Part 2

Chapter 24,100 wordsPublic domain

How different the new owner's viewpoint! His brother-in-law, he found, was thoroughly competent. He'd simply got off on the wrong foot. In the kitchen and the storeroom, he was a good operator. But the new owner's place was "out front."

His job was to "get more customers, get them to spend more--and to give them such good food and service that they would come back and bring their friends."

He began by spending money. Took out the gas pipe at the entrance. Replaced it with a brass rail. Provided a small lounging room where customers could wait for their friends. Put in upholstered chairs so they could be comfortable while waiting. Put attractive uniforms on attractive serving girls.

There was an air of good taste about the place when he got through.

Then he changed the arrangement of the counters. But you know all about that--how the desserts came first so they would catch your eye before your tray was too heavily loaded with the heavier part of the meal. Staples which offered a small margin of profit were relegated to places in the rear. Dishes that made the best profit got the positions up front. Each day he offered a low-priced "special." Thus he planned to increase customers' purchases.

And the business began to grow.

That's all there is. There isn't any more. Today he doesn't own a chain of cafeterias extending into many cities and feeding many thousands of people every day at a good profit.

He's still a very successful ceramic manufacturer--and a cafeteria proprietor.

"I flew in the face of tradition," he says. "'First watch your kitchen' is the cry of the restaurant man. But I started with what I wanted--net profits--and WORKED BACKWARD to make conditions that would provide net profits.

"VOLUME OF BUSINESS had to come first. I had to get it before I could get a margin of profit.

"No doubt I could go out in the kitchen today and save some money. If I went to market myself, maybe I could save a cent a pound on my meats. But I can't give up my attention to the 'front' in order to watch the 'back.' As soon as I do that I'm going to be right back where I started."

It would sound like heresy, wouldn't it, if we hadn't sat in and watched him begin with his final objective and work back through the means which make the objective possible. Only by careful analysis would he have had courage enough to FOLLOW HIS PLAN THROUGH to its successful conclusion.

And here's the amusing sequel. Today, as he still dabbles at feeding people, he will admit that he's a better ceramic manufacturer as a result of his cafeteria experience. His pottery had always yielded a nice profit. When he sat down with his sheet of coordinate paper and analyzed it, he found his job of management differed not at all in its fundamentals.

His first job he found was "out front" getting more customers in. A better knowledge of markets, a better job of selling, a better product--those were the ways to get the customers in and make them come back for more.

And his need for a better product led him out into the plant where he found that tunnel kilns with exact temperature control would more than treble the production of the old periodic kilns--and would produce better ware.

But that's another story. The important thing, anyway, is not what he found had to be done in the cafeteria and in the pottery, but HOW he found it.

He took his business to pieces--BACKWARDS.

He began with the objective he wanted to get--MONEY. It was a simple matter to find that to get money from the business he had to get customers to come in and spend money; that to get customers to come in he must make his place look like a good place to come to; that to make his place look attractive he must spend money on equipment and thought on the arrangement and display of food.

And there he had his big job cut out for him, with the other jobs following along in natural sequence. It altered the whole METHOD OF MANAGEMENT.

How this METHOD OF MANAGEMENT is applied to your job is shown in the chart which follows. It's a skeleton of what the cafeteria man did.

Indeed, it's more than that. For it shows what every manager--whether he manages a steel mill, a punch-press department or a time-study job--must do if he is to get an honest-to-goodness PERSPECTIVE OF HIS WORK.

It can be done very simply. Just a sheet of paper ruled in small squares--you can buy it at any stationer's--on which to fill in the steps you must take in between what you have to do and what you seek to accomplish by it--and some careful thought as to just what your job is and why it is to be done, will develop a true ANALYSIS of your problems which will beat reams and reams of typewritten words.

Remember the words of the Chinese philosopher: "A picture is worth ten thousand words"--and reflect how clever these Chinese are!

The MEANS FOR ACCOMPLISHING the final objective may be many or few. You have seen the cafeteria-manager's problems on the chart on page 24. Now turn to page 35 and see what a file clerk does beside powder her nose from nine to five.

A bright young lady fresh out of high school went to work in an editorial office. There wasn't enough filing to do to keep her happy from nine to five, so she filled in with a bit of typing here and a trifle of routine clerical work there. Thursdays she hopped over to the neighboring bookstore and collected _Saturday Posts_ for the editors--now she'll have to do that on Tuesday. And Fridays she distributed _The New Yorkers_ to avid readers.

Filing, though, was her main job. When she first came, the managing editor said "Here it is" or words to that effect, and she went to work.

