycle of one operator to that of another, thus effecting a better distribution of work and shortening the cycle of the person on whom the production of the group depends—thereby increasing the productivity of the entire group.
These analyses showed immediately an unequal distribution of work. Again, from the equipment layout made after the study, let us follow through and see what changes were effected.
First the wrapper was freed from turning and lifting the roll from his table by the introduction of an elevator which lifted the roll to an inclined runway. The roll then moved from place to place by gravity whenreleased by foot-operated trips. The pasting problem was solved by using a trough the length of the paper, open on the bottom and equipped with squeegee lips like the mucilage bottle on your desk. A pile of wrapping paper with the far edges of the sheets inserted under the trough supplied a pasted sheet every time one was drawn toward the operator. The trough was covered with a hinged plate which permitted the roll to pass over it to the elevator. It was found, by eliminating the fatiguing elements in this man's work and simplifying his cycle of motions, that the time would be so reduced that he could easily take over the work of the man who placed the cement and nails in the core of the roll. The instruction sheet was placed in the roll by the winder, who had ample time for this additional task. The pile of sheets was placed at his right under a date stamp so that he could date each sheet and slip it into the roll just before it stopped.
Simplifying the cycle of the men whoplaced the caps on the ends of the roll enabled them to take over with ease the work of the man who had placed the gummed-paper bands around the ends. Thus each man capped and banded his own end, whereas formerly the bander had had to assume an awkward and fatiguing position to reach the far end. And last, by placing a redesigned truck at the end of the incline, the completed rolls landed in the truck, and the trucker was able to care for two machines.
The method finally established was recorded on instruction sheets, and the existing premium was modified to provide additional incentive. Although, as stated at the outset, the rate of production was limited by the machine, substantial savings resulted from the study. Production has been maintained with 4½ men instead of 7; fatigue has been greatly lessened; cost has been reduced about 26 per cent; average earnings of the group have increased about 19 per cent.
Thus the search for the "one best" method becomes an important factor in organizing the work.
We might go on and show how this group work was organized in accordance with our two fundamentals, but the purpose of introducing this illustration and the one preceding it was, after all, to show that theprincipal'sresponsibility, after deputizing work, ends only when he has shown thedeputythe most effective method of doing it.
Besides, we must hasten on to the task of handling the "help." We have seen that the entire FABRIC OF MANAGING rests upon the knack of ORGANIZING; that organizing the work must be preceded by PLANNING; and that planning must be based upon ANALYSIS. And now, having organized, we must learn how to handle the "help"—which is a task met in every job involving managing.
And what job, big or small, does not involve MANAGING?
There used to be a good old golden rule of thumb that was plenty good enough for the good old rule-of-thumb days. It was:If you would be fair, treat all your men alike.
As a matter of fact it wasn't a bad rule in those halcyon days for man wanted then but little here below.
And he got it.
Those were the days when a certain plant of a certain electrical concern was known affectionately among the employees as "Siberia."
With good reason, too, for it was the dreariest, bleakest place in winter you can imagine. And a transfer to it was like nothing so much as a sentence to Siberia.
Well, well, their plant today is as comfortable a place to work in as you'll find anywhere in the country; that concern today sets a high standard of employer-employee relationships; those same workers who, thirty years ago, shivered at the bare thought of pulling on their pants and trekking over the barren wastes to "Siberia," are today comfortably retired on modest pensions which don't do a thing but help keep the wolf from the door.
Yet the management, in those days beyond recall, would have shown you thatall men were treated alike.
Perhaps that was the trouble. Anyway, if you asked the management today how to handle "help," dollars to doughnuts the answer would come closer to being: To be fair, TREAT EVERY MAN DIFFERENTLY.
A suggestive statement—significant because it is indicative of tremendous change in the relationships of capital and labor, of employer and employee.
Fifteen years ago a lad graduated from an Eastern university. His folks were poor but proud—as Mr. Alger used to say—but managed to see Phil through. Phil had made a good record in school—and some good friends. Through one of them he got a letter to Mr. H—, the head of an old established firm of stockbrokers—and the letter got him a job.
The job paid $5 a week. Even in those days there wasn't much left over after carfare and lunches had been deducted.
But Phil was "learning the bond business." He wouldn't be worth even $5 a week the first six months. After that, maybe.
He stuck. Graduated from "running the street" to a stool in the stock clerk's cage. Came the New Year and Phil found an extra dollar in his pay envelope. He asked the cashier if there wasn't some mistake. There wasn't.
Two days later he got a job in a factory near his home at $12 a week. Told Mr.H— he was leaving. Was offered $15 to stay. Wouldn't.
Mr. H— confessed later that he had let the most promising prospect in years slip through his fingers. All—if you ask us—because it was a fixed policy of the house to treat all alike.
For years it had been doing just exactly that. Each June it took on a new crop of young men to "learn the business." Each young man got $5 a week. No favorites. But nine out of every ten came from prosperous, even wealthy families. That $5 bill was nothing in their young lives. Their families were glad to have them work for nothing, for they were getting an insight into the investment business—and some day, whether they became bond salesmen or just plain manufacturers and solid bankers, that knowledge would be worth its weight in gold.
