Part 4

"I found much of the delay was due to certain Victorian notions about set-up time. The prevailing idea was to give an operator a good big job to minimize that item of expense.

"Sometimes the job was so big it took 60 days to run it through a single operation.

"Oh, me! oh, my! the inventories of finished goods that piled up. The tote boxes full of work in process that cluttered up the scenery.

"And the complaints from customers who were waiting for orders!

"Funny thing about our business, you can't get a customer to accept a couple of 1/4-in. taps in place of the 1/2-in. one he's ordered.

"So I had to revamp the whole shooting match. First on the program was to find out what was made and what was making. Then we withdrew from the shop all work in process except what actually applied on orders in the house or what was needed to fill out our stock on an item on which we had no order, but on which past experience had taught us we'd get one in the course of the next 30 days.

"You should have seen the pile of tote boxes we stuck under the boilers.

"Well, the next job was to figure out the most economical lots to send through the works. That figure was arrived at simply by choosing such a size that no single operation could possibly take more than a day. In a word, I made sure that every single lot would move every single day.

"Do you get the picture? A steady flow of manufacturing. No funnel. No poking around with sticks. Today there aren't any stock chasers. None is needed. Work reaches the stockroom on time. Orders are filled complete the same day they come in. Inventories are lower. Oh, heck, need I go on?"

No, he needn't. For already he has shown us how the motive force was applied at the right point to get results. Take this plan apart--or any other plan that really works--and you will see that it is built upon the FOUR ELEMENTS OF PLANNING.

They make the PLANNING wheels go round.

* * * * *

Now it's time to take your own job of planning to pieces and see if it, too, does not meet the test.

Here, again, as when the ANALYSIS was made, it helps to set things down on paper. In charting, you will find that by painstaking application of our four principles along the lines diagrammed in the figure on page 65, you can LAY OUT A WORKING PLAN depending for its approach to perfection only upon the amount of thought put into it, and upon the degree of accuracy with which the analysis of the job was made.

The chart you make may be only a guide to the complete plan. Some plans require details which utterly preclude any form of expression so simple as a chart. Other plans can be laid out on the actual chart shown.

In any event, the very attempt to put your plan into diagrammatic form will develop PRACTICABILITY AND ACCURACY OF ARRANGEMENT. The very necessity of having to indicate and to select the primary force back of your job or business; having to trace that force through the various activities necessary to completed work; and then having visibly and physically to concentrate all these activities at one point--those very acts which making a chart compels you to perform, enforce a mastery of the essential details of your business and a grasp of their relations which every manager should have.

Perhaps the plan you have isn't as hot as you think it is.

An office manager friend of ours was pretty proud of his system until one day he charted it.

His company was famous for the quality of work turned out. But the service it gave was wretched. Special instructions were often ignored. Delivery dates were overlooked. All that sort of thing.

The system looked good enough. The office manager said the mistakes were due to carelessness. And it looked as if he were right. So when something went wrong, the nearest employee got a handsome bawling out.

At last the sales force jumped on him with both feet. Too many promises had been broken.

So the office manager was forced to do something about it. And, quite by accident, made a chart of the ACTUAL PLAN OF WORK.

Hello, what was this? Half a dozen responsibilities were standing around absolutely unchaperoned, you might say. Someone might come along and pick them up, or then again----

For example, if a customer on the West Coast ordered a bill of goods, and then, while the order was in work, decided he wanted half the goods shipped by boat through the canal and the other half by fast freight, maybe he'd get his shipments that way and maybe he wouldn't. Under the prevailing "plan" that particular sort of job didn't fall inside any one man's bailiwick. No one man was responsible for seeing that such orders were executed. No "machinery" had therefore been provided for taking care of them.

That's only a sample of some of the duties which landed--in his diagrammatic representation of the actual plan of work--somewhere off the map. For all the action they got, they might as well have been painted ships upon a painted ocean.

Methods in general, you see, were pretty much all right. But there was no recognized initiative back of the plan. Activities were set in motion more or less spontaneously. As a result, certain parts of the business were left without managerial supervision.

Nothing is surer to expose such a condition than actually to chart a plan. In this instance, it was simple to recognize "following customers' instructions"--no matter when, why, or how they came--as the logical primary force. Then the whole trouble was taken care of by centering the responsibility upon the chief of the order department. From then on, all instructions regarding any order cleared through him.

Thus it will be seen that the idea back of charting a plan is not to get something you can work to as an ideal in carrying on a job, but rather to get a PRACTICAL FRAMEWORK on which the work can actually be done. Then it is at once evident whether the "clothes" of the business are hanging on the right limb or whether they have been hung up somewhere on the ground where, like as not, nobody will bother to pick them up.

