There used to be a good old golden rule of thumb that was plenty good
enough for the good old rule-of-thumb days. It was: _If you would be
fair, treat all your men alike_.
As a matter of fact it wasn't a bad rule in those halcyon days for man
wanted then but little here below.
And he got it.
Those were the days when a certain plant of a certain electrical concern
was known affectionately among the employees as "Siberia."
With good reason, too, for it was the dreariest, bleakest place in
winter you can imagine. And a transfer to it was like nothing so much as
a sentence to Siberia.
Well, well, their plant today is as comfortable a place to work in as
you'll find anywhere in the country; that concern today sets a high
standard of employer-employee relationships; those same workers who,
thirty years ago, shivered at the bare thought of pulling on their pants
and trekking over the barren wastes to "Siberia," are today comfortably
retired on modest pensions which don't do a thing but help keep the wolf
from the door.
Yet the management, in those days beyond recall, would have shown you
that _all men were treated alike_.
Perhaps that was the trouble. Anyway, if you asked the management today
how to handle "help," dollars to doughnuts the answer would come closer
to being: To be fair, TREAT EVERY MAN DIFFERENTLY.
A suggestive statement--significant because it is indicative of
tremendous change in the relationships of capital and labor, of employer
and employee.
Fifteen years ago a lad graduated from an Eastern university. His folks
were poor but proud--as Mr. Alger used to say--but managed to see Phil
through. Phil had made a good record in school--and some good friends.
Through one of them he got a letter to Mr. H--, the head of an old
established firm of stockbrokers--and the letter got him a job.
The job paid $5 a week. Even in those days there wasn't much left over
after carfare and lunches had been deducted.
But Phil was "learning the bond business." He wouldn't be worth even $5
a week the first six months. After that, maybe.
He stuck. Graduated from "running the street" to a stool in the stock
clerk's cage. Came the New Year and Phil found an extra dollar in his
pay envelope. He asked the cashier if there wasn't some mistake. There
wasn't.
Two days later he got a job in a factory near his home at $12 a week.
Told Mr. H-- he was leaving. Was offered $15 to stay. Wouldn't.
Mr. H-- confessed later that he had let the most promising prospect in
years slip through his fingers. All--if you ask us--because it was a
fixed policy of the house to treat all alike.
For years it had been doing just exactly that. Each June it took on a
new crop of young men to "learn the business." Each young man got $5 a
week. No favorites. But nine out of every ten came from prosperous, even
wealthy families. That $5 bill was nothing in their young lives. Their
families were glad to have them work for nothing, for they were getting
an insight into the investment business--and some day, whether they
became bond salesmen or just plain manufacturers and solid bankers, that
knowledge would be worth its weight in gold.
Phil was the tenth man. Mr. H-- knew well enough that he couldn't get by
on $5 a week. _But there was the rule._ It couldn't be broken.
No, we can't wind up by telling how Phil did well in the pants factory,
married the boss's daughter and owns the business today. That would be
wandering far from the truth. He couldn't "see" the boss' daughter for
one thing--and besides the pants factory wasn't such a much.
No, you'll find Phil today doing a bang-up job in an Ohio plant. It says
"General Manager" on his door. And as far as he is concerned, it was the
best thing that ever happened when Mr. H-- treated him like all the
rest.
Mr. H--, though, is still taking them on, still paying them $5 a
week--or maybe it's $10--still treating them all alike. He gets a lot of
bright young fellows into the business. But every so often he passes up
a chance to get an exceptionally promising boy--because he is fair and
treats them all alike. What's a rule for, anyway, except to break?
Mr. H-- will never know that it's the _exception_ that proves the
rule--particularly when you are dealing with human values.
* * * * *
But more later of the newer viewpoint. For the moment we are talking
about handling the "help"--and making it sound as though it were solely
the problem of the big employer.
Not so. It is a problem with every one of you in business--unless you do
nothing but sit in one spot and do one job from nine to five, five
days--we hope--a week.
The editor who wants a manuscript typed; the salesman who must get long
distance; the man at the machine who has to get tools from the toolroom;
the errand boy with his bundle to carry--all have the same problem. To
all of them it is just as important in relation to their own scale of
things as it is to the manager of a business with ten or a hundred or a
thousand employees. It is the eternal problem of GETTING OTHERS TO
COOPERATE.
