3. Directing this action along lines which either offer LEAST RESISTANCE
or assure GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENT.
4. Bringing the activities to a focus at the place or time that will
best carry the work to a SUCCESSFUL CONCLUSION.
The PRIMARY MOVING FORCE may be the selection of media in an advertising
plan; it may be the pushing of a button in the White House which opens a
dam in Arizona, a Century of Progress in Chicago, or the Annual
Convention of Whammit Manufacturers at Atlantic City; or it may be the
memo from the big boss which gives the research department _carte
blanche_ on a development project.
To apply this initiative to a place where it will get QUICK ACTION may
be to suggest an idea in the headline of an advertisement that will set
the reader to thinking of salmon fishing at Mooselookmeguntic, or of the
time the ice cubes gave out just when they shouldn't. Or it may be to
classify the output of a factory before shipping so that freight cars
can be packed to best advantage or so that lowest freight rates may be
secured. Or it may be a simple method of sorting mail so that
subordinates get the jobs they can handle and only the important
business is brought to the president's attention.
Directing this ACTIVITY along the lines that ASSURE GREATEST
ACCOMPLISHMENT may be--in the advertisement--the presentation of facts
or advantages which will persuade the reader that the fishing tackle you
manufacture is desirable. Again, it may be the dovetailing of a thousand
elements in a huge project like the Russian Five-Year Plan so that an
adequate supply of ore will be available when the blast furnaces roar
into operation; so that the steel will be on hand when production in the
Cheliabinsk tractor works is stepped up to meet the requirements of the
new agricultural regime. Or it may involve the simple sweeping of a
floor in a manner which raises a minimum of dust.
And bringing the activities to a SUCCESSFUL CONCLUSION may mean working
up the arguments of the advertisement to the psychological closing of a
sale--to the point where the ardent member of the Isaak Walton League
figures he can live no longer without your fishing tackle and sets out
gaily in the general direction of Abercrombie and Fitch's. Or it may be
coordinating the entire production of a factory so that the Diesel
generator set ordered by the Santa Fe can be delivered at the exact date
specified in the original order. Or it may be handling the day's
correspondence on the credit man's desk so that letters which must "make
the Century" are ready to go at 11:45--so that the rest of the day's
work is ready to sign, stamp and mail before the 5 o'clock whistle
blows.
FOUR ELEMENTS, then, in any job which is to be PLANNED. Every plan, if
practicable, will follow them.
There is, by way of further illustration, the story of the factory
manager of a food manufacturing plant who laid out a PLAN for an
operation no more intricate than the scrubbing of the floors at night.
Now it can be told.
And for two good reasons. First, because it was a practical plan which,
even on such a lowly operation, saved quite a bit of money. Second,
because in its construction the plan is, from the point of view of our
four elements, what has sometimes been called a "natural."
One night, it seems, the manager and his wife went to the movies. The
town didn't have daylight time, so it was quite dark. They passed the
plant, a large six-story building.
"Why, Ed!" exclaimed the wife, "you didn't tell me the factory was
working nights."
Ed, like most husbands, was in the habit of telling friend wife 'most
everything. For once he was at a loss. Sure enough, the lights were
going full tilt on all floors. Hitting on all six, you might say.
Then he laughed. It all came to him--"It's just the scrubwomen at
work."
One feature picture, one newsreel and one animated cartoon later, they
walked past the plant again.
"Look, the factory's still lit up," remarked the wife who turned off the
living room lights religiously when she went out to get supper ready.
This time Ed didn't laugh.
In days like these one doesn't. Not, at any rate, at the thought of
mounting electricity bills.
The very next evening he was on the job. Time somebody found out what
was what. In came the cleaners. They switched on the office lights--all
of them--and two of the crew went to work. A couple of others went up to
the second floor, switched on all the lights and pitched in with a vim.
And so _ad infinitum_--or at least to the sixth story.
And all the while the electric meter went round and round!
Twenty-four hours later the janitor had a new plan of work.
First the manager thought he'd start the whole crew at the top and work
down. On second thought, a better plan was born--like the goddess of
wisdom who sprang full grown from her papa's forehead. If I must go at
this cleaning job, he thought, I might just as well make a first-class
job of it and save not only on light, but on cleaners, too.
We shall pass lightly over that part of his plan which had to do with
releasing scrubwomen for other productive work, for in days like
these--or in any other day--we just can't figure out that sort of thing.
