What a different aspect could be put on many an employee's work if the employer, instead of depending on the man's own-farsightedness in seeing the main items of value in his work, would graphically put them before him by some such chart as this one!
Right here, however, we must guard against one important characteristic of this vital element.
It CHANGES—or at least it may change as the business develops.
Ask the manager of the circularizing department of a certain mail-order house. He will tell you it's VOLUME. All his other problems have been stabilized except the single job of getting out enough circulars every day to keep the required volume of orders flowing in. Again, go to the circularizing room of an Eastern financial house and the manager will tell you that the vital element in his work is QUALITY—quality addressing, quality folding and so on. Here the whole success of the department depends upon reflecting the dignity and prestige of the house. The danger point with this manager is therefore touched by anything that might affect the quality of the work.
Many a manufacturer starts with limited capital. For the first year or two the vital element in his business is finance. He may have to sacrifice attention to production and sales problems in order to guard the slender balance in the bank. Sometimes he may have to pay higher prices for materials because he must buy in small quantities; he may even have to check sales because he hasn't the capital with which to finance them. Later, though, as a reserve is built up, or when better credit is established, he will find the vital element has shifted to manufacturing, buying, or maybe sales.
A certain shoe manufacturer—we seem to gravitate toward shoes every so often—found manufacturing the vital element of his business a scant dozen years ago. His big job was to see that shoes went out the door. He doubled the size of his plant. In the short space of three years his problem had shifted to one of sales—he was no longer getting enough volume to fill his plants. And today his greatest concern is his shrinking bank balance.
The same tendency toward change will be found in individual jobs.
The traffic manager of an electrical supply house deposes that the vital element in his department's work changed completely in less than two years.
"When I first came here," he declares, "the business had grown faster than our manufacturing facilities. We were always working close up to the contract date for delivery. I was hired simply because I had a reputation for being able to speed up shipping, pick the shortest routes and rush things through at the last minute.
"Later on, we got in better shape in the factory. The goods began to come through to us further in advance of the promised delivery dates. I noticed this and changed my methods. Where I had previously watched after speed alone, slapping things into any old case to get them packed, hustling them out by any route which would save a day, regardless of rates, I now began to pack more carefully, to sort mixed shipments in order to get the lowest classification in freight rates, to pick the cheapest routes, and so on.