Manpower

by Lincoln C. Andrews

Pride in Organization.—Pride in the organization is a tremendous influence for keeping men up to the mark. It makes them keep each other up—and you begin to reap the rewards for having established it. You see them developing the spirit of discipline you have hoped for, and the co-operation in that teamwork which means so much. Every leader should always strive to arouse this pride. While we may not prescribe the exact steps for arousing it to fit the various conditions, your ingenuity will suggest the ways if you will make practical use of your knowledge that men take delight in doing things well and in having their excellence recognized; that the excellence of the individual should be reflected in the reputation of the team; that out of the bodily and mental development which comes from consciously doing things well, grow self-respect, laudable pride, and an assurance which strengthens the individual character; and that these are the elements of the organization spirit which you should seek to establish in your men.

Competition affecting Individuals.—The instinct of rivalry or competition, which makes a man strive to excel among his companions, is another of the leader's instruments. This is so powerful a motive that it has to be used with judgment. Once launched in a real contest most men are likely to sacrifice anything to win. I remember discovering one of my young soldiers cheating in calling the hits at the target he was marking. He was perfectly frank in admitting to me that he had called many hits improperly, and when I asked him why, he ingenuously replied, "I heard the captain say we must beat H troop, and I was trying to help." He was so honest that I had to admit that the fault was half mine, and did not punish him. As a general rule what we want from our men is a high average of performance which may be maintained without any impairment of their powers, so you must judge the case fairly before introducing the spirit of contest. You must not be using it eternally to keep the men on the jump, but only on occasions that are worth while. There are moderate things for which it may be used regularly to stimulate effort, as in making the best record for punctuality, etc. But you would not want a man to be driving himself constantly to capacity—and so you use judgment to guard against individual injury as well as to keep the spirit fresh for use on real occasions.

Team Competitions.—Competition between teams engaged in like undertakings will not only increase results, but its great advantage is that it brings the individuals of each team into close co-operation in order that their team may win, and thus gives them a better comprehension of the spirit of teamwork. As every leader is constantly trying to develop his teamwork, these rivalries are very common. But where your team competes with another in the same organization it must play fair as a member of the larger team. The same rules of co-operation and loyalty apply to the conduct of your team here, as to the individual members of your own team at home. You may not do anything for your team here which injures the other team, or lowers it in the estimation of your men. Building up peacetime infantry spirit by slurs at the artillery, and artillery spirit at the expense of the infantry, was found to have been expensive business when war linked them together in the same team and each found himself dependent for success in battle on the co-operation of the other. "Sure he's good, but we can beat him," is the true mental attitude for contests within an organization.

Care of Your Men.—Looking after your men's bodily welfare is an interesting and important part of the leader's direct responsibilities. I remember during the construction of one of the war training cantonments asking a bright-looking mechanic, who was pretending to be working at a steam heater at eleven o'clock one night, if he thought he could do good work in such long hours as he was keeping. "Certainly not, but I can make good pay." He was a decent-looking American, so I asked him how he justified such a spirit in this time of government need. "Because I am fed like a dog and lodged like one." It was true—and the ignorance or worthlessness of that contractor was thus squandering thousands of government dollars a day through needlessly disaffected labor, and delaying the completion of necessary accommodations for the soldiers. Such cases are common in every activity.

Each job presents its own problems to be solved according to the conditions. The big thing here is to realize that the welfare of his men is an important consideration for the leader who expects them to do good work. It would seem unnecessary to state that a man's mental and physical fitness have so much to do with his accomplishment, and yet so many bosses seem absolutely indifferent to a man's condition so long as he is able to drag himself to his work. In reality it should always be the first cause to investigate whenever any man shows a let down in his performance. A man cannot keep up good work on an empty or sour stomach, nor give continued careful attention to details if some trouble is constantly obtruding on his field of consciousness. This latter fact has cost many a good man an accident at his machine, and the intelligent foreman, knowing that sore feelings, grievances and mental troubles interfere with good performance, does all he can to eliminate them. In not keeping your workers in the best possible physical and mental condition, you are throwing away all kinds of potential energy—running a six-cylinder engine that is skipping many of the cylinders. How quickly the superintendent would get after a foreman who did that with a machine, yet possibly never notice that many of the human machines were as badly out of kilter.

