Increasing Efficiency In Business - Walter Dill Scott (ebook reader browser .txt) 📗
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among the veterans, but also among the newest
recruits for whom it realizes an illustration of
what true co<o:>peration means.
_Many Examples of the Loyalty of Executives for
their Men in Danger_
This double loyalty—to the chief and to
the organization—is not a plant of slow
growth. Few mine accidents or industrial
disasters occur without bringing to merited,
but fleeting, fame some heroic superintendent
or lesser boss who has risked his own life to
save his men or preserve the company’s
property. The same sense of responsibility
extends to every grade. Give a man the
least touch of authority and he seems to take
on added moral stature. The engineer who
clings to his throttle with collision imminent
has his counterparts in the “handy man”
<p 97>
who braves injury to slip a belt and save
another workman or a costly machine, and in
the elevator conductor who drives his car up
and down through flames and smoke to rescue
his fellows. Such efficiency and organization
spirit is the result of individual growth as well
as the impression of the employer’s personality
upon his machine.
_A Disloyal Sales Manager and his Influence on
his Force_
On the other hand, lack of loyalty on the
part of employers towards their men is almost
as common as failing devotion on the part of
workers. Too many assume that the mere
providing of work and the payment of wages
give them the right to absolute fidelity, even
when they take advantage of their men. The
sales manager concerned in the following incident
refused to believe that his attitude
towards his men had anything to do with the
lack of enthusiasm and low efficiency in his
force.
An experienced salesman who had lost his
<p 98>
position because of the San Francisco fire
applied to the sales manager for a position.
He was informed that there were fifteen applicants
for the Ohio territory, but that the
place would be given to him because of his
better record. The manager laid out an
initial territory in one corner and ordered the
salesman to work it first.
Working this territory, the salesman secured
substantial orders, but refrained from
“over-selling” any customer, gave considerable
time to missionary work and to cultivating
the acquaintance of buyers. His campaign
was planned less for immediate results
than for the future and for the effect on the
larger field of the state. Having no instructions
as to pushing his wider campaign, in
about sixty days he asked for instructions.
In answer he was ordered home and discharged
on the ground that business was dull and that
he had been a loss to the house. During the
sixty days he had been working on a losing
commission basis with the expectation of
taking his profits later. Investigation dis-
<p 99>
closed that he was but one of five salesmen to
whom the Ohio territory had been assigned
simultaneously. Of the five, one other also
had made good and had been retained because
he could be secured for less money.
This multiple try-out policy is entirely
fair when the applicants know the conditions.
But to lead each applicant to believe that he
has been engaged subject only to his ability
to make good is manifestly unjust. The facts
are bound to come out sooner or later and
create distrust among all employees of the
house. Loyalty is strictly reciprocal. If an
employee feels that he has no assurance of
fair treatment, his attitude towards the firm
is sure to be negative. Even the man who
secures the position will recognize the firm’s
lack of candor and will never give his employers
the full measure of co<o:>peration which produces
maximum efficiency.
The “square deal,” indeed, is the indispensable
basis of loyalty and efficiency in an
organization. The spirit as well as the letter
of the bargain must be observed, else the work-
<p 100>
men will contrive to even up matters by loafing,
by slighting the work, or by a minimum production.
This means a loss of possible daily
earnings. On the other hand, employees never
fail to recognize and in time respect the executive
who holds the balance of loyalty and justice
level between them and the business.
Fair wages, reasonable hours, working quarters
and conditions of average comfort and
healthfulness, ordinary precautions against
accidents, and continuous employment are
all now regarded as primary requirements
and are not sufficient to create loyalty in the
men. More than this must be done.
The chief executive should create such a
spirit that his officers shall turn to him for
help when in perplexity or difficulty. The
superintendent and officers or bosses should
sustain this same sympathetic relationship
toward their men that the executive has toward
his officers. A reputation for taking care of
his men is a thing to be sought in a chief
executive as well as in all underofficers.
Personal relationships should be cultivated.
<p 101>
In some large organizations the chief executive
may secure this personal touch with individuals
through an agent or through a department
known as the department of “promotion and
discharge,” “employment,” or “labor.” In
others, occasional meetings on a level of equality
may be brought about through house picnics,
entertainments, vacation camps, and so
on, where employer and employee meet each
other outside their usual business environment.
It is not worth while to attempt to develop
loyalty to the house until there has been
developed a loyalty to the personalities
representing the house. Loyalty in business is
in the main a reciprocal relationship. The
way to begin it is for the chief to be loyal to
his subordinates and to see to it that all officers
are loyal to their inferiors. When loyalty
from above has been secured, loyalty from the
ranks may readily be developed.
