In the preceding chapter we have been busily engaged in taking things to pieces. Now we've got to put them together again. Our house of blocks has been resolved into its component parts, not by aiming a swift kick at its midriff, but by starting at the top and working backwards. Now to REBUILD.

Our first care, at this stage of the game, is to remember that ANALYSIS IS NEVER AN END but simply the MEANS TO AN END.

The immediate end, this time, is to rearrange the pieces so that the job to be done can be done in the most effective way—the way that saves the most effort, the most time, the most money—the way which, in your business—and in yours and YOURS—leads to NET PROFITS.

Again it should be emphasized that NET PROFIT, in any job of managing, is the ultimate goal.

Our danger, then, is that we may find ourselves down on the floor surrounded by our blocks—and with never a trace of a PLAN for rebuilding the house, and rebuilding it in the simplest, most economical way.

In short, we must be sure we are taking things to pieces, not for the sake of taking them to pieces, but purely and simply to find out what has to be done.

Like the golfer who played golf so much in order to keep fit for golf, we have here a good old-fashioned beneficent circle. ANALYSIS without a PLAN isn't worth a whoop in Hades. It's time kissed goodbye. Wasted effort. And, in like manner, a PLAN without an ANALYSIS isn't worth the paper it's typed on.

Psmith in your office is a great "planner". He always has something on the fire. But somehow or other he never quite puts things over. His plans don't get across. Why not? Oh, just because he doesn't bother to analyze his problem—because he sets out to do what has to be done even before he knows what has to be done. He doesn't base his plan upon an actual need.

Pbrown, on the other hand, is a keen analytical thinker. A student. He's a shark at taking things to pieces and finding out what has to be done. But when he's done that, he's all done. He lacks the initiative that starts things moving. He hasn't that divine spark of something or other that gets things done. A stick of dynamite wouldn't do a bit of good. He simply hasn't the knack of building a plan. He knows what has to be done. He doesn't know how to do it.

Psmith and Pbrown—or Pbrown and Psmith—would make a fast team. But Psmith without Pbrown's analytical ability, or Pbrown without Psmith's capacity for planning how to get things done, isn't worth his weight in gold to any business enterprise.

A manufacturer friend tells an amusing yarn about a Pbrown he hired as sales manager.

"He went around analyzing everything from soup to nuts—the gadgets in our line, our markets, our competition, our salesmen.

"He was an analyzer de luxe. And all I ever got out of all his analyses was a distinct feeling that something was wrong with every gadget we made, that our markets were saturated, that our competitors had us backed off the map, and that our salesmen were a bunch of ribbon clerks.

"So," he continues, "I did a little analyzing all my own. And analyzed him out of his job. Today he's managing a filling station where they drive in for the most part and take it away from him. But in his place I got a man who found out what was wrong with gadgets, markets, salesmen—and right away he built a plan which sold goods."

Thus the futility of ANALYSIS without PLANNING.

There's the danger, too, of getting away from the SIMPLICITY OF TRUE ANALYSIS.

A job undertaken by an advertising agency for a rubber manufacturer supplies a case in point. Stripped of all the details, the task was to find out whether or not the manufacturer might profitably engage in the making of hard rubber tires for industrial trucks and trailers. If names are changed and products substituted, think nothing of it. The principle's the thing.

The agency began by analyzing the business to a fare-you-well. Everyone and everything got cross-examined.

It took three months. And when the analysis was done it told the manufacturer everything from where the rubber grew to where the money went to and came from. The trouble was, he knew all that before—or as much of it as he wanted to know. The report, in the words of a Chicago columnist, was just "64 dam pages." It didn't tell him one blessed thing he wanted to know. Or rather it was so full of plunder that he couldn't make head nor tail of it.

It wasn't SIMPLE. And because it wasn't SIMPLE, it was a far, far cry from TRUE ANALYSIS.

Well, well, the rubber manufacturer went out in the byways and got him a young man who was told to find out, if he could, whether or not there was any market for hard rubber tires on gas and electric industrial trucks, tractors and trailers, and allied equipment.

He found, for example, that there were 40,000 trucks and tractors in service; that annual sales were about 3,200 units. He discovered that, of trailers and hand lift trucks, 125,000 each were in service; annual sales were 12,000 and 10,000 units respectively. But when he came to floor and hand trucks, conservative estimates showed 8,000,000 in use, while annual sales were in the neighborhood of 250,000!