Some men are good at it; others are total failures.
Many a man on the bench or at the machine has the ability, knowledge
and experience which qualify him for a job as foreman or even
superintendent. But he can't hold down a foreman's job because he hasn't
the knack of getting hearty, whole-souled cooperation from others.
Foremen, too, have changed, you see. Today the successful foreman is
less often the hard-boiled driver, more often the student of his job, of
his men, of himself. He has learned that, _to be fair, he must treat
every man differently_.
Often we hear of Bill's losing his job as a mechanic, not because he
didn't know his job, not because he couldn't run every lathe in the
shop, but because he "couldn't get along" with the other men. And we
think, Poor Bill! it's too bad he's so quick-tempered.
Generally we blame it on "temperament." Yet some of the very best
handlers of men are the crabbiest, crankiest gents in seven states.
Others are as cold as steel. And like as not the warm-hearted, generous
man is a monumental failure at handling his "help."
No, when you check specific methods of handling people--methods which
are successful for the most part--something much more fundamental than
temperament will be found.
* * * * *
Mrs. Thompson was in charge of the information desk and switchboard in a
medium-sized New England factory. A well-bred Englishwoman in her late
thirties, the boss liked her for her pleasant voice over the phone, for
her unfailingly courteous treatment of visitors.
But if the boss liked her, almost no one else did. Salesmen particularly
complained of her crankiness and of the unsatisfactory service they
got. Young Bacon was an exception, though. He always got what he wanted.
One day the office manager asked him how on earth he did it.
Bacon thought he was being taken for a ride, but finally answered: "Why,
that's a cinch. I take Mrs. Thompson's job seriously."
Pressed for details, he supplied them.
"I never try to kid her. I never bawl her out. When I want a number I
treat her as though the switchboard were her own particular business and
I a customer. Just as if she had something to sell, and I something to
buy. When I ask for some special service, she gives it to me. Or she
tells me why she can't."
Afterwards the office manager took the trouble to look into the
situation. The switchboard job was a life saver to that woman of 38. She
needed the money in the first place. And besides the job gave her a
sense of responsibility. She was proud of her job, proud to know that
the men in the business depended upon her for certain important
services. She couldn't understand, then, when a salesman picked up his
telephone and barked a command at her as though she were a piece of
office furniture, or patronized her as if she were a child, or kidded
her as if she were a 20-year-old flapper. It made her cranky to be
treated like that. And when someone like Bacon came along with his
method of treating her work as a responsible piece of business, it put
her on her mettle.
The solution was obvious. The office manager talked Mrs. Thompson and
Mrs. Thompson's job over with the salesmen. It wasn't long before they
changed their tactics, with resultant improvement in the quality of the
telephone service they got.
Sounds like a case of knowing the foibles of the person involved,
doesn't it?
It's more than that.
Edna is a switchboard operator, too. She is pretty and agreeable. And
you couldn't blame the boys for liking to hang around.
No one thought much about that until some of the more serious-minded men
discovered they couldn't get a thing out of Edna. She was too busy
listening to Joe's latest exploit with one hand, and plugging Jack in
with the other. She played favorites in putting through long distance
calls, took advantage of the friendly feeling everyone had toward her.
The telephone service in that office just folded up and died. There
wasn't any.
The obvious remedy was to fire Edna. But the manager was a cagey old
codger. Beneath a rough exterior beat a heart of gold, and somehow he
felt that maybe it wasn't all Edna's fault. Why, blast it, she'd been
treated like a pretty, petulant girl. Why shouldn't she act like one?
A memo was the result. It announced the creation of a new department.
"Telephone Service" was its name--and Edna Blank was its head. It was
just as much a part of the business as the accounting department, or
any other.
He had sense enough to PUT DEFINITE RESPONSIBILITIES UPON EDNA'S
SHOULDERS. He did it not only to instill in her a sense of duty, but
also to impress her with his confidence in her ability to perform those
duties. Then, under the rose, he instructed the men to treat her just as
they treated the capable woman in charge of the accounting end of the
business. They did. And Edna rose to the occasion, took pride in her
work, discouraged the hangers-on, played no favorites in putting through
calls, and became as good an operator as ever you'd hope to see.
