Part 7

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 done promptly 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 ruther _work_--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, let _me_ whitewash 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 in wealth. 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 he _did_ see 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 wanted to 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.

V

Safeguarding the Business

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! these many 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 1/2 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? Stuff and 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 been there, 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: _Is_ the 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 5-1/2? 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 a score 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 office one 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 broken leg 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 of their 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, I must 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 of _my_ readers toward _their_ paper 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, picking and 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 increased _volume_.

"How does it affect my readers? That is my yardstick for measuring everything about my business. That is my guide to whether 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.

"I'll spend a week with my managing editor trying to figure out a way to get our afternoon editions on the street a few minutes earlier. It may involve some minor change in the pressroom running into only a few hundred dollars--but it does affect our permanent place in the sun. On the other hand, the managing editor can go ahead and spend $5000 of my good money on something that has nothing to do with our readers' interest, and all I'll do is okay the expenditure. He'll do the worrying this time."

* * * * *

You and I aren't interested in the way this publisher went about building up his newspaper. That is to say, we don't care anything about his female quartette who went around and sang the paper's praises. His methods were sound, of course, and merit attention. But our interest right now is in his division between the tasks he watched personally and the tasks he left his business manager or his managing editor to work out for themselves.

Strip off the publishing scenery--just as a moment ago we stripped off the individual characteristics of a totally different business--and you find that HIS DIVISION IS APPLICABLE NOT ONLY TO ANY BUSINESS, BUT TO ANY SINGLE JOB. Which means once more that that's the way the successful manager of a steel mill or of a peanut stand will divide the tasks which confront him from nine to five every day.