But goodness gracious, sometimes it's necessary.
The emphasis, then, shall be on the electric current saved. The plan
called for the entire crew's working together on one floor at a time--on
the well-founded theory, of course, that teamwork would accomplish more
in less time. Besides, since it was necessary to turn on all the lights
on the floor, why not get the full benefit from them by having the
entire gang at work?
So far, so good. The surprise comes when you learn that he didn't have
them start at the top and work down. He started them at the bottom and
worked them up.
"And I'll tell you why," explained the manager, "they have to climb six
floors anyway, so they might as well work up as walk up. Besides, by
leaving the stairs till the last, they can work their way down as well
as up."
In other words, they went to work right where they came in. And when
they had finished, they were right back where they started--back where
they went out on their way home.
Simple, isn't it? An immediate reduction in lighting bills was
noticeable. Even the amateur mathematician among you can figure that
with one floor out of six lighted at a time, five-sixths of the light
was saved. Besides, the work was done in less time--it wasn't long
before two cleaners were reading the want ads. But why go into that?
We aren't, for that matter, interested so much in the savings made,
because it is exceedingly doubtful if many of us pass our factories or
our offices on the way to the movies. We may never have an opportunity
to put this particular plan to work.
What we are interested in, though, is the fact that this cleaning plan
utilizes the four basic elements which we've said must be present in
every job of PLANNING.
Look at the chart. It shows the movement of energy in the manager's plan
for handling his crew. Starting the scrubbers on the ground floor--they
had to begin there anyway, no matter when they began to scrub--was
nothing but applying the primary force at the best point to get the
easiest action.
Working them up floor by floor was simply directing the activity along
both the lines of least resistance and greatest accomplishment. And
doing the stairs on the way down was just focusing the activity at the
right point for making a successful conclusion--that is, winding up the
job at the exit.
+------------------------------------+ +---------+
| | | Stairs |
| 6th Floor ------------- |
| /|\ | | | |
+--------------------------------|---+ | | |
| | | |
+--------------------------------|---+ | | |
| | | | | |
| 5th Floor | | | | |
| /|\ | | | |
+--------------------------------|---+ | | |
| | | |
+--------------------------------|---+ | | |
| | | | | |
| 4th Floor | | | | |
| /|\ | | | |
+--------------------------------|---+ | | |
| | | |
+--------------------------------|---+ | | |
| | | | | |
| 3rd Floor | | | | |
| /|\ | | | |
+--------------------------------|---+ | | |
| | | |
+--------------------------------|---+ | | |
| | | | | |
| 2nd Floor | | | | |
| /|\ | | | |
+--------------------------------|---+ | | |
| | | |
+--------------------------------|---+ | | |
| | | | | |
| Ground Floor | | | \|/ |
| /|\ | | |
+--------------------------------|---+ +---------+
|
+------------------------------+ |
| Application of Primary Force |--
+------------------------------+
Turn back now to the FOUR ELEMENTS OF SUCCESSFUL PLANNING as we set them
down on page 54. Try them out on any successful plan and assure yourself
that not a point has been stretched. By using them we shall learn the
constructive, creative KNACK OF PLANNING.
Stripped of the "clothes" which every plan wears--it's only in the
clothing that plans differ--this KNACK OF PLANNING may be quite simply
visualized by some such chart as the one shown on the opposite page.
There you see the PRIMARY FORCE--the INITIATIVE that sets the PLAN in
action. Second, the POINT OF APPLICATION--where you must hit if you're
going to win. Third, the various activities which bring about the
SUCCESSFUL CONCLUSION. And fourth, all these activities headed up at
the FOCUSING POINT.
It's just like the sailor off the whaler who picks up the wooden mallet,
hits the plunger a resounding crack, sends the weight hurtling up the
pole, rings the bell--and gets a good 5-cent cigar. Or like the golfer
who, putter in hand, strokes the ball firmly "in the direction of least
resistance and greatest accomplishment," sees it hit the back of the cup
and drop in for a par four.
|\
| \
| \
+--------------+ Various Activities | The \
| The "Primary | Point of Necessary to Bringing |"Focusing
| Moving Force"| Application about a Successful |Point"/
+--------------+ Conclusion | /
| /
|/
Watch these four essentials. Knowing them and using them continually
will enable you to break down every job of PLANNING into its component
parts--will enable you to develop that important side of your managing
faculties--whether your work is merely the carrying out of a job or
shouldering the responsibilities of a huge business.
