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.
There is, we shall find, a single problem with which the planner, the
constructive manager, deals. Again, it doesn't make a particle of
difference whether it's Mr. Schwab and Bethlehem Steel or Tonio and his
peanut stand. No business is so "different" that the principles of
management fail to apply.
All right, then. The problem of every planner is first to determine what
is the PRIMARY MOVING FORCE--the "initiative"--behind his job, and then
to find the EASIEST PLACE TO APPLY THAT FORCE in order to set up the
required MOTION or ACTIVITY with the LEAST AMOUNT OF EFFORT THAT WILL
GET THE BEST RESULTS.
A long sentence. Go over it again and you will find it is divided into
four distinct parts:
1. Deciding on the PRIMARY MOVING FORCE with which to set the wheels in
motion.