Too often the plan turns out to be a "sketch."

The builder waits until the architect's first sketch has become a plan.

In business it's like that, too.

When finally you know, from ANALYSIS, _what you want to accomplish_, it is not difficult to plan the procedure if you start right and forget nothing. You start right if you take time to figure out the primary initiative. You forget nothing if you take the trouble to set things down in black and white.

And finding the motive force and figuring out where to hit with it, is nothing more nor less than charting the moves of the game until you find a succession of activities moving along without back-tracking, without duplication, without wasted effort or supervision.

Thus cultivating the KNACK OF PLANNING is a long step in the direction of becoming a good manager. If you were going to try to tell someone else how to cultivate the knack of planning, the story of the two men shaving in the Pullman washroom serves to illustrate the point.

Both men seemed to be in a hurry. The first hustled over to one of the wash basins, scrubbed his face and hands, dried them on a towel. Then he began to shave. That finished, he washed the lather from his face, dried himself again on another towel, and put away his razor. Next came his teeth. He brushed them, washed away the traces of tooth paste, and dried himself on a third towel.

All this time the other fellow was going through the same motions--but in a much different order.

He began with his teeth. After he had brushed them, he lathered his face. After he had shaved, a single wash was enough and a single towel did the drying job. He had finished his canteloupe and was well along with his eggs before his companion reached the diner. Number two didn't do a better job of brushing his teeth, of shaving, of washing. But he _did_ do a better job of PLANNING.

He started where each operation would lead directly and naturally into the next, performing each at the proper time.

After all, isn't that precisely what you do in planning any part of your business?

III

Organizing the Work

Remember Psmith and Pbrown? One could analyze, but didn't know what to do with his analysis after he got it. The other was an expert planner, but alas! his plans were never based upon the solid foundation of actual necessity. He planned to do something before he knew what had to be done.

Psmith and Pbrown, together, looked like a grand pair when we introduced them in the chapter on PLANNING. Now, after taking particular pains to give that impression, we shall have to break right down and confess in open meeting that they are but two numbers of the MANAGEMENT TEAM. Probinson is the third.

Probinson ORGANIZES THE WORK. Psmith may analyze to a fare-you-well; Pbrown may plan till he's blue in the face--their best efforts are as of nothing worth unless Probinson is on hand to organize the work of the business. For as surely as there is a knack of analyzing and a knack of planning, just so surely is there a knack of organizing the work.

Thus we approach the third phase of the job of managing.

So far we have seen how the successful manager starts from the top, working backward, to chart his job--and then, having found out what has to be done, builds his plan for doing it. Analysis and planning, however, will carry him just so far. Unless he acquires the knack of organization, he will never make a howling success of his job--he will fall just short of being an outstanding manager.

The office manager for an Eastern concern affords the needed illustration.

P. C.--those aren't his initials--knew office management from A to Izzard. First to arrive in the morning, last to leave at night, he had a tremendous capacity for hard labor. But he never seemed to make a hole in the pile of work on his desk. It grew no smaller fast. Why? Because he never, in all his years of managing, learned to arrange the division of his work. He never learned to deputize it. When his mind should have been free for the more or less important decisions which crop out now and then even in an office manager's life, it was all bound around in the necessity of performing some silly little routine job which any girl of moderate intelligence could have done.

His idea of organizing his job was to try to do everything himself. And within his physical limitations he was a valuable man to the company. But how much more he'd have been worth had he, at some time in his career, acquired the KNACK OF ORGANIZATION!

Don't jump to the conclusion, now, that the successful organizer is one who merely divides up his work and parcels it out among a flock of assistants. Don't think for a moment that it is nothing but deputization.

Effective organization is far more than that.

It is the distribution of work, according to its character or urgency, among the facilities at hand for doing it according to their capacities or cost. And it makes no difference whether those facilities happen to be men, money, or machines--or simply your own available time.

You deputize work when you use an adding machine instead of your head to total last month's sales--when you turn the job of packaging breakfast food over to an automatic machine--when you jot down in your notebook information which would otherwise tax your memory--when you telephone the purchasing agent instead of making your legs take you to his office--when, instead of using your own funds, you do something on borrowed capital.

Deputization may be any one of these just as easily as it may be asking your assistant to find out why So-and-so's order for boys' pants wasn't shipped on time, or making him responsible for working out a new prospect list.

* * * * *

The office manager of a shoe concern found, right after the war, that much of his day was spent telling dealers in Kalamazoo and Keokuk to be patient, please, and they'd get their shoes.