Phil was the tenth man. Mr. H— knew well enough that he couldn't get by on $5a week.But there was the rule.It couldn't be broken.
No, we can't wind up by telling how Phil did well in the pants factory, married the boss's daughter and owns the business today. That would be wandering far from the truth. He couldn't "see" the boss' daughter for one thing—and besides the pants factory wasn't such a much.
No, you'll find Phil today doing a bang-up job in an Ohio plant. It says "General Manager" on his door. And as far as he is concerned, it was the best thing that ever happened when Mr. H— treated him like all the rest.
Mr. H—, though, is still taking them on, still paying them $5 a week—or maybe it's $10—still treating them all alike. He gets a lot of bright young fellows into the business. But every so often he passes up a chance to get an exceptionally promising boy—because he is fair and treats them all alike. What's a rule for, anyway, exceptto break? Mr. H— will never know that it's theexceptionthat proves the rule—particularly when you are dealing with human values.
But more later of the newer viewpoint. For the moment we are talking about handling the "help"—and making it sound as though it were solely the problem of the big employer.
Not so. It is a problem with every one of you in business—unless you do nothing but sit in one spot and do one job from nine to five, five days—we hope—a week.
The editor who wants a manuscript typed; the salesman who must get long distance; the man at the machine who has to get tools from the toolroom; the errand boy with his bundle to carry—all have the same problem. To all of them it is just as important in relation to their own scale of things as it is to the manager of a business with ten or a hundred or a thousand employees. It is the eternal problem of GETTING OTHERS TO COOPERATE.
Some men are good at it; others are total failures.
Many a man on the bench or at the machine has the ability, knowledge and experience which qualify him for a job as foreman or even superintendent. But he can't hold down a foreman's job because he hasn't the knack of getting hearty, whole-souled cooperation from others.
Foremen, too, have changed, you see. Today the successful foreman is less often the hard-boiled driver, more often the student of his job, of his men, of himself. He has learned that,to be fair, he must treat every man differently.
Often we hear of Bill's losing his job as a mechanic, not because he didn't know his job, not because he couldn't run every lathe in the shop, but because he "couldn't get along" with the other men. And we think, Poor Bill! it's too bad he's so quick-tempered.
Generally we blame it on "temperament." Yet some of the very best handlers of men are the crabbiest, crankiest gents in seven states. Others are as cold as steel. And like as not the warm-hearted, generous man is a monumental failure at handling his "help."
No, when you check specific methods of handling people—methods which are successful for the most part—something much more fundamental than temperament will be found.
Mrs. Thompson was in charge of the information desk and switchboard in a medium-sized New England factory. A well-bred Englishwoman in her late thirties, the boss liked her for her pleasant voice over the phone, for her unfailingly courteous treatment of visitors.
But if the boss liked her, almost no one else did. Salesmen particularly complained of her crankiness and of the unsatisfactoryservice they got. Young Bacon was an exception, though. He always got what he wanted.
One day the office manager asked him how on earth he did it.
Bacon thought he was being taken for a ride, but finally answered: "Why, that's a cinch. I take Mrs. Thompson's job seriously."
Pressed for details, he supplied them.
"I never try to kid her. I never bawl her out. When I want a number I treat her as though the switchboard were her own particular business and I a customer. Just as if she had something to sell, and I something to buy. When I ask for some special service, she gives it to me. Or she tells me why she can't."
Afterwards the office manager took the trouble to look into the situation. The switchboard job was a life saver to that woman of 38. She needed the money in the first place. And besides the job gave her a sense of responsibility. She wasproud of her job, proud to know that the men in the business depended upon her for certain important services. She couldn't understand, then, when a salesman picked up his telephone and barked a command at her as though she were a piece of office furniture, or patronized her as if she were a child, or kidded her as if she were a 20-year-old flapper. It made her cranky to be treated like that. And when someone like Bacon came along with his method of treating her work as a responsible piece of business, it put her on her mettle.
The solution was obvious. The office manager talked Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Thompson's job over with the salesmen. It wasn't long before they changed their tactics, with resultant improvement in the quality of the telephone service they got.
Sounds like a case of knowing the foibles of the person involved, doesn't it?
It's more than that.
Edna is a switchboard operator, too. Sheis pretty and agreeable. And you couldn't blame the boys for liking to hang around.
No one thought much about that until some of the more serious-minded men discovered they couldn't get a thing out of Edna. She was too busy listening to Joe's latest exploit with one hand, and plugging Jack in with the other. She played favorites in putting through long distance calls, took advantage of the friendly feeling everyone had toward her. The telephone service in that office just folded up and died. There wasn't any.
The obvious remedy was to fire Edna. But the manager was a cagey old codger. Beneath a rough exterior beat a heart of gold, and somehow he felt that maybe it wasn't all Edna's fault. Why, blast it, she'd been treated like a pretty, petulant girl. Why shouldn't she act like one?
A memo was the result. It announced the creation of a new department. "Telephone Service" was its name—and Edna Blank was its head. It was just as mucha part of the business as the accounting department, or any other.