In this question of looking after the welfare of your men there are two opposing considerations to be kept in mind. You are to build up in them self-respect, initiative, individual responsibility and self-determination, and therefore must not patronize them, coddle them, or treat them like children. On the other hand you have to recognize the characteristic of an individual in a group—he immediately shifts individual responsibility to the shoulders of the group. That is the reason why every man of a company in camp will continue to wade through the mud to reach a spring where five minutes' work by anyone would arrange stepping stones, or to dip water with difficulty from a shallow stream where a few minutes' work would dam it into a comfortable pool—and no one of them would do either of these helpful things until some leader came along and ordered it. This need for oversight is true in every activity, and the leader has to be on the lookout to see that his men do the things that are necessary for their comfort and welfare.

This is particularly necessary in out-of-doors jobs, as in engineering and construction. The man may be too tired or inexperienced to see to it himself that he has a comfortable place to sleep. The boss knows that the man's work of the morrow will depend on the restfulness of his sleep, and therefore requires him to make himself reasonably comfortable. Above all he gives constant attention to how his men are fed, especially at their breakfasts. He sees that they have the best available shelter and comfort for the noon rest. All this is simply part of his job of grooming and stoking the human engine which he is using on the work. To keep the men fit and to work them hard is his job—and the beauty of it is that the more thoroughly he does both the happier and more contented they are. For the hard play of tough muscles and the stern conquest of serious obstacles both bring pleasurable satisfaction to natural instincts in a healthy man; instincts designed to make him a cheerful and determined actor in the struggle to conquer nature and advance civilization. These instincts of pugnacity and of joy in a fight, of winning out no matter what the obstacle, are readily responsive to appeal, and most helpful to the leader who knows how to use them.

In some industries the physical and mental condition of the workers is made the care of a welfare department, which provides proper environment, sanitation, athletics, hospitals, kitchens, libraries, saving banks, country clubs, etc.—a background for successful management. But there still remains the necessity for the personal touch of the foreman in direct contact with the men. He understands all the facilities offered, their advantages, and what management intends them to do for the men—and he is there in close touch to see that the men get the right ideas and make the most of them. But beyond all that, incapable of general control, and properly in the sole hands of the immediate leader for the sake of their effect on his leadership, there are the thousand little homely things of the daily work and play in which the thoughtful foreman makes his men feel his interest in their welfare, success and happy living.

Creating and Maintaining Discipline.—The inexperienced man is likely to have more apprehension about his ability to maintain discipline than about anything else in connection with taking charge of a group of men. He wonders if they will obey him and is not sure of himself as a disciplinarian. It will help him if he gets a fair idea of how discipline is maintained. It is often said that discipline is the result of the leader's administration of rewards and punishments. This is too narrow a view. In reality the spirit we call discipline is the result of the leader's whole conduct of himself and his job, of his personality and methods, of everything he does for his men, to his men and with them. Among all these, rewards and punishments play an important part. But rewards have a great deal more to do with building up discipline than have punishments, and are given much more easily and pleasantly. In fact if the leader has established at all the spirit of leadership herein pictured he will have but rare occasions to use any punishments. This has been proven over and over again, and with all kinds of men. In every phase of human endeavor, fair treatment and the encouragement that comes from judicious appreciation of good intentions and from praise of good work soon establish a spirit which makes punishment quite out of place and unnecessary.

A concrete example of the highest type of rigid discipline based on purely democratic principles is that of a highly trained college football team. Here we have individual manliness and initiative highly developed, together with a sense of subordination, teamwork, and the requirements of leadership and discipline. Here we find instant, unquestioning, cheerful obedience to commands given in action, and an esprit and morale which make the team cheerfully tackle the toughest opponents. Where any leader may need in his group a discipline of quick implicit obedience to orders, let him consider the spirit of the football team as his model, rather than the spirit of whipped obedience which was found in the galleys of old.