Those were the halcyon days, you'll remember, when salesmen went out twice a year and told their customers how many shoes or ships or sewing machines they could have--and when they could have them.

As a result, this particular shoe factory was loaded to the guards with orders. Orders were shipped when, as and if they struggled from cutting room to fitting room--and from then on down to the packing department.

Complaints were numerous. They weren't exactly complaints, either. Queries, rather. Where are my shoes? Can't you ship March 15 instead of April 1? And so on--until, as we started to say, the sales manager was spending a great part of his time dictating replies to his stenographer. And she didn't have time for any of her other duties.

Analysis proved that the letters were, in the main, of three types. Three letters were therefore prepared, and each day the sales manager went through the inquiries and indicated which letter should go to which customer. In that way the latter got a prompt and courteous reply, as well as certain vague information explaining why he'd have to wait another month for his shoes.

And he was moderately happy. Personal attention from the sales manager could have accomplished no more. Thus a certain part of an executive's and his stenographer's time was deputized to a system.

Could the sales manager have gone a step further and had his letter mimeographed, he would have been DEPUTIZING TO A MACHINE the same amount of his own and a much larger part of the stenographer's time. But, while the customers accepted plausible excuses in place of shoes, it is doubtful whether the cleverest imitation would have taken the place of a real typewritten letter.

With the manufacturer of a proprietary medicine, however, things are different. Women from every part of the country write in describing their ailments. It is not difficult to classify these letters into a dozen groups. And form letters, done in skillful imitation of real typing, do the trick quite nicely.

That is DEPUTIZING--just as it is DEPUTIZING when the "big boss" calls in his assistant and says: "You run this shebang from now on. I've got to see if I can't get the K. C. plant out of the red."

And it's DEPUTIZING when a manufacturer, forced to increase the size of his plant, goes to a real estate operator and gets him to buy a piece of land, put up a building and rent it to him at a certain figure, while he uses his own capital to equip and operate the new plant, because he can make 15 per cent, say, on his capital himself, whereas he has to pay out as rent only an amount equal to 8 per cent of what land, building, insurance, and so on, would tie up.

Fundamentally, then, DEPUTIZING is taking something away from the "principal" of the job or business and assigning it to a "deputy." Principal and deputy may be a manager and his stenographer, a department head and a filing system, or a corporation's capital and a bond issue.

The first stumbling step toward organization, therefore, is to RECOGNIZE and DEFINE the PRINCIPAL and the DEPUTIES in a given task.

A good manager, though, can't simply go and deputize every detail of his job. That might be nothing more than the trick of a lazy man.

Yet a rising young executive (on our list of casual acquaintances) has done exactly that. He has carried it to such a fine point that he is able to spend three afternoons a week with Col. Bogie. He is still rising, although some of us have abiding faith in the old adage that what goes up must come down. In other words, he's rising to a fall.

No, organizing is not deputizing in that sense of the word.

In EFFECTIVE ORGANIZING, it will be noted from the examples cited, work is deputized _only when the "principal" is left free to do something else more important or more profitable_.

The "big boss" didn't hand the plant over to his assistant until he knew his undivided attention was needed elsewhere--until he knew he could spend his time more profitably in another phase of the business.

Analyze the conditions under which the sales manager delegated part of his dictation to a system, and part of his stenographer's typing to a duplicating machine. You will see that the work deputized fulfilled two conditions:

It was work the system and the machine could do to advantage--

And work which he and his stenographer could do only at the expense of more important work.

Wherever there is delegation of responsibility in any true job of managing, the same two fundamentals will be seen.

Too often a manager says: "Never do anything your subordinate can do for you." But it is not good management when turning a job over to a subordinate leaves the manager idle and unproductive--with nothing on his mind except his hat.

The good manager, whatever may be his particular job of managing, follows two rules when he deputizes or distributes work to man, money or machine. Such work, he knows, should be:

1. Work which that other person or other thing can do to good advantage.

2. Work which the manager would do himself only at the expense of something more important.

Deputizing your work so that your days are free for golfing or yachting is far from the spirit of true organization. When a Schwab deputizes, another job profits by the increased time he is able to give to it. Every time he passes on a bit more responsibility, the whole enterprise profits through his greater freedom for the big sweep of the business. And when a manager fails because he has never learned to share responsibilities, we shudder at his folly--never stopping to think that the sole reason it was folly was because there was a bigger job for him to do. Deputizing his work would have left him free to exercise big, broad judgment in a way that only leisure and calmness could afford.