He had sense enough to PUT DEFINITE RESPONSIBILITIES UPON EDNA'S SHOULDERS. He did it not only to instill in her a sense of duty, but also to impress her with his confidence in her ability to perform those duties. Then, under the rose, he instructed the men to treat her just as they treated the capable woman in charge of the accounting end of the business. They did. And Edna rose to the occasion, took pride in her work, discouraged the hangers-on, played no favorites in putting through calls, and became as good an operator as ever you'd hope to see.
Now, then, scratch the surface and what do you find? Not that it was simply a case of understanding Mrs. Thompson's and Edna's foibles. Not at all. Mrs. Thompson stopped being cranky and became accommodating, Edna dropped her irresponsible ways and became an alert, attentive operator WHEN THEY GOT THE FEELING OUT OF THEIR WORK THAT THEY WERE TRANSACTING BUSINESS FOR THEMSELVES.
And need we look for further proof of our postulate that TO BE FAIR, YOU MUST TREAT ALL YOUR ASSISTANTS DIFFERENTLY? You must know them, know yourself, if you would get whole-hearted cooperation. That is fundamental in any attempt to acquire the KNACK OF HANDLING THE "HELP."
For thereisa KNACK of handling the help. Itcanbe acquired. This we say despite the difficulty of analyzing the relations of one person to another, despite the seeming impossibility of setting down a rule which will work universally.
Take a man running a peanut stand, a hosiery mill, or a steel plant. There are three things he wants for himself: (1) to build up and hold a good trade; (2) toplease his customers; (3) to get a fair profit.
Remember these three wants when you're dealing with your help.
Get your "help"—it may be the switchboard operator or it may be a thousand automobile workmen—in the position of wanting those same three things. The help's job is his "trade," you are his customer; and his compensation is his profit.
When you do that, you have an employee or helper who is going to give you the hearty cooperation you're looking for—just so long as you are a good customer, and his compensation for helping you is a fair profit.
Next time you go into a store, try to keep that thought fixed in your mind. Everyone working in a business, you see, is selling his services—and when you use those services you are the buyer. Perhaps you pay in money for the services rendered—perhaps you simply repay him by making his day's work easier. In either event, treat your requests for service as though you and he were transacting a business that is mutually, but individually, profitable, and the cooperation which is otherwise usually begrudged will be automatically forthcoming.
But that, you say, is PERSONALITY. Then how do you account for this?
A. is a big, breezy salesman. He busts into a hotel, calls the "greeter" behind the desk by name, asks for 1209 "same as last time"—and gets all kinds of real service from porters, bell-hops and waiters.
It looks as though it might be personality.
Yet right behind him walks B. He's a horse-faced bird who never smiles—wiry, monosyllabic—asks brusquely for a $4 room—gets it. And gets everything else he asks for—just as promptly as A. does.
No, it can't be personality. For there's C. and there's D. C. is A's twin—and B.and D. were cast in the same mold. Their tips are no smaller; their demands no more unreasonable. Yet C. gets the poorest sample room in the house. And D's trunk is always the last one the porter brings up.
These aren't exaggerated cases. Hotel men will tell you they happen every day.
Why, then, did A. and B. rate such good service while their fellow knights of the road got none? Because when A. and B. asked for something, there was about the transaction a well-defined air of "you've something you can do for me—I've something I want done—what say we trade?" Whereas, when C. and D. came along, regardless of the personal manners involved, there was created the atmosphere of a one-sided business deal. C's breeziness had in it a touch of condescension, or D's brusqueness was the brusqueness of assumed superiority.
Thus is it seen, when we forget all about personality and study effects, that cooperation is gained by trading with the "help" according to the "help's" business.
Trade with an elevator man as though running an elevator were his own business—trade with the chief chemist as though the laboratory were his store—and they'll trade with you and be eager to make a satisfactory deal of it.
Under this fixed policy—or rule—the proper attitude to take towards this or that class of "help" becomes a matter of automatic selection.
And that is how we begin to acquire the KNACK OF HANDLING THE HELP. Thus do we step high, wide and handsome on our road to the KNACK OF MANAGING.
Now enters the business of COMPENSATION. There must be compensation in a trade if all hands are to be satisfied.
Everyone is in business because he wantssomething. Everything that will help him to get what he wants, he will like to do; everything that hinders him, he will dislike to do.
When you get ready to "trade" with someone, therefore, consider what the other man wants—that is, if you want to get the most help or cooperation out of the transaction. Then consider what you can give in return—balancing his wants.
There must be that balance in every satisfactory deal.
Examine the chart on this page. It will save a lot of paper and ink because it shows diagrammatically what must happen ifthere are to be satisfactory arrangements between you and your "help".
A word or two by way of interpretation may serve to show how it works out.
When the "help" is in your employ, the compensation—what you can give and he can take, leaving both parties satisfied—is his monthly pay check or his weekly envelope. Or it is the rate of commission. And bearing upon it are such things as local living conditions, and so on. When the "help" is someone not in your direct employ, then the compensation is regulated by the effect which performing the service you require, has on the success of the "help's" regular day's work.
For the moment, let's us return to the messenger boy whom we left in Chapter III just as he was about to deliver a message.
