Increasing Efficiency In Business by Walter Dill Scott (desktop ebook reader .txt) 📕

and executed in a burst of creative

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