Next he found out, as accurately as possible, how many hard rubber tires were sold as original equipment. The 3,200 trucks and tractors had 12,300 wheels. But 95 per cent of them were equipped with rubber tires at the factory. On the other hand, only 7 per cent of the floor and hand trucks were thus equipped!

Outside of the truck and tractor people, he found the equipment makers opposed to hard rubber tires. Let's not go into the reasons. Yet representative manufacturers in a dozen different lines stated, when he asked them: "All future equipment purchased by us will be equipped with rubber tires."

The whole report wasn't twelve pages long. And three tables, carefully compiled from available facts and figures, told the manufacturer everything he wanted to know.

In short, upon this SIMPLE ANALYSIS, he was able to build a plan for manufacturing and merchandising solid rubber tires. Much good, though, it would have done him had he done his planning first and then found out there weren't enough wheels to wear the tires after he had made them!

So much for our "beneficent circle." Let us look into this thing called PLANNING and find out if there isn't some way of developing a knack of planning which will help us over the second major hurdle in our road to managing.

There is, we shall find, a single problem with which the planner, the constructive manager, deals. Again, it doesn't make a particle of difference whether it's Mr. Schwab and Bethlehem Steel or Tonio and his peanut stand. No business is so "different" that the principles of management fail to apply.

All right, then. The problem of every planner is first to determine what is the PRIMARY MOVING FORCE—the "initiative"—behind his job, and then to find the EASIEST PLACE TO APPLY THAT FORCE in order to set up the required MOTION or ACTIVITY with the LEAST AMOUNT OF EFFORT THAT WILL GET THE BEST RESULTS.

A long sentence. Go over it again and you will find it is divided into four distinct parts:

1. Deciding on the PRIMARY MOVING FORCE with which to set the wheels in motion.

2. Applying this FORCE at the PROPER PLACE TO GET EASIEST ACTION.

3. Directing this action along lines which either offer LEAST RESISTANCE or assure GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENT.

4. Bringing the activities to a focus at the place or time that will best carry the work to a SUCCESSFUL CONCLUSION.

The PRIMARY MOVING FORCE may be the selection of media in an advertising plan; it may be the pushing of a button in the White House which opens a dam in Arizona, a Century of Progress in Chicago, or the Annual Convention of Whammit Manufacturers at Atlantic City; or it may be the memo from the big boss which gives the research department carte blanche on a development project.

To apply this initiative to a place where it will get QUICK ACTION may be to suggest an idea in the headline of an advertisement that will set the reader to thinking of salmon fishing at Mooselookmeguntic, or of the time the ice cubes gave out just when they shouldn't. Or it may be to classify the output of a factory before shipping so that freight cars can be packed to best advantage or so that lowest freight rates may be secured. Or it may be a simple method of sorting mail so that subordinates get the jobs they can handle and only the important business is brought to the president's attention.

Directing this ACTIVITY along the lines that ASSURE GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENT may be—in the advertisement—the presentation of facts or advantages which will persuade the reader that the fishing tackle you manufacture is desirable. Again, it may be the dovetailing of a thousand elements in a huge project like the Russian Five-Year Plan so that an adequate supply of ore will be available when the blast furnaces roar into operation; so that the steel will be on hand when production in the Cheliabinsk tractor works is stepped up to meet the requirements of the new agricultural regime. Or it may involve the simple sweeping of a floor in a manner which raises a minimum of dust.

And bringing the activities to a SUCCESSFUL CONCLUSION may mean working up the arguments of the advertisement to the psychological closing of a sale—to the point where the ardent member of the Isaak Walton League figures he can live no longer without your fishing tackle and sets out gaily in the general direction of Abercrombie and Fitch's. Or it may be coordinating the entire production of a factory so that the Diesel generator set ordered by the Santa FÉ can be delivered at the exact date specified in the original order. Or it may be handling the day's correspondence on the credit man's desk so that letters which must "make the Century" are ready to go at 11:45—so that the rest of the day's work is ready to sign, stamp and mail before the 5 o'clock whistle blows.

FOUR ELEMENTS, then, in any job which is to be PLANNED. Every plan, if practicable, will follow them.

