Increasing Efficiency In Business - Walter Dill Scott (ebook reader browser .txt) 📗

CHAPTER XII

MAKING EXPERIENCE AN ASSET: JUDGMENT

FORMATION

 

WHY is it that of two men who are

working at the same desk or bench

the one acquires valuable experience

rapidly and the other slowly?

 

Why is it that of two houses each employing

a thousand men the one sees its employees

securing experiences that enhance their earning

capacity rapidly, but the other house is

compelled periodically to secure new blood by

importing men from rival firms?

 

Modern psychology teaches that experience

is not merely the best teacher but the only

possible teacher. All that any instructor can

do is to select and to provide the conditions

necessary for appropriate experiences and to

stimulate the learner to make the most of

them. The ignorant is changed into the learned

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by means of the utilization of profitable

experiences. By the same method the novice is

changed into the expert; the amateur into the

professional; the inefficient into the efficient;

and the errand boy into the manager.

 

One of the most important questions any

man can ask is this: What experience am I

actually getting from day to day and what experience

might my situation offer?

 

One of the most important questions the

employer of men can ask is this: How much

more efficient will my men be to-morrow because

of the experience of to-day? How

might their experience be changed or utilized

so that their efficiency might be increased

more rapidly?

 

In planning to secure permanent increase in

efficiency, whether for one’s self or for one’s

employees, we simplify our problem by considering

it under the two following subdivisions:—

 

What Experiences are Most Valuable?

 

How may these Most Valuable Experiences

be Secured and Utilized?

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Preparatory to the answering of these two

questions it will simplify matters to consider

the general conditions which affect the value

of experience.

 

GENERAL CONDITIONS GIVING VALUE TO

EXPERIENCE

 

1. Health and Vigor.

 

The mind and body are so intimately connected

that the value of an experience is seriously

affected by depletion or exhaustion of

the body. The experiences acquired when one

is fresh and vigorous are remembered; those

acquired when one is tired are forgotten. Most

college students find that lessons gotten in the

morning are better remembered and are more

readily applied than those learned after a day

of exhaustive work. We get most out of those

experiences secured when we are feeling the

most vigorous, whether the vigor be dependent

upon age, rest, or general health.

 

2. Experience is valuable proportionately as

we apply ourselves to the task on hand. By

intensity of application we not only accomplish

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more, but each unit of work contributes more

to our development. Under the stress of voluntary

and spontaneous attention, under the

stimulus of personal efficiencyideals, and under

such social demands as competition and imitation

we develop new methods of thought and

action which are thereupon adopted as the

methods for future action.

 

3. The value of an experience depends upon

what has been called the “personal attitude”

sustained during the experience. Three forms

of “personal attitudes” have been distinguished

and are designated as follows:—

 

(_a_) The submissive or suggestible attitude.

 

(_b_) The self-attentive attitude.

 

(_c_) The objective or the problem attitude.

 

(_a_) One is likely to be thrown into the submissive

attitude when a new situation arises

(a business problem), if one knows that he is

in the presence of others who could solve the

problem with relative ease or accuracy. In

such a situation the individual is hampered

in his thinking by the presence of those who

are more expert than he. His thinking is

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therefore futile for the present difficulty and is

devoid of educative value.

 

(_b_) The self-attentive attitude is similar

to the submissive attitude, but is not to be

confused with it. If when confronted with a

difficult problem my attack upon it is weakened

by the expectation of assistance from others, I

am in a submissive attitude. If, however, my

attack is weakened by my realization that I

am on trial,—that what I do with the problem

will be observed by others,—then I become

self-conscious and am thrown into the self-attentive attitude. If I am conscious that I

am being watched, it is quite difficult for me to

hit a golf ball, to add a column of figures, or

to deliver a lecture on psychology. So long

as I am self-attentive my efficiency is reduced;

I hit on no improved methods of thought or

action, and my experience therefore has no

permanent value.

 

(_c_) So soon as I can forget others and myself

and can take the objective, or the problem

attitude, the chances of efficient action are

greatly increased. I find it relatively easy

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to assume this attitude when I feel that I

stand on my own responsibility; that the

problem cannot possibly be referred to any

higher authority, but that the solution depends

upon me alone. My chances of solving the

problem would be much reduced, if it were proposed

to me at a time when I felt domineered

by a superior, or when I felt that he knew much

more about it and could settle it much more

easily and surely than I. If the problem demanded

previous experience and the possession

of knowledge which I did not possess, it would

be likely to make me self-conscious and hence

incapable of utilizing even the experience and

the knowledge that I do possess. Past success,

the possession of wide experience, and

technical instruction keep me from assuming

the self-attentive attitude and enable me to

take the problem or objective attitude. This

is the only attitude consistent with improved

form of thought or action, and hence is the

attitude essential for valuable experience.