Or, at least, let's talk about another messenger boy whose task of managing his job differs in no wise from the first's—or, forthat matter, from any other job of management.
This boy worked in a large Chicago building and his job was carting light but bulky packages back and forth between his company's quarters and its customers'. There were a dozen other boys, and most of them complained of having trouble getting up and down in the elevators. It seemed that the starter took delight in making the boys wait for the freight elevator—even when there was plenty of room in the others.
But this particular boy—an impudent youngster with a "fresh" way about him—had no trouble at all. So the office manager was anxious to know "how come."
He posted himself where he could observe without being seen. And sure enough, in came the fresh messenger boy with a bundle almost as big as himself. Down he set it, favored the starter with an impudent military salute and leanednonchalantly up against the wall—well out of the way.
"Hello, feller," said he breezily; "lemme know when there's room. And don't keep me waiting too long, or I'll be out on my ear."
Picture the manager's astonishment when the starter replied:
"Git in here, then, and git in quick," and let him in the first car going up.
Somewhere, somehow, that impudent youngster had struck a responsive chord. Instinctively—or else because of past experience with elevator starters—he had put the problem of that particular starter's service on a business basis. He had put it in the starter's power to perform his own work without trouble, and to feel at the same time that he was "a man of affairs."
He was able to show his authority without taking it out on the boy.
Analyze this "trade" with the "compensation" chart in mind. Do you not see the"balance" of interests? Do you not see the starter's feeling that the service he rendered was his own business, that the boy was one of his customers, that the avoidance of trouble was his compensation or profit?
Is there not in this very unimportant transaction the BALANCE OF INTERESTS suggested by our little chart?
At this stage of our approach to the KNACK OF MANAGEMENT, a ready objection comes to mind. We are now dealing in human values and relationships—and you can't chart them. Analysis, planning, organization—certain rules may be set down which will enable one to attain some degree of effectiveness in carrying them out.
But human nature? You can't deal with it by rule.
The objection is well founded. Youcan't chart human nature—but youcanstudy the approaches to it and chart the laws that appeal to it.
Our chart onpage 146is based upon what successful managers have learned about finding the wants of the human element when it works, and is constructed to supply a method of supplying those wants with as much productiveness and as little friction as possible.
When you buy a new car and "put it to work," your first care is to find out its wants—how much you must give to get what it has to "sell"—what parts need oil and grease and so on.
So, IF YOU WANT TO GET WORK OUT OF A HUMAN BEING, your best bet is to find out what that human being needs and must get in return for the work he performs or the service he gives.
Some men seem to be born with an instinct for finding this out. But if you aren't built that way, there is no reasonwhy you can't drill yourself to the same end by deliberately studying each case.
See, for example, how a study of this sort gets the most out of men in a large New England plant where modern management methods are making serious inroads into the old rule-of-thumb ways of doing things.
This concern was confronted with the very serious problem of maintaining a steady flow of product from one manufacturing department to another. Because of the nature of the product, skids and power trucks had been chosen as the equipment best suited for the job.
Skids and lift trucks are effective handling units. No argument about that. Their introduction into any factory which has been using more primitive handling methods should automatically cut costs. But they save precious little time and money when they aren't working, or when they are being worked uneconomically.
The problem, then, as this concern saw it, was how to be sure that Big Ed hadn't shipped off for a quiet smoke far from the maddening crowd—or that Little Joe wasn't arranging his work so that there'd be a handful of skids left over at closing time—moves that called for overtime pay.
In other words, to get 100 per cent efficiency out of very efficient handling equipment, the management realized that it must take out some sort of insurance which would guarantee Little Joe's and Big Ed's and all the other truckers' being engaged in gainful occupation eight hours—count 'em—each and every day.
The best insurance seemed to be a central dispatching system. No need to go into the details of its operation. Suffice it to say that it went a long way toward directing the efforts of the truckers along gainful lines. There came to be an orderliness which had never existed before. When a foreman put in a call for a trucker, he knew that the move would be madewithout unnecessary delay. In fact, orders were placed into the truckers' hands within three minutes of the time the foreman picked up his telephone to call the central dispatching department.
BUT—no attempt had been made to sell this system to the truckers. It met with some little resistance, just as anything new does. And there are ways, as who does not know, of beating any "game" designed to get more work out of human beings.
So the management—after many a huddle over this particular situation—decided upon a bonus plan.
And they set about selling it to the truckers—somewhat in the fashion about to be narrated.
"See here, men," said the manager in effect, "I'm going to put this plan right up to you and let you decide for yourselves. We've looked into it carefully. You men average 30 moves a day. So we've chosen 40 moves as the starting point. We're sure you can make 40 movesa day without tearing your shirts—and from there on, you begin to collect. For the next five trips you get a bonus of a nickel over and above your day rate; for the next five trips your bonus is 6 cents; and so on.
"So, if a man makes 50 trips, his day's pay is not $4.50, but $5.05 because he has earned 55 cents in bonus. Do you get it?"
"Yeah, we get it all right, all right. We do twice as much work for 50 or 60 cents more a day. How come? Why don't we get paid extra forallthe moves we make over 30?"
