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
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
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
in line. Management is as much a continuous process, organized and wasteproof, as the journey of raw materials through his plants.
This is an illustration of remarkable individual efficiency attained by concentration --the power of the human mind which seems inseparable from any great achievement in business, in politics, in the arts, in education. Through it men of moderate capacities have secured results apparently beyond the reach of genius. And in no field has this power of concentration been displayed more vividly by leaders or been more generally lacking in the rank and file than in business. Analysis of the conditions may suggest the reason and the remedy.
_The modern business man is exhausted no more by his actual achievements than by the things which he is compelled to resist doing_.
Appeals for his attention are ceaseless. The roar of the street, the ring of telephone bells, the din of typewriting machines, the sight of a row of men waiting for an interview, the muffled voices from neighboring offices or
workers, the plan for the day's work which is being delayed, the anxiety for the results for certain endeavors, suspicion as to the loyalty of employees--these and a score of other distractions are constantly bombarding him.
Every appeal for attention demands expenditure of energy--to ignore it and hold the mind down to the business in hand.