CHAPTER I

THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE EXECUTIVE

There are more jobs for forceful men than there are forceful men to fill them.-CHARLES M. SCHWAB.

The Big Idea in Business

The time has arrived in business when executives, convinced that rule-of-thumb cannot serve them, are developing with great rapidity the new science of management. It is not that these men prefer theories, or changes, or severe thinking; the new methods get results and they are adopted solely for this reason. This development of better management, both in its aims and methods, is commendable; but, since every man personally, as well as officially, has a business enterprise under way, is the process to stop short of the executives themselves? The individual, no less than the corporation, has his problems of production, sales, accounts, and finance. In order to render his enterprise highly profitable, a first-rate dividend-payer whose stock is always above par, every selfmanager who is progressive and foresighted, will seek to conduct these four operations in a manner that is thoroughly efficient.

In his moments of strength a man sets for himself as personal manager certain standards of achievement. These represent his maximum, that high level of independence, responsibility, opportunity, and remuneration for which his best self longs and to which his capacity justifiably entitles him. He proposes to forge ahead until these worthy ends are attainedhis part meanwhile to be that of a skilled player enjoying

every move in the great game of business itself. This full utilization of every available resource, this getting of the best from oneself, constitutes to him the big idea.

In Charge of a Billion-Dollar Enterprise

In speaking of a man's personality as a business enterprise, with its problems of production, sales, accounts, and finance, and its ideal of first-class management, have we a conception which is definite and which may be justified? Let us

see.

For more than fifteen years one man has been the chief master of the iron and steel industry, with 152,000 stockholders above him expecting dividends and 270,000 workmen beneath him demanding wages. He is Elbert H. Gary, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the United States Steel Corporation. He presides over an industrial empire owning more land than Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont combined; supporting more people than inhabit Nebraska; employing more men than fought at Gettysburg; sailing a larger navy than that of Italy; gathering in a larger revenue than the United States Treasury; and representing more capital than all the banks in New York City.

Judge Gary, while not a practical manufacturer, is overlord of 146 plants and 1,700 industrial communities; though he is neither a railroad nor steamship authority, he directs a trackage of 3,380 miles and a fleet of 220 units; he is not a miner, yet his company excavates iron ore and coal with an army of 40,000 men; he is no expert steel-maker, but his furnaces and mills roll up,tremendous production records.

His business cares do not seem to tax him.

Yet while Judge Gary goes calmly on his way with his billion-dollar corporation in tow and other captains of industry, similar in their effectiveness, are crowding the business day with transactions of like magnitude, we meet men "hur

ried to death" managing corner groceries, "awfully busy" attending to tiny machine shops, worried into sleeplessness over the burden of $100 deals. Their business stature, in comparison with the captain of industry, appears dwarfed. Manifestly Judge Gary, and men like him, had certain inborn qualities and capacities of high grade upon which to build. Yet mere inherent ability, inborn capacity, floats no man to an easy success. Every one of these men utilized, developed, made the most of the powers with which he was endowed by nature. His personal enterprise becomes stronger, better organized, more smoothly efficient year by year.

The Twenty-Five Per Cent Man

Inside every business organization there are men who, somehow, have stood still. They have been years perhaps with the same company, at their desk regularly from nine to five; yet they have received little if any real promotion. Worse still, others have been advanced over their heads, and the orders issued by some of these erstwhile subordinates, now managers, under the circumstances contain a sting. mental atmosphere in which such men live deadens and embitters; it serves to breed disloyalty, possibly anarchy, certainly not efficiency.

The

What men in business receive, however, whether they be rising executives or the routine-minded caught in stagnant coves, is, as a broad, general principle, proportioned strictly to the value of their services. The corporation which pays its president perhaps $100,000 annually believes that inasmuch as the net profits would be considerably less under a $50,000 man, the big man is cheap at the big salary, whereas acting under similar reasoning it at the same time discharges a $15-a-week clerk because at that price he is found too expensive. It is a matter simply of services rated at a given value and purchased at a given cost.

The men who advance concentrate upon the essentials of their enterprise-its production, sales, accounts, and finance activities—because these things, not complaints and criticisms, will get them what they seek. The position on ahead is for the man who overflows the position now at hand.

Is the average business man of this plus type, a smoothly running dynamo with reserve power in wait for some unusual job? Does he produce, sell, record, and finance at maximum capacity? While not a few persons in a vague way deceive themselves into thinking that their best is being done, an impartial analysis commonly reveals this average man acting thus:

He squanders his energy unproductively, worrying more than he works and filling his body and brain with fatigue poisons.

He thinks superficially.

He is the slave of rule-of-thumb, a sluggish fellow content to tread the winding cow-path of custom instead of striking through a short cut of his own.

He procrastinates, dulls his will by "can'ts," "won'ts," and "don'ts," and merely dreams of new ventures.

He forgets.

He lacks control-a victim of carelessness, bad temper, selfishness, laziness, and snap judgment.

He swelters along under loads of details, a never-ending routine under which creative plans are crushed out, and fails above all to perceive that perched high upon this pack-horse burden which he carries rides his real master, the devil of inefficiency.

"I believe," says Melville W. Mix, President of the Dodge Manufacturing Company, "that the majority of executives in this country are not more than twenty-five per cent efficient measured by the standard of performance of the few really efficient ones."