"Because we're just like you. The company wants to make more money. We've shown you how it can be done and we'll split pretty much 50-50. But we won't give you all the extra profit any more than we'd think of keeping it ourselves. Now think it over tonight and if you want to make $5 or $5.50 a day instead of $4.50, come 'round in the morning and we'll talk some more about it."
Came only the dawn.
The truckers were pretty sure that they were being had, although they couldn't figure out just how. 'Tis ever thus when the old order yields place to new.
There was nothing left to do but try a new tack. So the manager talked to his fifteen or eighteen truckers again. And this time he proposed taking two of them and putting them on the new plan. After a little conversation to assure themselves that there was no skullduggery afoot, the truckers consented. And Little Ed and Big Joe (sic!) were nominated.
Little Ed made 62 moves the very first day and was as fresh as a daisy when the 5 o'clock whistle blew. Big Joe made 56 trips and looked none the worse for it. Ed's bonus was $1.98; Joe's was $1.28. If you check up, we're sure you'll find those figures are wrong. But cheer up, we aren't nearly so much interested in the exact amounts of Ed's and Joe's earning as weare in the ultimate results and in the principles involved.
We may pass quickly over the former. Of course the men were convinced. And Big Ed would have beaten any trucker to a gentle pulp who wouldn't have been convinced. In a week's time, those truckers were making nearly twice as many trips a day—and their earnings had increased by something like 35 per cent.
If you don't believe it, look at the figure onpage 158. See what happened to production? Yes, that pretty dotted line—the one with the big dip in it—marks labor costs per trip.
The manager, you see—and now we come to the principle involved—had MADE HIS HELP SEE THAT THE BONUS PLAN AMOUNTED TO GIVING THEM WHAT THEY WANTED. And of course, that was more pay. At the same time it got the company what it wanted—more production.
CHART OF RECORDS OF DISPATCHING ELECTRIC TRUCKS 1922-1929CHART OF RECORDS OF DISPATCHING ELECTRIC TRUCKS1922-1929
Fundamentally, the manager's systemwas precisely like the messenger boy's. And you can prove that in a trice by charting it on the same old basis.
Try it. It won't take you more than a couple of minutes.
This might go on for a long, long time. Innumerable examples might be introduced into this text to illustrate this balancing of wants and its importance to the successful conduct of this business of MANAGING—to illustrate that your own personal method of seeking cooperation or service is more a matter of reason than innate ability to "size up the other fellow."
There is, in a word, method back of this "KNACK OF HANDLING THE HELP."
The method is this. Ask yourself each time this simple question: What does your "helper" want?
Does your stenographer want to leave promptly at five so she can get ready for an evening of whoopee? Or does she haveto catch a particular train in order not to find a cold supper waiting for her at home? Then why not fix things so she can work during the hours she is paid to work—and so she can leave at the hour when pay stops?
Can your truckers live in the style to which they are accustomed on $4.50 a day? Or will $5.50 enable them to put away a bit for a rainy season? Then why not arrange a wage payment method which will help them to do it?
And above all, tell them WHY.
To do such things is not philanthropy. Successful managers will tell you IT IS NOTHING MORE NOR LESS THAN GOOD BUSINESS. Strip from their methods the individual characteristics required by the individual conditions involved. What do you find? EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM IS BASED ON OUR PRIMARY RULE. That, you remember, is to find out what you want from your "help" and what your "help" wantsfrom you; then a way to make the two meet on a ground of mutual satisfaction—the compensation you can give and the compensation they can take—and BOTH OF YOU GET WHAT YOU WANT.
Don't you see, to grasp the real KNACK OF HANDLING "HELP," the necessity for making what you want from them balance with what they want from you? If there isn't that balance, there won't be whole-souled COOPERATION. To paraphrase what Henry Ford once said—or what one of his collaborators made him say: "See that each man in doing the best he can for you is also doing the best he can for himself."
Thus, by digging in and finding out what everybody involved in the situation wants, it is possible to get the utmost in cooperation and loyalty. Where one man does so instinctively, another gets equally good results by making a deliberate study along the lines we have pointed out.
Hundreds of jobs don't get donepromptly and enthusiastically for no other reason than that they aren't interesting. They can be made interesting if you get the right line on what your work requires, what your "help" wants, and then make a common meeting ground.
Mark Twain knew all about the KNACK OF MAKING WORK INTERESTING AND ATTRACTIVE.
Remember his description of Tom Sawyer's whitewashing the fence? Even if you do, it won't hurt to read it again.
Poor Tom. It was on a summer's morn just made for swimming or fishing—and he had to work.
Along comes Ben, one of his cronies. Tom begins to do some tall thinking. But let's not try to improve the original:
"He took up his brush and went tranquilly to work....
"Ben said: 'Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?'
"Tom wheeled suddenly and said: 'Why, it's you, Ben! I warn't noticing.'
"'Say—I'm going in a-swimming, I am. Don't you wish you could? But of course you'd rutherwork—wouldn't you? Course you would!'
"Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said: 'What do you call work?'
"'Why, ain't that work?'
"Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly: 'Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain't. All I know is, it suits Tom Sawyer.'
"'Oh come, now, you don't mean to let on you like it?'
"The brush continued to move.
"'Like it? Well, I don't see why I oughtn't to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?'