Those files had always been more or less of a sore point. An editor's mail is nothing if not voluminous. And every day Flossie the fascinating file clerk got a mass of data which she had to stick away. Her great trouble was finding it again after she'd stuck it away.

Often she couldn't find it. And pretty soon she discovered that she got the blame no matter what was missing--whether an important inquiry from Peter B. Stilb or the editor's pipe cleaners.

She couldn't do a thing about the pipe cleaners, but she made up her mind that since she was held responsible when a letter got lost, she would also have the responsibility of changing the filing system. The system, she felt sure, was to blame.

One day when she was "on her lunch" and the editors didn't need cigarettes from the corner drugstore, she sat down and made an ANALYSIS of her problem. Curiously enough, she started at the end and WORKED BACKWARDS.

She WORKED BACKWARDS, not because someone told her that was the right way to analyze her job, but probably because she was only a file clerk and no one ever told her anything.

"Why," she asked herself, "do I file these old papers anyway?"

"So I can find them again, quickly and surely, when they're wanted," seemed to be the only answer to that.

"What's the right way to file these letters and papers and data so I can find them quickly?" was her next question.

"Arrange them like words in the dictionary--ONE PLACE, and ONLY ONE PLACE, where each can be," was only common sense.

In the filing system which she had inherited, there were a dozen places for each set of data. There was a file on "Industries" with sub-files for "Automobiles" and all the rest; a file for data on "Railroads," with two or three sub-files. The file clerk had to use judgment and discretion in selecting the heading under which each letter or piece of data was filed. And she wasn't hired for judgment and discretion. Sometimes, too, the editors erred in their descriptions of the material they wanted.

One file, arranged alphabetically--ONE PLACE TO LOOK, regardless of the thing looked for--was the logical conclusion, viewed from the standpoint of _finding_.

The managing editor was horrified. Mix "railroads" with "public service," and "manufacturing" with "agriculture"?

"Why," asked the file clerk, looking back at her analysis, "why care how things are _kept_ so long as they can be _found_ quickly? When you send me for Camels, do you care, so long as you get them quickly, whether they're kept next to Chesterfields, or right beside the chewing gum? When the chief asks for data on 'C.P.R.' does he care, if he gets it right away, whether it was filed next to data on 'Coal' or beside facts about other railroads?"

"All right," objected the managing editor, "suppose someone asks for all the data we have on railroads?"

Not a bad question. It was from a _finding_ standpoint.

"Have a separate cross-index by classes," was the answer. "That is, under 'Railroads' have a card showing the name of every----"

"But look at the extra work."

Back to her ANALYSIS went the file clerk. "Why file at all, except to make it easy to find what we file? If we were to set up a system for _easiest filing_, we'd simply put everything in boxes just as it comes to us. Our main objective is to make information easy to _find_, and anything that increases the work of filing but lessens the work of finding, is profitable."

The result was a filing system that has made a great mass of data as accessible as the words in the dictionary. And it has taken the human equation out of the job. No longer does the file clerk have to stop and use her judgment as to where she shall file Mr. Stilb's letter. There is ONE PLACE AND JUST ONE PLACE.

And the basis of the plan was the simple process of ANALYZING--of starting with the final objective and WORKING BACKWARD--not forward from the work to be done.

In hundreds of business offices--in countless industrial plants--time, labor and money are being wasted today in outmoded methods which, like Topsy, "just grew." The manager who started them didn't stop to reason out first exactly what had to be done--or if he did, he failed to WORK BACKWARD from the final objective.

One way is as bad as the other.

In fact, it may even be better not to reason at all than fail to get to the very bottom and reason out the absolute right of what has to be done. At least it takes less time.

A sure way, incidentally, to avoid making mistakes in your analysis is to do it on paper. A professor of mathematics in one of the large universities always tells his students that no problem should be performed in the head that can be done on paper. "Make pencil and paper do as much as you can, for your brain has enough to do to supervise the work."

Until your mind is trained to the habit of QUICK, ACCURATE ANALYSIS, you'll find it helps to do the work on paper. Keep on hand a small supply of blank charts like the one on page 31, on which to sketch an analysis of new work or of important decisions. The constant performance of this detail will of itself train your mind to look at problems more analytically, and automatically to sift and classify them more logically.

Perhaps you can improve on the chart shown on page 31. Surely you can adapt it better to your own needs. But force yourself to some such method. It will help you to cultivate the instinct of SHREWD, RAPID ANALYSIS--and at the same time it cannot help giving you a KEENER, SURER INSIGHT into the particular problem, no matter how complex or how simple it may be.

Sometimes it is the apparently simple problems that need analysis most. For example----

Did you ever hear of a sales organization that didn't have a stenographic problem?