Now, then, scratch the surface and what do you find? Not that it was
simply a case of understanding Mrs. Thompson's and Edna's foibles. Not
at all. Mrs. Thompson stopped being cranky and became accommodating,
Edna dropped her irresponsible ways and became an alert, attentive
operator WHEN THEY GOT THE FEELING OUT OF THEIR WORK THAT THEY WERE
TRANSACTING BUSINESS FOR THEMSELVES.
And need we look for further proof of our postulate that TO BE FAIR, YOU
MUST TREAT ALL YOUR ASSISTANTS DIFFERENTLY? You must know them, know
yourself, if you would get whole-hearted cooperation. That is
fundamental in any attempt to acquire the KNACK OF HANDLING THE "HELP."
* * * * *
For there _is_ a KNACK of handling the help. It _can_ be acquired. This
we say despite the difficulty of analyzing the relations of one person
to another, despite the seeming impossibility of setting down a rule
which will work universally.
Take a man running a peanut stand, a hosiery mill, or a steel plant.
There are three things he wants for himself: (1) to build up and hold a
good trade; (2) to please his customers; (3) to get a fair profit.
Remember these three wants when you're dealing with your help.
Get your "help"--it may be the switchboard operator or it may be a
thousand automobile workmen--in the position of wanting those same three
things. The help's job is his "trade," you are his customer; and his
compensation is his profit.
When you do that, you have an employee or helper who is going to give
you the hearty cooperation you're looking for--just so long as you are a
good customer, and his compensation for helping you is a fair profit.
Next time you go into a store, try to keep that thought fixed in your
mind. Everyone working in a business, you see, is selling his
services--and when you use those services you are the buyer. Perhaps you
pay in money for the services rendered--perhaps you simply repay him by
making his day's work easier. In either event, treat your requests for
service as though you and he were transacting a business that is
mutually, but individually, profitable, and the cooperation which is
otherwise usually begrudged will be automatically forthcoming.
But that, you say, is PERSONALITY. Then how do you account for this?
A. is a big, breezy salesman. He busts into a hotel, calls the "greeter"
behind the desk by name, asks for 1209 "same as last time"--and gets all
kinds of real service from porters, bell-hops and waiters.
It looks as though it might be personality.
Yet right behind him walks B. He's a horse-faced bird who never
smiles--wiry, monosyllabic--asks brusquely for a $4 room--gets it. And
gets everything else he asks for--just as promptly as A. does.
No, it can't be personality. For there's C. and there's D. C. is A's
twin--and B. and D. were cast in the same mold. Their tips are no
smaller; their demands no more unreasonable. Yet C. gets the poorest
sample room in the house. And D's trunk is always the last one the
porter brings up.
These aren't exaggerated cases. Hotel men will tell you they happen
every day.
Why, then, did A. and B. rate such good service while their fellow
knights of the road got none? Because when A. and B. asked for
something, there was about the transaction a well-defined air of "you've
something you can do for me--I've something I want done--what say we
trade?" Whereas, when C. and D. came along, regardless of the personal
manners involved, there was created the atmosphere of a one-sided
business deal. C's breeziness had in it a touch of condescension, or D's
brusqueness was the brusqueness of assumed superiority.
Thus is it seen, when we forget all about personality and study effects,
that cooperation is gained by trading with the "help" according to the
"help's" business.
Trade with an elevator man as though running an elevator were his own
business--trade with the chief chemist as though the laboratory were his
store--and they'll trade with you and be eager to make a satisfactory
deal of it.
Under this fixed policy--or rule--the proper attitude to take towards
this or that class of "help" becomes a matter of automatic selection.
And that is how we begin to acquire the KNACK OF HANDLING THE HELP. Thus
do we step high, wide and handsome on our road to the KNACK OF MANAGING.
* * * * *
Now enters the business of COMPENSATION. There must be compensation in a
trade if all hands are to be satisfied.
Everyone is in business because he wants something. Everything that
will help him to get what he wants, he will like to do; everything that
hinders him, he will dislike to do.
When you get ready to "trade" with someone, therefore, consider what the
other man wants--that is, if you want to get the most help or
cooperation out of the transaction. Then consider what you can give in
return--balancing his wants.
+----------------------------------------------------------+
| +-------------+ +--------------+ |
| |What YOU Want| | What YOUR | |
| +-------------+ | "HELP" Wants | |
| \ /+--------------+ |
| +---------------------+ |
| |What You Can Give and| |
| |He Can Take That Will| |
| | Leave Both Parties | |
| | Satisfied | |
| +---------------------+ |
+----------------------------------------------------------+
There must be that balance in every satisfactory deal.
