Identifier: efficientman00west
Title: The efficient man
Year: 1914 (1910s)
Authors: West, Thomas D. (Thomas Dyson), 1851-1915
Subjects: Success Employee motivation Industrial efficiency Personnel management
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : Gardner Printing Co.
Contributing Library: University of Connecticut Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Connecticut Libraries

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egiving up of time to begin at the bottom of a vocationand work up through all its specialties and auxiliaries,causes much of the art of many if not almost all kindsof business being lost to a greater or less degree. It is to be understood that a loss of the arts of a busi-ness includes inability for its employees, which embracesits supervisors, to handle all its tools in an adept manner,as well as to be versed in all of its known ways and meansto do its work in expert style. If difficulties are en-countered, they should also possess the skill and knowl-edge necessary to remedy them promptly and not take amonth to stop defections or evils that should be ended ina few minutes or hours. 96 THE EFFICIENT MAN Amateurs Pathetic Post-mortem Conferences onDefective and New Work A lamentably pathetic sight, often seen these days, isa post-mortem held by a supervisor and a bunch of hisoperatives over some defective work in order to decideon the cause and a remedy or to discuss plans for making

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Fig. 13. POST-MORTEM GATHERING OF THE UNKNOWING new work. Instead of having this demure gathering ofdeficient ones, a boss who understands his business ashe should do would as a rule simply call the operativehaving made the defective article and in a few moments,without wasting words, order some changes made to cor- POST-MORTEM CONFERENCES 97 rect the evils and all would be ended. New work wouldbe handled by him in a similar manner. Many of these common practices of post-mortem gath-erings are like calling a conference of a dozen or more ofpoor cooks, in the anticipation that they might attain theperfection of a lone good one. It may be said, as by theScotch, Two heads are better than one if they are onlysheep heads. There are no objections to the bumping ofany two heads to help solve a problem, but when a flockof lambs knowing little and often caring less are calledupon to swell a post-mortem, over defective or new work,such certainly does not augur well for the knowledge andskill of

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Tagged: , bookid:efficientman00west , bookyear:1914 , bookdecade:1910 , bookcentury:1900 , bookauthor:West__Thomas_D___Thomas_Dyson___1851_1915 , booksubject:Success , booksubject:Employee_motivation , booksubject:Industrial_efficiency , booksubject:Personnel_management , bookpublisher:Cleveland__Ohio___Gardner_Printing_Co_ , bookcontributor:University_of_Connecticut_Libraries , booksponsor:University_of_Connecticut_Libraries , bookleafnumber:100 , bookcollection:uconn_libraries , bookcollection:blc , bookcollection:americana