"That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth—stepped back to note the effect—added a touch here and there—criticized the effect again—Ben watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed.
"Presently he said: 'Say, Tom, letmewhitewash a little.'
"Tom considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind. 'No, no—I reckon it wouldn't hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly's awful particular about this fence—right here on the street—you know—but if it was the back fence I wouldn't mind and she wouldn't. Yes, she's awful particular about this fence; it's got to be done very careful; I reckon there ain't one boy in a thousand, mebbe two thousand, that can do it the way it's got to be done.'
"'No—is that so? Oh, come now—lemme just try. Only just a little—I'd let you, if you was me, Tom.'
"'Ben, I'd like to, honest Injun; but Aunt Polly—well, Jim wanted to do it, but she wouldn't let him; Sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn't let Sid. Now don't you see how I'm fixed? If you was to tackle this fence and anything was to happen to it——'
"'Oh, shucks, I'll be just as careful.Now lemme try. Say—I'll give you the core of my apple.'
"'Well, here—no, Ben, now don't. I'm afeard——'
"'I'll give you all of it!'
"Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart. And while the late Steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents. There was no lack of material; boys happened along every little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for a kite, in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to swing it with—and so on, and so on, hour after hour. And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling inwealth. He had, besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, part of a jew's-harp, a piece of blue bottle glass to look through, a spool cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six firecrackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass doorknob, a dog collar—but no dog—the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange peel and a dilapidated old window sash.
"He had a nice, good, idle time all the while—plenty of company—and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn't run out of whitewash, he would have bankrupted every boy in the village."
Mark Twain didn't have the worker on the modern assembly line in mind—nor the stenographer tapping her typewriter—but hedidsee that THE WORK MEN CAN DO BEST IS THE WORK THAT IS MADE ATTRACTIVE TO THEM—either through the money in it or the sheer success in doing it. Find out what's wantedto make your work attractive, then find out what you can give that will meet those wants. Then you get not only good work, but loyalty in it and enthusiasm for it.
But you can't fool your "help"—at least not for long. If you play upon the desire for responsibility, you must give it up to capacity. If it is promotion you hold out as a reward, you must give it when it is deserved. If you play upon the desire for good pay, you must give it as far as the job will allow.
And the nearer you come to giving all you can afford for the service received, in as nearly as possible the form that is wanted, whether in courtesy or in coin, in reasonable hours or in rapid advancement, in self-respect or in reciprocal service, THE MORE COOPERATION YOU MAY EXPECT.
Now for the last lap. Our journey has run four-fifths of its course. We have passed through the successive stages of analysis, planning, organization and handling the "help." They have all been child's play compared with the most important part of the manager's work—the task of GUARDING THE WELFARE OF A BUSINESS OR A JOB. All other managerial cares fade into insignificance before the necessity of conserving the general good of the business.
A business rises. A business falls. Its life must be protected. And, as has been said so often, "the bigger they are, the harder they fall."
A certain concern in New York State had been enjoying prosperity for lo! thesemany years. Established 'way back in the "Roaring Forties," it had passed through three generations of the same family.
Each morning at nine the president was at his desk opening the mail into three piles—taking great care that no checks fell into the waste basket—as might easily have happened had the task been delegated to the office manager or to his assistant.
It was unfortunate, of course, that no orders reached the stockroom until ten o'clock. But a president must earn his salt. Besides, is there a better way to keep one's finger on the pulse of the business than to know what's in the mail?
Let's take a look at those three piles, though. Here is the daily "take"—a fat pile of checks—with the big one from San Francisco laid carefully aside so that it can be admired a couple of extra times before being placed on the top of the heap.
Reverently the president carries the receipts to his head bookkeeper. With slow and majestic tread, almost.
And over here are the orders.
It's a fat pile, too.
The president casts one last lingering glance at the ½ doz. of something or other ordered by a famous name—and, secure in the knowledge that Fifth Avenue shoppers are still clamoring for his product, hands the sheaf to his office manager who has been pretty fidgety for the past hour and a half because he knows the stock department is going to have a heck of a time making the afternoon express.
Ho, hum! It's a busy life, this being the president of a successful concern doing over a million a year. Why, when grandfather started in, he didn't have a——
But that's another story, and there's that third pile.
A slim little pile scarcely demanding a president's attention—or a sales manager's. A few complaints. A retailer out in Butte. That San Antonio jobber Winchester had such a hard time landing. What's this? Didn't get the buttons he ordered? Stuffand nonsense—well, Henry will write nice, consoling letters and those will be those.
Now Henry is a good kid. Just out of school. Learning the business. Writes a bang-up letter.
But the San Antonio jobber doesn't want nice, consoling letters. He wants to know how come his pants came without the special buttons he ordered. And those special buttons are so important in his life that he has written to the head of the firm—whom he'd met at the Atlantic City convention—and he expects the head of the firm to tell him what he wants to know.
"Come, come," the president would have said to him, had he walked into the inner sanctum, "you know I can't give my time to such petty details—I've got department heads who attend to such matters. When you want an extra thirty days—or want to talk over handling our goods exclusively in the Southwest—why, those are the things for you and me to spend our time on."