* * * * *
Remember the production manager in the shoe factory? Rather sketchy was
the story of the ANALYSIS he made. Let's go a bit more into the details
of the PLAN which was based on the ANALYSIS. And, at the same time,
examine it to see if it checks with our FOUR ELEMENTS.
You remember he was hired to find out why the so-and-so shoes didn't
move out the door on time. And you'll remember that instead of clanking
up and down from one department to another, he was seen one day picking
out lasts from a bin in the assembly room. He had crept up quietly on
the POINT OF APPLICATION. The INITIATIVE, you see, or the PRIMARY MOVING
FORCE, was the boss's order to get shoes to moving.
Here (in the lasting room) was his POINT OF APPLICATION. The biggest
factor in slowing up shoes, he found, was failure to have lasts ready
the instant the uppers came down cut and stitched from the fitting room.
The shoes were entered into work with almost entire disregard of this
vital point. Oh, yes, they knew they once bought so many pairs of lasts
on this style or that in such and such sizes. And in a vague sort of way
they tried to regulate the number of pairs sent to the cutting room with
the number of lasts which they thought should be available the day the
shoes reached the assembly department where uppers, insoles, bottoms and
lasts met together--or should have.
A single missing size could hold up a 36-pair lot which included a run
of sizes all the way, say, from 7-1/2 to 12.
Today it's all so different. A running inventory is kept of every active
last. Each day the lasts which are released as shoes leave the finishing
room are added to the supply on hand; at the same time, the lasts which
are to be used that day in lasting incoming lots are subtracted.
A job? No, a good girl of moderate intelligence simply added it to a
dozen other office chores which she finds time to do daily.
The running inventory, you see, is one of the various activities which,
aimed at the focusing point--the moving of shoes out the door--are
necessary to bring about a successful conclusion--the successful
conclusion, in this particular instance, probably being the saving of
the young man's scalp--for the boss was certainly out to get it the day
he saw the young production manager pawing over the chunks of maple in
the lasting room.
Other activities might be mentioned. Plenty of them. An automatic
conveyor which brought back empty racks to the point where they were
needed. Semi-automatic elevators which made possible the rapid moving of
shoes from floor to floor. Twelve-pair lots which simplified the
handling problem, made the job of picking out lasts an easier one--and
all in all did much to take the weight off management's shoulders. All
these and more are the activities which were needed to bring about a
successful conclusion. They were all part of the PLAN.
Today, in that shoe factory, the production manager sits down for an
hour in the forenoon and an hour in the afternoon and schedules the next
half-day's work which will go to the cutting room. Two girls have been
moderately busy getting him the information he needs. Sales have been
brought up to date within half a day. He knows how many kid shoes he can
cut, how many calf. He knows which patterns can be cut by machine,
which must be cut by hand. He knows that certain patterns take longer to
go through the fitting room. There's extra stitching or fancy
perforations. He must lay off those. And last of all, he knows what he
can count on in the way of lasts when the shoes hit the lasting room.
With his two girls, the young production manager does all the work of
scheduling.
Actually, there isn't much work. Management, you see, has done an
awfully nice job of PLANNING.
* * * * *
Picture now the manufacturer of small electrical appliances who sought
to lay out new avenues of growth. His was pretty much a seasonal
business. Electric fans constituted most of his bread-and-butter
production. Early in the year and well on into the spring his plant ran
full blast getting out merchandise for sale during the warm, muggy days
when Sirius is in the ascendant.
And then along in the summer and fall his production curves went into a
serious decline.
To level them out would have meant carrying a load of finished inventory
which he could ill afford. Other appliances, such as hair curlers and
driers which might conceivably find a ready sale during the holiday
season, helped considerably--but not enough. The rough places were by no
means made plane.
Why not, thought he, a line of toys which would enable him to utilize
his present production set-up profitably during the slack summer and
fall? Why not, indeed?
So he set out to chart a plan of action beginning, as you will see from
the figure, with the furnishing of amusement as the PRIMARY FORCE. His
POINT OF ATTACK was through the 15,000,000 American boys who love to
build something. On he went to the various ways of getting parents
interested as the ACTIVITIES WHICH SHOULD LEAD TO A SUCCESSFUL
CONCLUSION--to the linking up of those activities with the retail store
as the job of FOCUSING THEM on the final achievement--SALES.
