The Tickler as a Business Getter The tickler method may be used in many other ways. Resourceful salesmen, for instance, utilize it in some such form as shown in Figure 4, to "establish a point of contact" with their prospects. Such a list, slightly modified in form, is perhaps even more useful to the assistant sales manager. S NAME Samuel Randolph ADDRESS Elmira, NY. POSITION Machinery Buyer FIRM Clark, Dodge Comes to New York every three months. Fine fellow, democrat, good friend of Collins, Urges Benton of Saratoga to buy of us. Figure 4. Alphabetical Filing Information concerning various customers filed alphabetically in this way furnishes the sales manager a point of contact. Incoming Material Memoranda by no means exhaust the list of details to be handled by the executive. Letters, circulars, catalogues, books, and trade papers flow into his office incessantly. What is to be done with them? The one best way here, of course, is to use a filing system. Systematic filing, by means of which orderly storage and swift and accurate reference are secured for the daily accumulations of letters and records of all sorts, has been an indispensable part of the growth of modern business. The improvement in filing methods has been almost incredible. Systematic Filing a Matter of Course in Careful Business Our grandfathers jabbed the firm's letters upon hooks or stowed them away in some pigeonhole or drawer. It is scarcely more than a generation ago that the box file was introduced, with its cover opening like a book and a set of manila sheets tabbed alphabetically; and the flat file, much the same in style but more substantial and elaborate. Today the vertical file, papers arranged on edge in filing cases of wood or of steel built in standardized size and form, is practically universal in all well-managed business houses, large or small. Progressive concerns regard it as an essential part of their work to devise a system fitted to their particular organization and to provide for its competent administration. All this should have a lesson for the executive in the management of his personal memoranda. If system is good for the general organization, it is equally good for the work of the man who administers the organization—or a division of it. Apply the Lesson to Your Own Work Yet many executives have failed to learn this lesson. Even when the correspondence, records, memoranda of the organization, are handled with the utmost care and efficiency, their personal offices often exhibit astonishing lack of system. In not a few offices most of the material referred to above is simply piled up anywhere. The plan seems easy enough, but, judged by results, it is grinding hard. No one can afford to dig through dust-covered heaps every time he needs something, and yet he cannot run the risk of forgetting that the information is available, or of ignoring it entirely because he is too lazy to hunt for it. The executive should have his own filing system planned according to a simple but complete scheme of classificationhe will probably find the alphabetic method most convenientand kept in a properly arranged vertical cabinet. A single unit file, fitted with twenty-six guides, lettered alphabetically, will care very satisfactorily for the average man's personal correspondence, and perhaps leave space which is available for other purposes. The vertical filing cabinet itself may be had in either wood or metal, in colors to match the regular office furniture, in cap size or letter size, and in varying numbers of sections, such as single units, two sections vertical, or three sections horizontal. With this variety of patterns available, one need not encounter serious difficulty in fitting the vertical cabinet into his office equipment. The more bulky catalogues, together with books and such trade papers as are preserved, are preferably stored upon shelves. Bookcase units to match the files can be used if the additional expense is not too great. When shelves cannot otherwise be arranged conveniently, a small revolving bookcase often will solve the problem. The equipment here described enables the executive to keep the incoming material under strict control as it moves across his desk to its final destination—a file, a shelf, or the wastepaper basket. The Idea File-Mental Staleness and Its Antidotes The executive at the head of a progressive enterprise gives of himself freely. He scatters enthusiasm, bright sayings, point-driving stories, and big ideas here and there as he goes along. After a time the disquieting thought is apt to present itself that he is becoming stale; he has given but has not grown; he is in danger of mental bankruptcy. Since to continue effective he must be fertile in new ideas, it is well to inquire what system, if any, will aid him in meeting the demand. What shall he do, for instance, with the choice bits of information which come along daily? An advertising man finds in his mail an unusually pulling form. letter. An engineer sees in his technical paper an article on better results from coal. A works superintendent learns how a manager in Pittsburgh,by opening up a dead-end job, secures a higher grade of applicants. Shall such items, the results of much thought and costly experiment on the part of other men, escape him? With his own puzzling questions to settle, shall he merely say helplessly: "If I could only lay my hands on that article I was reading somewhere last month—.” Digging through piles of trade papers in search of what he knows is in there somewhere, or vaguely trying to remember its location, is poor business. Such material should be filed. The scrap-book has been discarded as inefficient, partly because it commonly has no scheme of indexing. The envelope system, in which each subject or topic has its particular envelope, is so time-consuming and laborious that few persons keep it going consistently. The vertical file, however, offers a device both easy and rapid. The Retailer Keeps Up to Date In one of the smaller cities retailer Norling, let us say, owns a department store which he wants to make the up-todate store of that region. In thinking over the matter, he decides that the vital problems of his business center around the following topics: 1. Buying methods 2. Care of stock 3. Store equipment 6. Window displays 7. Salesmanship 9. Handling employees II. Charge accounts 12. Delivery problems 14. Accounting Accordingly, he secures a single unit vertical file and with some pressboard guides indexes it by writing on the respective tabs the foregoing titles. When he next reads in his trade paper the details of how a Mr. Cowley in Nebraska is winning mail-order trade from a city competitor, he files the sheet under "Mail-order competition." In the same paper he finds reproduced the prize-winning display window of a recent contest, and he slips this picture into "Window displays." His mind becomes more and more alert, because he is now an active seeker of ideas; and his business becomes more and more profitable, because he puts into service the most productive ideas of many merchants. The Idea File in Operation When the idea file is used extensively, the best way is merely to mark with a number only the articles desired, leaving to a secretary the clipping and filing. In case these items are found in a book from which it is not convenient to remove the leaves, the executive places the file number on a blank page which, for the time being, serves as a book-mark, and indicates by pencil on the margin the paragraphs or sentences to be copied. When the material preserved consists of miscellaneous clippings and quotations, a vertical letter file is appropriate. But suppose the ideas one wishes to save are his own, jotted down here and there on memo? The letter size file is then cumbersome, and a card index, 3 x 5, 4 x 6, or 5 x 8, corresponding to the size of his memo paper, is more satisfactory. This index, of course, will also serve for clippings, provided these are folded. Such a "brain box" is capable of aiding a |