Increasing Efficiency In Business by Walter Dill Scott (top 10 most read books in the world TXT) đź“–
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enthusiasm. His first few months’ achievement
as sales manager was due to the same
stimulus, but as the months went by the spur
of novelty became dulled. Lacking the discipline
which would have enabled him to
force voluntary attention and the resulting
interest in his tasks, he failed also to trace the
cause of his flagging invention and energy and
assumed that this was due to exhaustion of his
resources.
<p 240>
This is further borne out by his experience
in his present position. Addressing a succession
of new tasks, the interest of novelty has
stimulated him to an uncommon degree and
produced an unbroken record of high efficiency.
That this has continued over a considerable
period is partly due, beyond doubt, to the
sustained interest in his work excited by the
broadness of the field before him, the bigness
of the company, the size of the appropriation
at his disposal, the unusual experience of scoring
hit after hit by comparison with the
house’s low standards, the frank and prompt
appreciation of his superiors, and substantial
advances in salary.
It is only human to be more or less dependent
upon novelty. If I am to stir myself to continuous
and effective exertion, I must frequently
stimulate my interest by proposing new
problems and new aspects of my work. If
I am to help others to increase their efficiency,
I must devise new appeals to their interest and
new stimulations to action. If I have been
dependent upon competition as a stimulus
<p 241>
I must change the form of the contest—a
fact which receives daily recognition and
application by the most efficient sales organization
in the country. If I have been depending
upon the stimulating effect of wages,
there is profit occasionally in varying the
method of payment or in furnishing some new
concrete measure of the value of the wage. To
the average worker, for example, a check means
much less than the same amount in gold. In
deference to this common appreciation of
“cold cash,” various firms have lately abandoned
checks and pay in gold and banknotes,
even though this change means many hours
of extra work for the cashier.
_At every stage of our learning, progress is aided
by the utilization of old habits and old fragments
of knowledge_.
In learning to add, the schoolboy employs
his previous knowledge of numbers. In learning
to multiply he builds upon his acquaintance
with addition and subtraction. In solving
problems in percentage his success is
measured by the freedom with which he can
<p 242>
use the four fundamental processes of addition,
subtraction, Multiplication, and division. In
computing bank discount, his skill is based on
ability to employ his previous experience with
percentage and the fundamental processes of
arithmetic.
The advance here is typical of all learning
processes. In mastering the typewriter no
absolutely new movement is required. The
old familiar movements of arm and hand are
united in new combinations. The student has
previously learned the letters found in the copy
and can identify them upon the keys of the
typewriter. Scrutiny enables him to find any
particular key, and in the course of a few hours
be develops a certain awkward familiarity with
the keyboard and acquires some speed by
utilizing these familiar muscular movements
and available bits of knowledge. All these
prelearned movements and associations are
brought into service in the early stages of
improvement, and a degree of proficiency is
quickly attained which cannot be exceeded
so long as these prelearned habits and asso-
<p 243>
ciations alone are employed. Further advance
in speed and accuracy is dependent
upon combinations more difficult to make
because they involve organization of the old
and acquisition of new methods of thought or
movement. When such a difficulty is faced, a
plateau in the learning curve is almost inevitable.
The young man who enters upon the work
of a salesman can make immediate use of a
multitude of previous habits and previously
acquired bits of knowledge. He performs by
habit all the ordinary movements of the body;
by habit he speaks, reads, and writes. During
his previous experience he has acquired some
skill in judging people, in addressing them, and
in influencing them. His general information
and his practice in debate and conversation—
however crude—enable him to analyze his
selling proposition and unite these selling
points into an argument. He learns, too, to
avoid certain errors and to make use of certain
factors of his previous experience. Thus
his progress is rapid for a short time but soon
<p 244>
the stage is reached where his previous experience
offers no more factors which can be easily
brought to his service. In such an emergency
the novice may cease to advance—if indeed
there is not a positive retrogression.
Nor is this tendency to strike a plateau
confined to clerks in the office and to semi-skilled men in the factory. Often the limitations
of a new executive are brought out
sharply by his failure to handle a situation
much less difficult than scores which he has
already mastered and thereby built up a reputation
for unusual efficiency. His collapse,
when analyzed, can usually be traced to the
fact that his previous experience contained
nothing on which he could directly base a
decision. His prior efficiency was based on
empirical knowledge rather than on judgment
or ability to analyze problems.
The office manager of an important mercantile
house is a case in point. Though
young, he had served several companies in
the same capacity, making a distinct advance
at each change. He was a trained accountant,
<p 245>
a clever employment man, and a successful
handler of men and women. His association
with the various organizations from which he
had graduated gave him an unusual fund of
practical knowledge and tried-out methods to
draw upon.