+---------------------------------+
|Wholesome Amusement and Education|
+---------------------------------+
|
\|/
+---------------------------------+
| 15 Million Boys Who Want to Play|
| and Love to Build |
+---------------------------------+
|
\|/
+---------------------------------+
| Bought for by 7,500,000 Parents |
+---------------------------------+
|
\|/
+-------------------+
| Can be Reached by |
+-------------------+
|
\|/
+---------------+---------------+---------------+
| | | |
+---------+ +-----------+ +----------+ +-----------+
|Magazines| | Attention | | Window | | |
|They Read| | Caught in | | Displays | | The Boy |
+---------+ | Stores | +----------+ | Himself |
| +-----------+ | | |
+---------+ | | +-----------+
| List of | +--------------+ +--------------+ |
|Magazines| |Description of| |Description of| |
|Carrying | |Demonstration | | Window Advg. | |
|Our Advg.| | Offer | | Offer | |
+---------+ +--------------+ +--------------+ |
\ | | |
\ | | +-------------------+
\ | | | |
\ | | +-------------+ +--------------+
\ | | |List of Boys'| |Description of|
\ | | |Papers Advsd.| |Prize Contest |
\ | | | In | +--------------+
\ | | +-------------+ /
\ | | | /
\ | | | /
+-------------------------------------------+
| All Leading to |
+-------------------------------------------+
|
\|/
+-------------------------------------------+
| The Store That Sells Our Toys |
+-------------------------------------------+
Only the bare headings on the plan are shown in the chart. Nevertheless
it shows clearly the same knack of using the FOUR ELEMENTS which we have
been at such pains to discuss.
The chart proved helpful, not only in guiding the management in its
efforts to enlarge the scope of manufacturing activities, but also in
giving the office and the sales force a true picture of the business. So
helpful, indeed, did it prove that it was blueprinted. And today every
salesman has one pasted in his selling portfolio. It's the first thing
the dealer sees. And it has gone far in arousing the latter's interest
and confidence.
If you were a dealer, would you buy from a factory that was run by
guess and by gob when you could give your business to a concern which
you knew was functioning in accordance with a sound, well-formulated
plan?
There, if you please, lies the answer.
* * * * *
It is not within the purpose of this chapter, incidentally, to play any
favorites. Time must be taken out at this point, therefore, to return to
the messenger boy who, when we left him, had just finished analyzing his
job.
Let's see now how his plan of action is based upon what the analysis
taught him. Let's examine this elementary job of managing, not because
it may make better messengers of us, but because the examination will
show how universal this thing called management is--because it will
afford one more proof of our general axiom that the principles of
management are ever the same, no matter what particular paraphernalia
of business may be used to cover up its old bones.
Did, then, the messenger boy work out his plan in accordance with our
FOUR BASIC ELEMENTS? He did, if he was really managing his job--and from
the careful analysis he made, we may assume he was.
If his trip meant riding a street car, then going to the cashier for
carfare is his primary force. If he can walk, then the primary force is
simply getting under way. Hastening as directly as possible to the car
line is applying the force at the easiest place to get results. Perhaps
he might have to choose between a slow street car which would carry him
right to his destination for seven cents, and a fast elevated which, for
a dime, would make better time but leave several blocks to walk at the
other end. Deciding between the two is directing the activities along
lines of greatest accomplishment. And getting his transfer, leaving the
car, and going straight to the address on the message, are nothing more
nor less than focusing his activities at the POINT OF ACHIEVEMENT.
You see? The Colonel's lady in her Parisian peignoir and Judy O'Grady in
her sleazy slip were sisters under the skin. So, if we may stretch a
physiological point, are our messenger boy and the man who made the
toys.
The plans of both were built on the same foundation.
Or take the plan by which the new general manager of a tap and die
concern rehabilitated his company's business.
"Why," he said, reaching for a pad of paper and roughly sketching
something that looked like a funnel and must have been because he said
it was, "our manufacturing plan looked about like this. Up here at the
top we poured in a lot of orders and hoped to high heaven some of them
would finally trickle through at the bottom.
"Some of them did drop through. Others dropped because we poked sticks
up the flue. That is to say, an army of stock chasers did their level
best to keep everyone happy.
"It was bedlam around the shop. It took three months on an average to
complete an order.
"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.