“I was just thinking,” continued the Adv. Mgr. affecting to ignore the suggestion but failing miserably from the knees down, “I was just thinking that maybe it might not be a bad plan, perhaps, to paint New York next month, please.”
“NEVER!” roared the Boss. “Never in a thousand years. The painted bulletin is no good—never was. Poster’s the thing! I’d rather post New York for one month than paint it for forty years at half the price.”
“Very good, then—shall I go in for that?”
“Not on your life. I’ve just decided on a newspaper campaign.”
“Thank you,” said the Adv. Mgr., backing out of the room and falling over a few chairs and things on the fairway.
When the intruder had vanished, Commander Boss got up, ran his long temperamental digits through his top-fringe and pounded out into the manufacturing department where he proceeded to raise from fourteen to sixteen separate and distinct kinds of scarlet hell for the general lack of initiative and commonsense around his plant.
Things went on in this happy homelike fashion until one fine warm Spring day when Brigadier Boss up and booted the whole bunch of bungling department heads into the great Out of Doors and set about to effect a re-organization.
“What I want is men who do THEIR OWN thinking,” he said, and he began telephoning and writing and wiring and advertising all over the country for A-1 Initiativers.
In due time he got them and called them all into his office and passed the cigars and explained how he wanted each man to run his own Department just as if it was his own business, exercising merely ordinary judgment and commonsense.