Next he found out, as accurately as possible, how many hard rubber tires were sold as original equipment. The 3,200 trucks and tractors had 12,300 wheels. But 95 per cent of them were equipped with rubber tires at the factory. On the other hand, only 7 per cent of the floor and hand trucks were thus equipped!
Outside of the truck and tractor people, he found the equipment makers opposed to hard rubber tires. Let's not go into the reasons. Yet representative manufacturers in a dozen different lines stated, when he asked them: "All future equipment purchased by us will be equipped with rubber tires."
The whole report wasn't twelve pages long. And three tables, carefully compiled from available facts and figures, told the manufacturer everything he wanted to know.
In short, upon this SIMPLE ANALYSIS, he was able to build a plan for manufacturing and merchandising solid rubber tires. Much good, though, it would have done him had he done his planning first and then found out there weren't enough wheels to wear the tires after he had made them!
So much for our "beneficent circle." Let us look into this thing called PLANNING and find out if there isn't some way of developing a knack of planning which will help us over the second major hurdle in our road to managing.
There is, we shall find, a single problem with which the planner, the constructive manager, deals. Again, it doesn't make a particle of difference whether it's Mr. Schwab and Bethlehem Steel or Tonio and his peanut stand. No business is so "different" that the principles of management fail to apply.
All right, then. The problem of every planner is first to determine what is the PRIMARY MOVING FORCE—the "initiative"—behind his job, and then to find the EASIEST PLACE TO APPLY THAT FORCE in order to set up the required MOTION or ACTIVITY with the LEAST AMOUNT OF EFFORT THAT WILL GET THE BEST RESULTS.
A long sentence. Go over it again and you will find it is divided into four distinct parts:
1. Deciding on the PRIMARY MOVING FORCE with which to set the wheels in motion.
2. Applying this FORCE at the PROPER PLACE TO GET EASIEST ACTION.