But the San Antonio jobber, had he beenthere, and had he been asked, would have rejoined:
"I, too, have my department heads. I, too, leave many of the trivial details to them. But if a customer came to me with a complaint, I wouldn't care a rap what it was about. It wouldn't be that particular complaint which would interest me. It would be the mere fact that he had a complaint at all. A dissatisfied customer is a dissatisfied customer, and there isn't anything in my business that would get quicker and more personal attention from me."
Well, well, businesses come and businesses go. Our imaginary conversation will never take place between the president and the San Antonio jobber. The San Antonio jobber took his business elsewhere some five years ago. The president still comes in at nine and opens the mail. He never drops a check in the wastebasket. There are still three piles in front of him. Three slim piles. Even the pile of complaints is slim.There isn't enough business left to produce many complaints.
Henry? Oh, he got to writing letters to an heiress who was wintering on the Riviera. And when her daddy died, he wrote such a nice, consoling letter——
But we wander far afield. We're out in the rough somewhere, and it's going to take a real recovery to get us back on the fairway if we don't watch out.
For one thing and for instance:Isthe customer always right?
A one-time shoe salesman reports the following incident in a Chicago department store. He was talking with the head buyer in the middle of the sales floor when up marched a thoroughly angry woman with the shoe adjuster tagging on behind.
"These shoes," she pointed to a pair of satin pumps in the adjuster's hands, "are too small."
"And she wants a new pair after having worn them half a dozen times," added the adjuster.
"Who sold them?" asked the buyer.
"Jones."
"Go get him."
Came Jones. "But, madam," he protested, "don't you remember I warned you that you needed a 5½? And don't you remember that I also suggested an A instead of a double A? And when you felt certain you wanted the 5AA, didn't I suggest that you try them again at home before having the cut-steel buckles sewn on?"
Well, yes, that was all quite true. But it didn't offset the fact that the shoes were too small and she couldn't wear them.
Two guesses as to what she got. And if each guess is a satin pump you may step quickly and quietly to the head of the class. She got a new pair of shoes.
"Well," sighed the buyer, when peace and quiet had been once more restored, "they tell me upstairs the customer is always right. Certainly it's true that one dissatisfied woman has more effect on our business than four or five satisfied customers. Oh, no, she won't go and tell her friends about the fair treatment she got here, but oh, man, if we'd let her get away! What a story that would have been—in spite of admitting she was wrong!"
Innumerable examples of that sort of thing might be introduced. There is the story of the North Shore matron who had an expensive rug sent out, kept it three months and then decided she didn't like the color. In its place she wanted a certain oriental, but oh, dear, it was just a bit too big for her purpose.
Of course the rug was cut to fit. And when she decided a week later that it, too, wouldn't do and went and bought another rug somewhere else, the management thanked her kindly and credited her account with the full amount. It knew that the life of the business had to be protected, and every now and then found it distinctly worth while to take time out to LOOK AFTER THE WELFARE OF THE ENTERPRISE.
And here we face another question: "Must the manager occupy his time with every minor complaint, just because it happens to be one which comes from a good customer?"
To answer it, we must go back to our New York State manufacturer and strip the scenery from his particular enterprise.
His is a business of few customers. Except for a half-dozen famous retailers whose accounts cost more than they earn, but to whose stores he may point the finger of gesticulating pride as being among his outlets (it would be better for him if they were among his souvenirs), his business is handled through thirty or forty jobbers. Naturally each of his customers is a very important unit in the business.
The loss of one account is serious.
So a customer to him is an outlet for business greater than the trade a big department store gets from a hundred good customers. One customer to him is as ascore of customers to the manufacturer who sells to the retail trade.
To him, then, a complaint from a San Antonio jobber that the buttons on his pants aren't right has all the importance that the same complaint, echoed by a hundred different customers, would have to the retail merchant. Looked at in this light, is it not logical that any complaint—no matter how trifling its nature—should have his prompt, personal attention? Had he but known it, the letters he turned over to Henry were danger signals. They warned of the need for GUARDING THE WELFARE OF THE BUSINESS—LOOKING AFTER ITS GENERAL GOOD HEALTH.
And that task, as we have said, overshadows in importance every other task which the successful manager, in his daily business of managing, may have to perform.
The maintenance foreman in a New England mill walked into the agent's officeone day—why the manager of a mill is called an agent is just one of those things—and said:
"Something's got to be done about that freight elevator over in Building C, Mr. Dearle. I've monkeyed with it and monkeyed with it. It's just worn out, and one of these fine days, it's going to drop a couple of floors and pile up in the basement."
And one fine day it did. You see, the manager was all tied up in a labor controversy. Labor squabbles aren't any fun. And presumably their speedy settlement is far more important to the business than the matter of what to do about a tired freight elevator which has seen far better days.
So Frank the maintenance man had to run along and sell his papers. And the elevator kept on working.
The day it quit, Henry Fitts was aboard. And when the elevator man picked himself up off the cellar floor, Henry couldn't.
