Does your stenographer want to leave promptly at five so she can get ready for an evening of whoopee? Or does she have to catch a particular train in order not to find a cold supper waiting for her at home? Then why not fix things so she can work during the hours she is paid to work—and so she can leave at the hour when pay stops?
Can your truckers live in the style to which they are accustomed on $4.50 a day? Or will $5.50 enable them to put away a bit for a rainy season? Then why not arrange a wage payment method which will help them to do it?
And above all, tell them WHY.
To do such things is not philanthropy. Successful managers will tell you IT IS NOTHING MORE NOR LESS THAN GOOD BUSINESS. Strip from their methods the individual characteristics required by the individual conditions involved. What do you find? EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM IS BASED ON OUR PRIMARY RULE. That, you remember, is to find out what you want from your "help" and what your "help" wants from you; then a way to make the two meet on a ground of mutual satisfaction—the compensation you can give and the compensation they can take—and BOTH OF YOU GET WHAT YOU WANT.
Don't you see, to grasp the real KNACK OF HANDLING "HELP," the necessity for making what you want from them balance with what they want from you? If there isn't that balance, there won't be whole-souled COOPERATION. To paraphrase what Henry Ford once said—or what one of his collaborators made him say: "See that each man in doing the best he can for you is also doing the best he can for himself."
Thus, by digging in and finding out what everybody involved in the situation wants, it is possible to get the utmost in cooperation and loyalty. Where one man does so instinctively, another gets equally good results by making a deliberate study along the lines we have pointed out.
Hundreds of jobs don't get done promptly and enthusiastically for no other reason than that they aren't interesting. They can be made interesting if you get the right line on what your work requires, what your "help" wants, and then make a common meeting ground.
Mark Twain knew all about the KNACK OF MAKING WORK INTERESTING AND ATTRACTIVE.
Remember his description of Tom Sawyer's whitewashing the fence? Even if you do, it won't hurt to read it again.
Poor Tom. It was on a summer's morn just made for swimming or fishing—and he had to work.