The New York office of a Western factory was no exception. The manager was broadminded--even liberal--with his salesmen. But when it came to stenographers, he was decidedly Scotch. Valuable men sat around the office mornings and evenings waiting for a chance to dictate to a staff of girls which was measured to fit the average load of the day, but not the rush load of the two hours a day when the salesmen were inside.

Dictating machines seemed to be the answer. The sales manager figured they would not only solve the dictation problem, but would further reduce stenographic costs.

They were installed. At the same time the stenographic force was cut to insure keeping all the girls busy all the day.

Good. The salesmen were able to dictate when they felt like it. But often the letters dictated were a day or two late in being transcribed.

Complaints increased. And the manager lost his temper: "What's the matter with this cursed letter-writing business?" he demanded. "Why the Sam Hill do we have typists and stenographers?"

Well, why? He calmed down a bit, seized a sheet of paper and mapped out his problem.

This is what he wrote:

1. Salesmen's letters are to save salesmen's time and to give prompt service to customers.

2. I don't begrudge half a day's time of a $20-a-day salesman to call on a customer. Then it's still profitable to waste half of the time of a $4-a-day stenographer in order to save a long trip for a salesman, or to get a quick answer to a question.

3. What we need is enough typists to transcribe every letter of every salesman promptly, even if part of them have to be idle half the day.

The increased use of sales letters, the greater freedom salesmen feel in their dictation, the number of selling details now promptly handled by mail without an expensive call--all are directly traceable to the manager's ANALYSIS which he made by using the final objective as a starting point.

He's a convert to the pencil and paper method. Sales problems are part of his daily exercise. He goes to the bottom of them instinctively. But any problems that arise concerning office work, he settles only after analyzing from front to back--on paper.

His method of charting his ANALYSIS differs in appearance from the chart on page 31, but it is identical in PRINCIPLE AND EFFECT. It works from final objective BACKWARD.

One more application of the same KNACK OF ANALYSIS--and we are done. It is that of an Ohio manufacturer who recently put up a new building.

Plans prepared by the architect called for four stories and a basement. When it came time to discuss arrangement of space, it was found that one department would have to go in the basement. There were objections from all sides.

The manufacturer ended up by taking the problem home with him to TAKE TO PIECES and put together again.

He began--fortunately--with the final objective. "What's this new building for?" Obviously, to provide more space for enlarged operations.

"How much space is needed?"

He went over the figures and plans and found the four main floors weren't enough.

"Then why not a fifth floor?"

As long as a bigger building was to be built, why not make it big enough? Why not another full story instead of a basement?

Why not, indeed! Come to find out, no one knew just why a basement had been considered. The old building had one, and apparently that was the only reason for proposing one for the new building. A full story would give all the general storage space of a basement and also give regular working quarters for the department crowded out of the four upper floors.

And when the architect was consulted, it was found that with the extras for excavation, waterproofing and the like, the cost of a basement was considerably more than the cost of another full story.

Yet, but for the manufacturer's analysis of the building problem from the point of final objective, the basement would have gone in--simply because NO ONE HAD STOPPED TO THINK, and think clearly and logically.

Logical thinking is a trait that can be cultivated. Every problem thought through by means of some such simple help as we have suggested, makes the mind more ready to tackle the next problem.

Some men's minds grow so keen by practising that sort of thinking that they AUTOMATICALLY TAKE THINGS TO PIECES as they listen. Before you finish talking to them, they have already analyzed your statement and are planning on its execution--or are ready to reject it. Sometimes it's intuition. But rarely. Usually, it is nothing more than cultivated KNACK.

Cultivate ACCURACY first. SPEED OF ANALYSIS will come of itself.

_Don't start until you know exactly where you're going._

There is no task so trifling, no business so large, that its management does not need to ANALYZE EXACTLY WHAT THERE IS TO DO.

Planning

In the preceding chapter we have been busily engaged in taking things to pieces. Now we've got to put them together again. Our house of blocks has been resolved into its component parts, not by aiming a swift kick at its midriff, but by starting at the top and working backwards. Now to REBUILD.

Our first care, at this stage of the game, is to remember that ANALYSIS IS NEVER AN END but simply the MEANS TO AN END.

The immediate end, this time, is to rearrange the pieces so that the job to be done can be done in the most effective way--the way that saves the most effort, the most time, the most money--the way which, in your business--and in _yours_ and YOURS--leads to NET PROFITS.

Again it should be emphasized that NET PROFIT, in any job of managing, is the ultimate goal.

Our danger, then, is that we may find ourselves down on the floor surrounded by our blocks--and with never a trace of a PLAN for rebuilding the house, and rebuilding it in the simplest, most economical way.