But why go into that? Henry's brokenleg and Henry's lost time cost the company more than a new elevator. And Henry was one of the company's best technical men. Lots of bum sheets and pillow cases got made and shipped and returned while Henry was laid up. The damage done by that falling elevator could hardly be measured in dollars.
Now, then, settling the differences of capital and labor was a big job to the mill agent. Saying "No" to Frank was merely postponing a trifling detail. Yet what a heap of difference a "Yes" would have made. That defective elevator, because it endangered lives, overshadowed all else in importance, had the agent viewed his job from the standpoint of CARING FOR THE BUSINESS. THE KNACK OF SAFEGUARDING ITS WELFARE lies not merely in doing tasks that preserve the safety of the business or job, but also in the ability to discern when such tasks are really mere trifles, and when, because oftheir potential effect, they are details vital to the life of the business.
How is a manager to know when he shall devote his entire attention to settling wage rates, and when listen to the maintenance man's song? How can the president of a million-dollar concern tell when it is good business to drop a tremendously important managerial task and listen to a customer's tale of woe about pants buttons—and personally set the complaint right?
How, on the other hand, are you to know when to lay off such tasks?
Some few men—seventh sons of seventh sons—may be born with that instinct or knowledge. The rest of us must cultivate a true knack of conserving the business—a knack which carries with it the finest sense of discrimination and the best of business judgment.
And not until we have acquired this important knack and added to it all the other knacks we've been talking about, can we consider ourselves successful managers.Not until then shall we have acquired THE TRUE KNACK OF MANAGING.
"I've learned how to pick out the tasks that are vital to the business and make them my own special responsibilities," a successful newspaper publisher once said, "by setting up a sort of yardstick to judge every job that comes along.
"My paper was in the 'red' when I bought it. It was a weak sister. It carried the least advertising, had the least circulation and exercised the least influence. Today its lineage is nearly one-third more than its nearest competitor's—and circulation has more than doubled in four years, so now it tops all the rest.
"I analyzed my job something like this: I bought the paper because I thought I could make money with it. To make money, I must carry a large volume of advertising. To get advertising, I must show results to advertisers. To show results, Imust make my paper a real "home" paper—a paper really read and appreciated—not merely a paper with which people are only satisfied. To get that kind of circulation, I must put into the paper what people who read a paper at home wouldn't 'miss for anything.'
"What did this analysis show me? Simply this: That while more advertising and more circulation meant more profits, the attitude ofmyreaders towardtheirpaper meant even more—it meant business life or death.
"So my yardstick is never to let anything get by me that might change our standing with our readers. The toughest business problem is shoved aside when something comes up that means loss of respect among our public.
"I made it my first business to get to know our type of reader. Never was a good hand at guessing. So had to learn about human nature.
"After a lot of hiring and firing, pickingand sorting, coaching and drilling, I got me four women who could go out and get exactly the kind of information I had to have.
"Each of the four took a section of the city. Each section represented a distinct type of home-dweller—and it takes all kinds of people to run a world, you know—or to buy a newspaper.
"Every week those four women canvassed close to a thousand homes between them. Their method was to tell the housewife that we were going to deliver our paper free for a week—and hoped they'd take it in and read it. A week later they went back over the same ground, soliciting subscriptions, of course, but also gathering information for me.
"More important than getting a subscription was finding out why a woman subscribed—or why she wouldn't subscribe. They asked what the women thought about certain special features.
"I got a lot of good pointers. For instance, I'd been a bitter opponent of the'funnies.' But I put them back when I learned that people really wanted them. You see, I was getting a good cross section of the likes and dislikes of all my customers and my prospects.
"After the 'funnies' were in—and after various other changes had been made—I sent my four scouts back once more to tell of the improvements. Then we checked the new reports with the old ones. There was plenty of deadwood. I knew there would be. But there was enough good live stuff to furnish food for thought.
"Some needed changes couldn't be made right away. Many people preferred a competing paper because it carried more department store ads. Well, I couldn't do anything about that for the moment. But I could and did improve the sports page, put in more home-stuff for the women, more society news, funnier 'funnies' and so on. Those were things our readers wanted which I could gradually give them.
"Then it was time to tackle the advertising problem. I had my ammunition. Carried a bunch of reports around with me. Told the merchants frankly what I was up to. Showed them the reports from women who said they'd subscribe if we had more advertising as well as the reports from those who did subscribe for certain good reasons.
"And I quoted a rate on what we were worth at the time, not on what I knew we could do in the future. I didn't begrudge a full day spent in one small store, if that small store advertised the stuff I felt was wanted by the people I wanted for readers.
"Well, they came 'round one by one—the stores and the people. And I think the results prove that I was keeping busy on the right tasks—the tasks on which the welfare of my business depends—and not on the tasks that mean only increasedvolume.
"How does it affect my readers? That is my yardstick for measuring everything about my business. That is my guide towhether or not I should worry. If a little error in last night's paper has the power to affect my readers' opinion of the paper, then it's my job to run it down to earth, find out how it happened—and see that it never happens again. But if there's a big advertising contract in the offing which won't affect the permanent standing of the paper in any way whatsoever—except to increase the number of dollars that come clinking into the coffers—I don't give thirty seconds of my time to it. I hire a sales manager to do that. That's his job. The other's mine.