His first six months were starred with brilliant
detail reorganizations. The shipping
department, first; the correspondence division
next; the accounting department third, and he
literally swept through the office like the
proverbial new broom, caught up all the loose
ends, and established a routine like clockwork.
So successful was his work that the directors
hastened to add supervision of sales and collections.
Forthwith the new manager struck his
plateau. His previous experience offered little
he could readily use in shaping a sales policy
or laying out a collection program. He
plunged into the details of both, effected some
important minor economies, but failed altogether
—as subsequent events showed—to
grasp the constructive needs and opportunities
<p 246>
of management. He puzzled and irritated his
district managers by overemphasizing details
when they wanted decisions or policies or
help in handling sales emergencies. In the
same way, he neglected collections,—chiefly
because he could not distinguish between
detail and questions of policy,—but escaped
blame for more than six months because the
season was conceded to be a poor one.
Not till he resigned and the general manager
investigated the sales and collection departments
did the real cause of the failure become
evident. Important and numerous as had
been the economics instituted, they all fell
under the head of the “easy improvements ”
based on previous experience and observation.
When problems outside this experience presented
themselves, the manager encountered
his plateau.
In the acquisition of skill, days of progress
are followed by stationary periods. “Time
must be taken out” to allow the formation of a
habit or the organization of this new knowledge
or skill.
<p 247>
All trees and plants have periods of growth
followed by periods of little or no growth. In
May and June the leaves and branches shoot
forth very rapidly, but the new growth is
pulpy and tender. During succeeding days
or months, these tender shots are filled in and
developed. In learning and in habit formation
a similar sequence is lived through. We
have days of swift advancement followed by
days in which the new stage or method of
thinking and acting takes time to become
organized and solidified. The nervous system
has to adjust itself to the new demands, and
such adjusting requires time.
Although periods of incubation are essential
for every specific habit, practically every act
of skill is dependent upon a number of simpler
habits. At any one time progress may be made
in utilizing some of these habits, even though
others could not be advantageously hastened.
Thus the period of incubation should not
necessarily cause any profound slump in the
advance. Almost invariably, however, it produces
a plateau which persists until the worker
<p 248>
has mastered the expert way. The golf
player, for example, usually finds he is able
to drive longer and straighter balls at the beginning
of the season than a little later. The
reason is that in golf the perfect stroke is the
product of almost automatic muscular action.
In the first round the swing of the driver or
iron is not consciously governed, and the muscular
habit of the previous year controls.
Later, as the player concentrates on his task
of correcting little faults or learning more
effective methods, his stroke loses its automatic
quality, his game falls off, and it is not
until he masters his new form that he attains
high efficiency.
The same cycle is repeated in office and factory
operations, where efficiency is possible
only when the hands carry out automatically
the desired action. In typewriting and telegraphy,
in the handling of adding machines,
in the feeding of drill presses, punch presses,
and hundreds of special machines, the learner
passes through three distinct phases: first,
swift improvement in which prelearned move-
<p 249>
ments and skill are brought to bear on the task
under the stimulus of both novelty interest and
voluntary interest; second, arrested progress—
the period of incubation or habit formation; and
the final stage of automatic skill and efficiency.
_Since increase of efficiency is dependent upon
continued efforts of will, slumps are inevitable.
Voluntary attention cannot be sustained for a
long period_.
Work requiring effort is always subject
to fluctuations. The man with a strong will
may make the lapses in attention relatively
short. He may be on his guard and “try to
try” most faithfully, but no exertion of the will
can keep up a steady expenditure of effort in
any single activity. All significant *increases
in efficiency, however, are dependent upon
voluntary attention—upon extreme exertions
of the will.
No man can develop into an expert without
great exertion of the will. Such exertions of
the will are recognized by authorities as being
very exhaustive and unstable. One of the
greatest of the authorities and one who in
<p 250>
particular has emphasized the necessity of
a “do-or-die” attitude of work concludes his
discussion with the following significant admission:
“All this suggests that if one wants
to improve at the most rapid rate, he must
work when he can feel good and succeed, then
lounge and wait until it is again profitable to
work. It is when all the conditions are favorable
that the forward steps or new adaptations
are made.”
Voluntary attention must be employed in
making the advance step, in improving our
method of work, and in making any sort of
helpful changes. But voluntary attention
must not be depended upon to secure steady
and continuous utilization of the improved
method or rate of work. To secure this end,
an attempt should be made to reduce the
work to habit so far as possible and also to secure
spontaneous interest either from interest
and pleasure in the work itself or because of
the reward to be received.
The case of the young sales manager, described
in the first part of this article, suggests
<p 251>
some of the methods by which this interest
can be secured. The chief factor in his progress
was the interest in the work itself due
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