In short, we must be sure we are taking things to pieces, not for the sake of taking them to pieces, but purely and simply _to find out what has to be done_.

Like the golfer who played golf so much in order to keep fit for golf, we have here a good old-fashioned beneficent circle. ANALYSIS without a PLAN isn't worth a whoop in Hades. It's time kissed goodbye. Wasted effort. And, in like manner, a PLAN without an ANALYSIS isn't worth the paper it's typed on.

Psmith in your office is a great "planner". He always has something on the fire. But somehow or other he never quite puts things over. His plans don't get across. Why not? Oh, just because he doesn't bother to analyze his problem--because he sets out to _do_ what has to be done even before he _knows_ what has to be done. He doesn't base his plan upon an actual need.

Pbrown, on the other hand, is a keen analytical thinker. A student. He's a shark at taking things to pieces and finding out what has to be done. But when he's done that, he's all done. He lacks the initiative that starts things moving. He hasn't that divine spark of something or other that gets things done. A stick of dynamite wouldn't do a bit of good. He simply hasn't the knack of building a plan. He knows what has to be done. He doesn't know how to do it.

Psmith and Pbrown--or Pbrown and Psmith--would make a fast team. But Psmith without Pbrown's analytical ability, or Pbrown without Psmith's capacity for planning how to get things done, isn't worth his weight in gold to _any_ business enterprise.

A manufacturer friend tells an amusing yarn about a Pbrown he hired as sales manager.

"He went around analyzing everything from soup to nuts--the gadgets in our line, our markets, our competition, our salesmen.

"He was an analyzer _de luxe_. And all I ever got out of all his analyses was a distinct feeling that something was wrong with every gadget we made, that our markets were saturated, that our competitors had us backed off the map, and that our salesmen were a bunch of ribbon clerks.

"So," he continues, "I did a little analyzing all my own. And analyzed him out of his job. Today he's managing a filling station where they drive in for the most part and take it away from him. But in his place I got a man who found out what was wrong with gadgets, markets, salesmen--and right away he built a plan which sold goods."

Thus the futility of ANALYSIS without PLANNING.

There's the danger, too, of getting away from the SIMPLICITY OF TRUE ANALYSIS.

A job undertaken by an advertising agency for a rubber manufacturer supplies a case in point. Stripped of all the details, the task was to find out whether or not the manufacturer might profitably engage in the making of hard rubber tires for industrial trucks and trailers. If names are changed and products substituted, think nothing of it. The principle's the thing.

The agency began by analyzing the business to a fare-you-well. Everyone and everything got cross-examined.

It took three months. And when the analysis was done it told the manufacturer everything from where the rubber grew to where the money went to and came from. The trouble was, he knew all that before--or as much of it as he wanted to know. The report, in the words of a Chicago columnist, was just "64 dam pages." It didn't tell him one blessed thing he wanted to know. Or rather it was so full of plunder that he couldn't make head nor tail of it.

It wasn't SIMPLE. And because it wasn't SIMPLE, it was a far, far cry from TRUE ANALYSIS.

Well, well, the rubber manufacturer went out in the byways and got him a young man who was told to find out, if he could, whether or not there was any market for hard rubber tires on gas and electric industrial trucks, tractors and trailers, and allied equipment.

He found, for example, that there were 40,000 trucks and tractors in service; that annual sales were about 3,200 units. He discovered that, of trailers and hand lift trucks, 125,000 each were in service; annual sales were 12,000 and 10,000 units respectively. But when he came to floor and hand trucks, conservative estimates showed 8,000,000 in use, while annual sales were in the neighborhood of 250,000!

Next he found out, as accurately as possible, how many hard rubber tires were sold as original equipment. The 3,200 trucks and tractors had 12,300 wheels. But 95 per cent of them were equipped with rubber tires at the factory. On the other hand, only 7 per cent of the floor and hand trucks were thus equipped!

Outside of the truck and tractor people, he found the equipment makers opposed to hard rubber tires. Let's not go into the reasons. Yet representative manufacturers in a dozen different lines stated, when he asked them: "All future equipment purchased by us will be equipped with rubber tires."

The whole report wasn't twelve pages long. And three tables, carefully compiled from available facts and figures, told the manufacturer everything he wanted to know.

In short, upon this SIMPLE ANALYSIS, he was able to build a plan for manufacturing and merchandising solid rubber tires. Much good, though, it would have done him had he done his planning first and then found out there weren't enough wheels to wear the tires after he had made them!

* * * * *

So much for our "beneficent circle." Let us look into this thing called PLANNING and find out if there isn't some way of developing a knack of planning which will help us over the second major hurdle in our road to managing.