So far as possible, responsibility for the success of the house should be assumed by all employees. In some way the workmen should feel that they are in partnership with the executives. We easily develop loyalty for the cause for which we have taken responsibility or rendered a service.
Creating Loyalty to Firm itself by Educational Campaign
A perpetual campaign of publicity should be maintained for the benefit of every man in the employ of the house. In this there should be a truthful but emphatic presentation of acts of loyalty on the part of either employers or <p 103> workmen. Everything connected with the firm which has human interest should be included in this history. This educational campaign should change the loyalty to the *men in the firm into loyalty to the *firm itself. It should be an attempt to give the firm a personality, and of such a noble character that it would win the loyalty of the men. This could be accomplished at little expense and with great profit.
CHAPTER V
CONCENTRATION
AS A MEANS OF INCREASING HUMAN EFFICIENCY
THE owner of one of the largest and most complex businesses in America handles his day's work on a schedule as exacting as a railway time-table. In no other way could he keep in touch with and administer the manifold activities of his industry and a score of allied interests—buying of the day's raw materials for a dozen plants in half as many markets, direction of an organization exceeding 20,000 men, selling and delivering a multitude of products in a field as wide as three continents, financing the whole tremendous fabric.
Every department of his business, therefore, has its hour or quarter hour in the daily program when its big problems are considered <p 104> <p 105> and settled on the tick of the clock. This schedule is flexible, since no two days bring from any division of production, distribution, or financing the same demands upon the owner's attention. Yet each keeps its place and comes invariably under his eye—through reports and his own mastery of conditions affecting the department.
To secure the high personal efficiency required for this oversight and methodical dispatch of affairs, the owner-executive is not only protected from outside interruptions and distractions, but is also guarded against intrusion of the vital elements of his business—both men and matters —except at the moment most advantageous for dealing with them.
Analysis and organization have determined these moments—just as they have eliminated every non-essential in the things presented for consideration and decision. Except when emergencies arise there is no departure from the rule: ``One thing at a time—the big thing—at the right time.'' The task in hand is never cheated, or allowed to cheat the next <p 106> in line. Management is as much a continuous process, organized and wasteproof, as the journey of raw materials through his plants.