 

4. That experience is the most valuable that

is acquired in dealing with conditions similar

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to those in connection with which improvement

is sought. Experience in woodchopping makes

one a better chopper but does not necessarily

increase his skill in sawing wood. Experience

in bookkeeping increases one’s ability in

that particular, but does not appreciably increase

his ability to handle men. Speed and

accuracy of judgment secured in inspecting one

sort of goods cannot be depended upon, if a

different sort of goods is to be inspected.

 

The experience secured in responding to one

situation will be valuable in responding to a

similar situation because of the three following

facts:—

 

(_a_) Two similar conditions may secure identical

factors in our activity. Thus school life

and the executive’s work secure such identical

activities as are involved in reading, in writing,

or in arithmetic, and so forth, whether accomplished

in the schoolroom or the office.

 

(_b_) The method developed in one experience

may be applied equally well to another activity.

In connection with a course in college, a

student may acquire a scientific method of

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procedure. At a later time he may (or he may

not) apply this same method to the problems

arising in his business or industrial life.

 

(_c_) Ideals developed in one experience may

be projected into other experiences. If the

ideals of promptness, neatness, accuracy, and

honesty are developed in one relationship of

life, the probabilities are somewhat increased

that the same ideals will be applied to all

experiences.

 

Provided that the four general conditions

discussed are secured, we then have the more

specific and important question to ask:—

 

WHAT EXPERIENCES ARE THE MOST VALUABLE?

 

Only those experiences are valuable that in

an appreciable degree modify future action.

One way in which an experience or a series of

experiences modifies future action is in the

formation of habits.

 

Habit Formation

 

Habit has a beneficial influence on future

action in five particulars:—

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(_a_) Habit reduces the necessary time of

action. Repeating the twenty-six letters of

the alphabet has become so habitual that I can

repeat them forward in two seconds. To repeat

them in any other than an habitual order,

e.g. backwards, requires sixty seconds.

 

(_b_) Habit increases accuracy. I can repeat

the alphabet forward without danger of error,

but when I try to repeat it backward I am

extremely likely to go astray.

 

(_c_) Habit reduces the attendant exhaustion.

Reading English is for me more habitual than

reading French. Hence the latter is the more

exhausting process.

 

(_d_) Habit relieves the mind from the necessity

of paying attention to the details of the

successive steps of the act. When piano

playing has been completely reduced to habit,

the finger movement, the reading of the notes,

etc., are all carried on successively with the

minimum of thought.

 

(_e_) Habit gives a permanency to experience.

For many years in playing tennis I served the

ball in a way that had become for me perfectly

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habitual. For an interval of three years I

played no tennis, but when I began again I

found that I could serve as well as ever. If

the manner of service had not been so perfectly

reduced to habit, I would have found

after an interval of three years that I was completely

out of practice, i.e. that my previous

experience did not have a permanent value.

 

(The subject of habit formation will be more

completely presented in Chapter XIII.)

 

A second form of experience that is capitalized

and so predetermines a man’s capacity to

act and to think is the formation of what is

known as practical judgments.

 

Practical judgments

 

By a practical judgment is meant the conscious

recall of a concrete past experience and

the determination of some action by means of

this consciously recalled event. I find that it

will be necessary for me to secure a new stenographer.

I solve the problem by consciously

recalling how I got one before. Upon the

basis of that consciously recalled previous

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experience I decide how to act now. This is a

practical judgment.

 

In strictness what is capitalized is not the

practical judgment itself but the original

concrete experience that is recalled at a later

time, and upon the basis of which a practical

judgment is formed.

 

Practical judgments cannot be more

comprehensive than one’s previous experience.

The necessary condition for fertility in the

formations of practical judgments is therefore

richness of previous experience. Indeed one’s

practical judgments are much more restricted

than one’s actual experiences. A practical judgment

is dependent not merely upon having had

the necessary experience, but upon the recall

of it at the appropriate occasion. The key to a

side door of my house was temporarily lost.

After trying scores of keys, I found that a key

to a room in the attic would also open the side

door. This side-door key was again carried

off last week. After much vexation and after

trying numerous keys, I again discovered that

the key to the room in the attic would open the

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side door. I failed to make the necessary

practical judgment. If when the key was lost

the second time I had recalled my former experience

and had taken advantage of it, I would

have formed a practical judgment and would

have saved myself much inconvenience.

 

The formation of practical judgments is not

a high form of thought. Indeed it