Who are your "readers"?
Every business, every job has its "readers"—some element which, once injured or neglected, affects the welfare, the health, the profits, or the ultimate success of the business or job.
A file clerk may acquire tremendous speed in putting letters away in drawers, but if she can't get you the correspondence you need at a moment's notice, what good is all her speed? Your stenographer may keep up with you in your best and fastest moments of dictation, but if her finished letters don't say what you said, her facility isn't worth the proverbial thin dime. An accountant may work out a cost system that reflects conditions like a mirror, but what of it if his reports come out so late that they're ancient history by the time the plant manager gets them? A miller may produce a flour that contains more vitamins than any other flour on the market, but if the dough won't rise properly, it isn't much use. A small-town banker may have splendid reserves and a strong cash position, but he's going to lose your business if he asks 6½ per cent interest and 3 per cent commission to extend your mortgage when the big-city bank offers you the same loan at 6 per cent interest and 2½ per cent commission. That messenger boy of ours—no chapter is complete without him—may run all the way from the Tribune Tower to State and Madison, but what if in his haste he loses the message?
There is, then, in every business or job a VITAL ELEMENT. And no one can do a good job of managing unless he finds out definitely what that element is, and then proceeds to guard it through all the hustle and bustle of cost cutting, labor saving and so on.
One manager put it pretty plainly to his billing clerk. The latter tried out some short cuts. They were splendid from the billers' point of view. Saved time and money. But the customers weren't used to any of this new-fangled stuff and kicked like steers. They couldn't check the invoices. Or wouldn't.
"They just won't use their heads. It's all as simple as ABC," protested the billing clerk when the manager called him in on the carpet. "All they've got to do is check the numbers on the cartons against the numbers on the invoices. There's no need of all the description we've been giving them."
"Right you are, Johnson," replied the manager. "But sometimes you bump up against a stone wall when you try to educate the trade. Oftentimes life's too short. Your system saves us money. It's good up to a certain point. That point is where your labor saving and cost cutting begin to have an adverse effect on sales or sales satisfaction.
"I've seen you playing bridge at noon," he went on. "You score honors above the line, don't you? Below the line you keep your game score. If you hold 80 or 90 honors in your hand, it affects your play. But you can't give your entire attention to scoring above the line, for after all it's the score below which determines who wins games and rubbers.
"You can score your job in pretty much the same way. All this work you're doing along cost-cutting lines is fine. Those things determine the size of your department's profits. Sketch them out on a card and check them over and add to them. But below the line put down the main object of your work—to have your invoices correct and to have them so plain that no customer can fail to understand them. Keep plugging away above the line. Don't let me discourage any effort that will reduce costs. They're all-important. But at the same time keep your eye below the line and make sure your game score is piling up. That sort of thinking and playing wins in business just as it does in bridge."
It's a long time since we've drawn any charts. Let's study the newspaper publisher's policy and see if he wasn't doing mentally just what the manager recommended that his billing clerk do on paper.