There is, by way of further illustration, the story of the factory manager of a food manufacturing plant who laid out a PLAN for an operation no more intricate than the scrubbing of the floors at night. Now it can be told.

And for two good reasons. First, because it was a practical plan which, even on such a lowly operation, saved quite a bit of money. Second, because in its construction the plan is, from the point of view of our four elements, what has sometimes been called a "natural."

One night, it seems, the manager and his wife went to the movies. The town didn't have daylight time, so it was quite dark. They passed the plant, a large six-story building.

"Why, Ed!" exclaimed the wife, "you didn't tell me the factory was working nights."

Ed, like most husbands, was in the habit of telling friend wife 'most everything. For once he was at a loss. Sure enough, the lights were going full tilt on all floors. Hitting on all six, you might say.

Then he laughed. It all came to him—"It's just the scrubwomen at work."

One feature picture, one newsreel and one animated cartoon later, they walked past the plant again.

"Look, the factory's still lit up," remarked the wife who turned off the living room lights religiously when she went out to get supper ready.

This time Ed didn't laugh.

In days like these one doesn't. Not, at any rate, at the thought of mounting electricity bills.

The very next evening he was on the job. Time somebody found out what was what. In came the cleaners. They switched on the office lights—all of them—and two of the crew went to work. A couple of others went up to the second floor, switched on all the lights and pitched in with a vim. And so ad infinitum—or at least to the sixth story.

And all the while the electric meter went round and round!

Twenty-four hours later the janitor had a new plan of work.

First the manager thought he'd start the whole crew at the top and work down. On second thought, a better plan was born—like the goddess of wisdom who sprang full grown from her papa's forehead. If I must go at this cleaning job, he thought, I might just as well make a first-class job of it and save not only on light, but on cleaners, too.

We shall pass lightly over that part of his plan which had to do with releasing scrubwomen for other productive work, for in days like these—or in any other day—we just can't figure out that sort of thing. But goodness gracious, sometimes it's necessary.

The emphasis, then, shall be on the electric current saved. The plan called for the entire crew's working together on one floor at a time—on the well-founded theory, of course, that teamwork would accomplish more in less time. Besides, since it was necessary to turn on all the lights on the floor, why not get the full benefit from them by having the entire gang at work?

So far, so good. The surprise comes when you learn that he didn't have them start at the top and work down. He started them at the bottom and worked them up.

"And I'll tell you why," explained the manager, "they have to climb six floors anyway, so they might as well work up as walk up. Besides, by leaving the stairs till the last, they can work their way down as well as up."

In other words, they went to work right where they came in. And when they had finished, they were right back where they started—back where they went out on their way home.

Simple, isn't it? An immediate reduction in lighting bills was noticeable. Even the amateur mathematician among you can figure that with one floor out of six lighted at a time, five-sixths of the light was saved. Besides, the work was done in less time—it wasn't long before two cleaners were reading the want ads. But why go into that?

We aren't, for that matter, interested so much in the savings made, because it is exceedingly doubtful if many of us pass our factories or our offices on the way to the movies. We may never have an opportunity to put this particular plan to work.

What we are interested in, though, is the fact that this cleaning plan utilizes the four basic elements which we've said must be present in every job of PLANNING.

Look at the chart. It shows the movement of energy in the manager's plan for handling his crew. Starting the scrubbers on the ground floor—they had to begin there anyway, no matter when they began to scrub—was nothing but applying the primary force at the best point to get the easiest action.

Working them up floor by floor was simply directing the activity along both the lines of least resistance and greatest accomplishment. And doing the stairs on the way down was just focusing the activity at the right point for making a successful conclusion—that is, winding up the job at the exit.

Turn back now to the FOUR ELEMENTS OF SUCCESSFUL PLANNING as we set them down on page 54. Try them out on any successful plan and assure yourself that not a point has been stretched. By using them we shall learn the constructive, creative KNACK OF PLANNING.

Stripped of the "clothes" which every plan wears—it's only in the clothing that plans differ—this KNACK OF PLANNING may be quite simply visualized by some such chart as the one shown on the opposite page.

There you see the PRIMARY FORCE—the INITIATIVE that sets the PLAN in action. Second, the POINT OF APPLICATION—where you must hit if you're going to win. Third, the various activities which bring about the SUCCESSFUL CONCLUSION. And fourth, all these activities headed up at the FOCUSING POINT.