Examine the chart on this page. It will save a lot of paper and ink
because it shows diagrammatically what must happen if there are to be
satisfactory arrangements between you and your "help".
A word or two by way of interpretation may serve to show how it works
out.
When the "help" is in your employ, the compensation--what you can give
and he can take, leaving both parties satisfied--is his monthly pay
check or his weekly envelope. Or it is the rate of commission. And
bearing upon it are such things as local living conditions, and so on.
When the "help" is someone not in your direct employ, then the
compensation is regulated by the effect which performing the service you
require, has on the success of the "help's" regular day's work.
For the moment, let's us return to the messenger boy whom we left in
Chapter III just as he was about to deliver a message.
Or, at least, let's talk about another messenger boy whose task of
managing his job differs in no wise from the first's--or, for that
matter, from any other job of management.
This boy worked in a large Chicago building and his job was carting
light but bulky packages back and forth between his company's quarters
and its customers'. There were a dozen other boys, and most of them
complained of having trouble getting up and down in the elevators. It
seemed that the starter took delight in making the boys wait for the
freight elevator--even when there was plenty of room in the others.
But this particular boy--an impudent youngster with a "fresh" way about
him--had no trouble at all. So the office manager was anxious to know
"how come."
He posted himself where he could observe without being seen. And sure
enough, in came the fresh messenger boy with a bundle almost as big as
himself. Down he set it, favored the starter with an impudent military
salute and leaned nonchalantly up against the wall--well out of the
way.
"Hello, feller," said he breezily; "lemme know when there's room. And
don't keep me waiting too long, or I'll be out on my ear."
Picture the manager's astonishment when the starter replied:
"Git in here, then, and git in quick," and let him in the first car
going up.
Somewhere, somehow, that impudent youngster had struck a responsive
chord. Instinctively--or else because of past experience with elevator
starters--he had put the problem of that particular starter's service on
a business basis. He had put it in the starter's power to perform his
own work without trouble, and to feel at the same time that he was "a
man of affairs."
He was able to show his authority without taking it out on the boy.
Analyze this "trade" with the "compensation" chart in mind. Do you not
see the "balance" of interests? Do you not see the starter's feeling
that the service he rendered was his own business, that the boy was one
of his customers, that the avoidance of trouble was his compensation or
profit?
Is there not in this very unimportant transaction the BALANCE OF
INTERESTS suggested by our little chart?
At this stage of our approach to the KNACK OF MANAGEMENT, a ready
objection comes to mind. We are now dealing in human values and
relationships--and you can't chart them. Analysis, planning,
organization--certain rules may be set down which will enable one to
attain some degree of effectiveness in carrying them out.
But human nature? You can't deal with it by rule.
The objection is well founded. You can't chart human nature--but you
_can_ study the approaches to it and chart the laws that appeal to it.
Our chart on page 146 is based upon what successful managers have
learned about finding the wants of the human element when it works, and
is constructed to supply a method of supplying those wants with as much
productiveness and as little friction as possible.
When you buy a new car and "put it to work," your first care is to find
out its wants--how much you must give to get what it has to "sell"--what
parts need oil and grease and so on.
So, IF YOU WANT TO GET WORK OUT OF A HUMAN BEING, your best bet is to
find out what that human being needs and must get in return for the work
he performs or the service he gives.
Some men seem to be born with an instinct for finding this out. But if
you aren't built that way, there is no reason why you can't drill
yourself to the same end by deliberately studying each case.
* * * * *
See, for example, how a study of this sort gets the most out of men in a
large New England plant where modern management methods are making
serious inroads into the old rule-of-thumb ways of doing things.
This concern was confronted with the very serious problem of maintaining
a steady flow of product from one manufacturing department to another.
Because of the nature of the product, skids and power trucks had been
chosen as the equipment best suited for the job.
Skids and lift trucks are effective handling units. No argument about
that. Their introduction into any factory which has been using more
primitive handling methods should automatically cut costs. But they save
precious little time and money when they aren't working, or when they
are being worked uneconomically.