The personality of the worker must be
respected by the employer. “Giving a man
a chance” to develop himself, allowing him
<p 102>
to express his individuality, is the surest way
of enlisting the interest and loyalty of a
creative man.
To identify the interests of employees with
the interests of the house, various plans of
profit sharing, sale of stock to employees,
pensions, insurance against sickness and accident,
and so on, have been successfully applied
by many companies.
So far as possible, responsibility for the
success of the house should be assumed by
all employees. In some way the workmen
should feel that they are in partnership with
the executives. We easily develop loyalty
for the cause for which we have taken responsibility
or rendered a service.
_Creating Loyalty to Firm itself by Educational
Campaign_
A perpetual campaign of publicity should be
maintained for the benefit of every man in the
employ of the house. In this there should be
a truthful but emphatic presentation of acts
of loyalty on the part of either employers or
<p 103>
workmen. Everything connected with the
firm which has human interest should be included
in this history. This educational campaign
should change the loyalty to the *men
in the firm into loyalty to the *firm itself. It
should be an attempt to give the firm a personality,
and of such a noble character that it
would win the loyalty of the men. This could
be accomplished at little expense and with
great profit.
CONCENTRATION
AS A MEANS OF INCREASING HUMAN EFFICIENCY
THE owner of one of the largest and most
complex businesses in America handles
his day’s work on a schedule as exacting
as a railway time-table. In no other way
could he keep in touch with and administer
the manifold activities of his industry and a
score of allied interests—buying of the day’s
raw materials for a dozen plants in half as
many markets, direction of an organization
exceeding 20,000 men, selling and delivering
a multitude of products in a field as wide as
three continents, financing the whole tremendous
fabric.
Every department of his business, therefore,
has its hour or quarter hour in the daily program
when its big problems are considered
<p 104>
<p 105>
and settled on the tick of the clock. This
schedule is flexible, since no two days bring
from any division of production, distribution,
or financing the same demands upon the owner’s
attention. Yet each keeps its place and
comes invariably under his eye—through
reports and his own mastery of conditions
affecting the department.
_To secure the high personal efficiency required
for this oversight and methodical dispatch of
affairs, the owner-executive is not only protected
from outside interruptions and distractions, but is
also guarded against intrusion of the vital
elements of his business—both men and matters
—except at the moment most advantageous for
dealing with them_.
Analysis and organization have determined
these moments—just as they have eliminated
every non-essential in the things presented
for consideration and decision. Except when
emergencies arise there is no departure from
the rule: “One thing at a time—the big
thing—at the right time.” The task in hand
is never cheated, or allowed to cheat the next
<p 106>
in line. Management is as much a continuous
process, organized and wasteproof, as the
journey of raw materials through his plants.
This is an illustration of remarkable individual
efficiency attained by concentration
—the power of the human mind which seems
inseparable from any great achievement in
business, in politics, in the arts, in education.
Through it men of moderate capacities have
secured results apparently beyond the reach
of genius. And in no field has this power of
concentration been displayed more vividly by
leaders or been more generally lacking in the
rank and file than in business. Analysis of
the conditions may suggest the reason and the
remedy.
_The modern business man is exhausted no
more by his actual achievements than by the
things which he is compelled to resist doing_.
Appeals for his attention are ceaseless.
The roar of the street, the ring of telephone
bells, the din of typewriting machines, the
sight of a row of men waiting for an interview,
the muffled voices from neighboring offices or
<p 107>
workers, the plan for the day’s work which is
being delayed, the anxiety for the results for
certain endeavors, suspicion as to the loyalty
of employees—these and a score of other distractions
are constantly bombarding him.
Every appeal for attention demands expenditure
of energy—to ignore it and hold
the mind down to the business in hand. The
simple life with its single appeal is not for the
business man. For him life is complex and
strenuous. To overcome distractions and focus
his mind on one thing is a large part of his
task. If this single thing alone appealed to
his attention, the effort would be pleasing and
effective. It is not the work that is hard; the
strain comes in keeping other things at bay
while completing the pressing duty.
_He is exhausted, not because of his achievements,
but because of the expenditure of energy
in resisting distractions_.
He is inefficient, not through lack of industry,
but from lack of opportunity or of ability
to concentrate his energy upon the single task
at hand.
<p 108>
All sources of illumination—from the candle
to the sun—send out rays of light equally
in all directions. If illumination of only *one
point is desired, the loss is appalling. The rays
may be assembled, however, by reflectors and
lenses and so brought to bear in great force
at a single point.
This brilliancy is not secured by greater
expenditure of energy, but by utilizing the
rays which, except for the reflectors and lenses,
would be dissipated in other directions.
_As any source gives off equally in all directions,
so the human intellect seems designed to respond
to all forms and sorts of appeal
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