Part 25

His is a business of few customers. Except for a half-dozen famous retailers whose accounts cost more than they earn, but to whose stores he may point the finger of gesticulating pride as being among his outlets (it would be better for him if they were among his souvenirs), his business is handled through thirty or forty jobbers. Naturally each of his customers is a very important unit in the business.

The loss of one account is serious.

So a customer to him is an outlet for business greater than the trade a big department store gets from a hundred good customers. One customer to him is as a score of customers to the manufacturer who sells to the retail trade.

To him, then, a complaint from a San Antonio jobber that the buttons on his pants aren't right has all the importance that the same complaint, echoed by a hundred different customers, would have to the retail merchant. Looked at in this light, is it not logical that any complaint--no matter how trifling its nature--should have his prompt, personal attention? Had he but known it, the letters he turned over to Henry were danger signals. They warned of the need for GUARDING THE WELFARE OF THE BUSINESS--LOOKING AFTER ITS GENERAL GOOD HEALTH.

And that task, as we have said, overshadows in importance every other task which the successful manager, in his daily business of managing, may have to perform.

The maintenance foreman in a New England mill walked into the agent's office one day--why the manager of a mill is called an agent is just one of those things--and said:

"Something's got to be done about that freight elevator over in Building C, Mr. Dearle. I've monkeyed with it and monkeyed with it. It's just worn out, and one of these fine days, it's going to drop a couple of floors and pile up in the basement."

And one fine day it did. You see, the manager was all tied up in a labor controversy. Labor squabbles aren't any fun. And presumably their speedy settlement is far more important to the business than the matter of what to do about a tired freight elevator which has seen far better days.

So Frank the maintenance man had to run along and sell his papers. And the elevator kept on working.

The day it quit, Henry Fitts was aboard. And when the elevator man picked himself up off the cellar floor, Henry couldn't.

But why go into that? Henry's broken leg and Henry's lost time cost the company more than a new elevator. And Henry was one of the company's best technical men. Lots of bum sheets and pillow cases got made and shipped and returned while Henry was laid up. The damage done by that falling elevator could hardly be measured in dollars.

Now, then, settling the differences of capital and labor was a big job to the mill agent. Saying "No" to Frank was merely postponing a trifling detail. Yet what a heap of difference a "Yes" would have made. That defective elevator, because it endangered lives, overshadowed all else in importance, had the agent viewed his job from the standpoint of CARING FOR THE BUSINESS. THE KNACK OF SAFEGUARDING ITS WELFARE lies not merely in doing tasks that preserve the safety of the business or job, but also in the ability to discern when such tasks are really mere trifles, and when, because of their potential effect, they are details vital to the life of the business.

How is a manager to know when he shall devote his entire attention to settling wage rates, and when listen to the maintenance man's song? How can the president of a million-dollar concern tell when it is good business to drop a tremendously important managerial task and listen to a customer's tale of woe about pants buttons--and personally set the complaint right?

How, on the other hand, are you to know when to lay off such tasks?

Some few men--seventh sons of seventh sons--may be born with that instinct or knowledge. The rest of us must cultivate a true knack of conserving the business--a knack which carries with it the finest sense of discrimination and the best of business judgment.

And not until we have acquired this important knack and added to it all the other knacks we've been talking about, can we consider ourselves successful managers. Not until then shall we have acquired THE TRUE KNACK OF MANAGING.

* * * * *

"I've learned how to pick out the tasks that are vital to the business and make them my own special responsibilities," a successful newspaper publisher once said, "by setting up a sort of yardstick to judge every job that comes along.

"My paper was in the 'red' when I bought it. It was a weak sister. It carried the least advertising, had the least circulation and exercised the least influence. Today its lineage is nearly one-third more than its nearest competitor's--and circulation has more than doubled in four years, so now it tops all the rest.

"I analyzed my job something like this: I bought the paper because I thought I could make money with it. To make money, I must carry a large volume of advertising. To get advertising, I must show results to advertisers. To show results, I must make my paper a real "home" paper--a paper really read and appreciated--not merely a paper with which people are only satisfied. To get that kind of circulation, I must put into the paper what people who read a paper at home wouldn't 'miss for anything.'

"What did this analysis show me? Simply this: That while more advertising and more circulation meant more profits, the attitude of my readers toward their paper meant even more--it meant business life or death.

"So my yardstick is never to let anything get by me that might change our standing with our readers. The toughest business problem is shoved aside when something comes up that means loss of respect among our public.

"I made it my first business to get to know our type of reader. Never was a good hand at guessing. So had to learn about human nature.

"After a lot of hiring and firing, picking and sorting, coaching and drilling, I got me four women who could go out and get exactly the kind of information I had to have.

"Each of the four took a section of the city. Each section represented a distinct type of home-dweller--and it takes all kinds of people to run a world, you know--or to buy a newspaper.

"Every week those four women canvassed close to a thousand homes between them. Their method was to tell the housewife that we were going to deliver our paper free for a week--and hoped they'd take it in and read it. A week later they went back over the same ground, soliciting subscriptions, of course, but also gathering information for me.

"More important than getting a subscription was finding out why a woman subscribed--or why she wouldn't subscribe. They asked what the women thought about certain special features.

"I got a lot of good pointers. For instance, I'd been a bitter opponent of the 'funnies.' But I put them back when I learned that people really wanted them. You see, I was getting a good cross section of the likes and dislikes of all my customers and my prospects.