The problem, then, as this concern saw it, was how to be sure that Big
Ed hadn't shipped off for a quiet smoke far from the maddening crowd--or
that Little Joe wasn't arranging his work so that there'd be a handful
of skids left over at closing time--moves that called for overtime pay.
In other words, to get 100 per cent efficiency out of very efficient
handling equipment, the management realized that it must take out some
sort of insurance which would guarantee Little Joe's and Big Ed's and
all the other truckers' being engaged in gainful occupation eight
hours--count 'em--each and every day.
The best insurance seemed to be a central dispatching system. No need to
go into the details of its operation. Suffice it to say that it went a
long way toward directing the efforts of the truckers along gainful
lines. There came to be an orderliness which had never existed before.
When a foreman put in a call for a trucker, he knew that the move would
be made without unnecessary delay. In fact, orders were placed into the
truckers' hands within three minutes of the time the foreman picked up
his telephone to call the central dispatching department.
BUT--no attempt had been made to sell this system to the truckers. It
met with some little resistance, just as anything new does. And there
are ways, as who does not know, of beating any "game" designed to get
more work out of human beings.
So the management--after many a huddle over this particular
situation--decided upon a bonus plan.
And they set about selling it to the truckers--somewhat in the fashion
about to be narrated.
"See here, men," said the manager in effect, "I'm going to put this plan
right up to you and let you decide for yourselves. We've looked into it
carefully. You men average 30 moves a day. So we've chosen 40 moves as
the starting point. We're sure you can make 40 moves a day without
tearing your shirts--and from there on, you begin to collect. For the
next five trips you get a bonus of a nickel over and above your day
rate; for the next five trips your bonus is 6 cents; and so on.
"So, if a man makes 50 trips, his day's pay is not $4.50, but $5.05
because he has earned 55 cents in bonus. Do you get it?"
"Yeah, we get it all right, all right. We do twice as much work for 50
or 60 cents more a day. How come? Why don't we get paid extra for _all_
the moves we make over 30?"
"Because we're just like you. The company wants to make more money.
We've shown you how it can be done and we'll split pretty much 50-50.
But we won't give you all the extra profit any more than we'd think of
keeping it ourselves. Now think it over tonight and if you want to make
$5 or $5.50 a day instead of $4.50, come 'round in the morning and we'll
talk some more about it."
Came only the dawn.
The truckers were pretty sure that they were being had, although they
couldn't figure out just how. 'Tis ever thus when the old order yields
place to new.
There was nothing left to do but try a new tack. So the manager talked
to his fifteen or eighteen truckers again. And this time he proposed
taking two of them and putting them on the new plan. After a little
conversation to assure themselves that there was no skullduggery afoot,
the truckers consented. And Little Ed and Big Joe (sic!) were nominated.
Little Ed made 62 moves the very first day and was as fresh as a daisy
when the 5 o'clock whistle blew. Big Joe made 56 trips and looked none
the worse for it. Ed's bonus was $1.98; Joe's was $1.28. If you check
up, we're sure you'll find those figures are wrong. But cheer up, we
aren't nearly so much interested in the exact amounts of Ed's and Joe's
earning as we are in the ultimate results and in the principles
involved.
We may pass quickly over the former. Of course the men were convinced.
And Big Ed would have beaten any trucker to a gentle pulp who wouldn't
have been convinced. In a week's time, those truckers were making nearly
twice as many trips a day--and their earnings had increased by something
like 35 per cent.
If you don't believe it, look at the figure on page 158. See what
happened to production? Yes, that pretty dotted line--the one with the
big dip in it--marks labor costs per trip.
The manager, you see--and now we come to the principle involved--had
MADE HIS HELP SEE THAT THE BONUS PLAN AMOUNTED TO GIVING THEM WHAT THEY
WANTED. And of course, that was more pay. At the same time it got the
company what it wanted--more production.
[Illustration: CHART OF RECORDS OF DISPATCHING ELECTRIC TRUCKS
1922-1929]
Fundamentally, the manager's system was precisely like the messenger
boy's. And you can prove that in a trice by charting it on the same old
basis.
Try it. It won't take you more than a couple of minutes.
* * * * *
This might go on for a long, long time. Innumerable examples might be
introduced into this text to illustrate this balancing of wants and its
importance to the successful conduct of this business of MANAGING--to
illustrate that your own personal method of seeking cooperation or
service is more a matter of reason than innate ability to "size up the
other fellow."