* * * * *

A few years ago, two young men went into business in a small Illinois town. They were honest, industrious, well liked. Austin was a born salesman; Black was a shrewd buyer. It looked like a good combination and the local banker gave them a line of credit.

One year went by. Two years. Austin and Black were just skinning by. A fair living was all they were getting out of the business. Volume--which was what they needed--was increasing, oh, so slowly.

A salesman came along about that time and told them some things they didn't know. A little more skill in watching the stock; cutting out lines which weren't paying; trimming purchases on slow-moving stocks; pushing specialties before they went bad on their hands--those were some of the methods which meant added profits.

It certainly looked like good business to hire another clerk so that the partners' time would be free for these new phases of the business.

The clerk was taken on--and things began to hum. Soon Austin and Black saw other steps they ought to take. More attention must be given to advertising. That meant another clerk. Next came a bookkeeper, an assistant bookkeeper.

Trade was increasing, you see, and net profits were increasing. Extra clerks were needed all right, but the proprietors went the whole hog and put on so many that they themselves no longer had to stand behind a counter. They were both badly bitten by the bug of supervision.

Finally the tide turned. It usually does.

And when Austin and Black went to the bank one day to get an extension of credit, the shrewd old retired farmer on the other side of the desk laid down the law.

They got the extension--but only on certain conditions.

The chief condition was that they do LESS MANAGING and MORE MERCHANDISING.

And that's what they are doing today.

There were two managers who organized their work, increased their profits. Up to a certain point, every time they deputized their work, it was an advantage, because it left them more time for better merchandising.

But they weren't ORGANIZING according to our TWO FUNDAMENTALS. Literally, they were _deputizing all the work that others could do_--and not confining the work deputized to _work they themselves could do only at the expense of something more important_.

How well the chart tells the story! The great big white piece of pie marked "IDLE" shows exactly where Austin and Black went wrong. The worst thing that ever happened to them was the day they went home from Chicago and tried to run their business the way they thought Mr. James W. Simpson runs his large retail emporium.

Somewhere along the line they tripped over the point of vanishing returns and kept right on going.

And thus we come to the Scylla and Charybdis of our job of ORGANIZING. Remember we are not interested in the mere knack of getting someone else to take over every last responsibility that can be borne by another. Perhaps that may be good management for a Schwab--in so far, at least, as it leaves his mind free for the exercise of the broad judgment we mentioned a while ago. Nor are we interested in the sheer industry and application involved in doing without assistance everything that can possibly be so done, although doing it may be equally good management for, say, a file clerk. Rather is our interest in the KNACK OF SENSING THE DIVIDING LINE between WORK to PERFORM and WORK to DEPUTIZE. It is that ability which is the mark of the successful manager.

* * * * *

Where is this DIVIDING LINE? How shall we know where to DEPUTIZE and when to PERFORM? What kind of work shall we turn over to subordinates? What shall we reserve for ourselves?

Again, whatever the job or business we are engaged in organizing, there are simple rules to follow.

But first an illustration which will help to make the point.

Consider the credit man for a large concern which sold machines on a monthly payment plan.

He was always in a jam with the sales department. It took too long, complained the sales manager, to get credit rulings. It was no fun to put a whole lot of work into selling the customer, only to have the order turned down by the house because of poor credit. Why couldn't the credit man give them a ruling before they attempted to close a sale? Sometimes it took so long to get an O.K. that the prospect got all cold and went somewhere else.

The treasurer of the company was drawn into the picture when the sales manager openly declared he'd "get" the credit man.

And it certainly looked as if the sales manager had a good case.

"But," protested the credit man, "I've made mighty few mistakes. As for delays--well, I don't know how I could work any harder."

"Maybe you work too hard," the treasurer ventured.

"Hm, if I didn't do what I do, I don't know who would."

"Hold on, now, let's get this thing straight. You're valuable to the company because of your long experience and good judgment on credits. When you have all the dope on a man, I'll bet my last dollar on your decision. The only mistakes you ever make are when you hurry your decisions.

"But--and here's the point--you aren't any better at digging out the facts than either of your two assistants. Yet here's what you do. You divide salesmen's requests for credit rulings into two groups. You take those that run over $500; your assistants get the others. Each of you does his own investigating and digging--and except in puzzling cases, you practically let your two men make their own decisions.

Myself Assistants $500 Up Under $500 Mercantile Reports Bank References Special Investigations "Briefing" Data Final Ruling Correspondence

$500 Up Under $500 { Mercantile Reports Assistants { Bank References { Special Investigations { "Briefing" Data

Myself { Final Ruling { Correspondence