An old friend in London who had developed a unique business out of nothing, was asked what percentage of those who had worked under him during sixty years had enough executive capacity to deal with an emergency when their superior was away, without being frightened by their assumption of responsibility. His answer was: “Perhaps two per cent.—not more.”
Sir William Whyte with whom this facet of success was discussed, thought the estimate was low, for railways, because the very nature of railroading—movement, climatic emergencies, accidents, for example—develops latent ability to meet unexpected conditions, to an extent that does not apply to a calling wherein the employes operate in one set of buildings. But, Sir William said, an outsider would be surprised at the number of men who declined promotion because of fear that they would be inadequate to enlarged, unfamiliar duties. One recalls our first engineer at Edmonton who, promoted to a superintendency, asked for his throttle again.
One is sometimes divided between the two views—that ability is scarce in the world, and that it is abundant. The question was once raised among a company of men of affairs—How many high officers in public, or semi-public service, are the superiors in ability of their chief subordinates? One, with a wide knowledge of lands and men, said he thought that perhaps two in five would be the average.
“Oh,” said another, who had sat in Parliament, “your percentage is far too high. There may be ten able men in the House of Commons—one in sixty-seven!”
It is true that many men in railway service have a lower estimate of their own ability than their superiors have had; and that they have remained stationary because they hadn’t the courage to rise when the chance came. There are others—not many—who have risen pretty high because, in the man-power of a railway there is something like the steam-power which moves trains. A man may be just as powerful as a locomotive; and just as narrow, and just as helpless if he doesn’t stay on the track where he was put.
Here, for instance, is a youth in an office, blessed with the great virtues of willingness, diligence, method, perseverance, and the ambition to better himself. He isn’t everlastingly looking at the clock. If he is asked to stay late, he shows that he likes to be thought important enough to be invited to share an extra burden. All these distinctions may belong to a head which does not harbour an expansive, wide-seeing mind. They combine into an efficiency of a sort that is not at all to be despised, and which almost inevitably brings promotion.
In spite of the impulses to a liberalized mastery of his work, such a man will develop qualities that magnify the tendency to use red tape which afflicts some officials in all large institutions, from Governments down. It narrows the capacity of subordinates through a persistent, but usually unrecognized dread of giving an official inferior full scope to develop any originality he may possess. The fear of the secondary man coming to the primary place is common everywhere. You cannot expect a small man to display the qualities of a giant.
A railway officer, like the centurion who, being under authority, had soldiers under him, may wire two or three thousand miles to a subordinate and know that his directions will be obeyed. Perhaps there is no more potent inducer of a sense of authority than this ability to command, at long range, by the invisible messenger. It sometimes produces in a railway official, to whom the wires are free, a rather morbid pride in keeping in touch with his office when he is away, by making his office keep constantly in touch with him. An old colleague used to say that if he could edit the departmental telegrams of any leading railway system on this continent, and be paid a cent a word for prevented verbiage, he would become disgracefully rich in five years.
The admirable tendency in executive efficiency—the encouragement of initiative—is represented by the practice of the departmental head whose duty carried him often and far afield—frequently for weeks at a time he would be absent from his office. He secured the ablest assistance his appropriation afforded; and when he went away his instruction to his deputy was:—“Don’t bother me with telegrams, unless it is absolutely necessary—I assume you are equal to your job. Whatever comes up, don’t be afraid to deal with it, according to your best judgment. Always have a clear reason for whatever action you take, and when I come back I will back you up, even if I don’t agree with all you have done.”
It is rather a tempting excursus—this discussion of the discovery and use of executive ability; but it must be passed by, with the further remark that, on the whole, railways, as I have known them, are staffed by able, conscientious men, in all ranks; and that, while our twenty years of phenomenal expansion cannot recur, and the scope for promotions will be limited, compared with what it was, railway service will always be a great arena for the use of talents of the highest order, even though they may first be exercised in the most unlikely-looking corners of a great system.