And no matter how good you may be with the woods, how the approach does affect the final score!
Consider for the moment that you have a house built of blocks and want to take it to pieces. A quick and easy way of separating it into its component parts would be a swift kick aimed down around the foundations.
A quick method. But comes nothing. There are all your blocks lying on the floor, but so far as knowing what they're all about, you're worse off than ever you were before you kicked your house down.
The other way of taking your house of blocks to pieces is to start with the roof and WORK BACKWARDS. The very thought, then, of "taking to pieces" suggests the correct way to undertake the analysis of a business or of a job.
And a study of the methods of successful managers will convince the doubtingest Thomas that starting at the top and working down to the cellar is the method they follow in the analysis of any business problem they have to tackle.
Once a busy ceramic manufacturer found himself in the restaurant business. He knew about all there was to know about dinnerware up to the point where it left his customers' counters. What went on after that was pretty much Greek to him if you know what we mean.
And then he became a restaurateur. All because his brother-in-law got into him for several thousand dollars and then couldn't quite seem to make the darned thing pay a profit.
Brother-in-law knew the game. Oh, yes. He had worked for a number of years as assistant manager in a similar enterprise. With his "knowledge of the business," he should have made a success of this cafeteria of his.
He knew how to handle the help, how to buy, how to run the kitchen, and so on. The operating details were as an open book to him. Judged from every outward appearance, the cafeteria was up to standard. It should have climbed out of the red in short order.
He had been taught to buy carefully and to manage economically. "Well bought," he announced, "is half sold." He'd read it in a book and he thought he was being a good salesman. Still the business stayed in the red.