Increasing Efficiency In Business, Walter Dill Scott [best novels for teenagers .TXT] 📗
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sion but by selecting the common though essential
element from various former experiences
and by uniting these elements into a new unity.
This breaking up of former experiences by
analyzing out the essential factor is a difficult
task and one in which no man can proceed far
without assistance from others.
At a recent meeting of psychologists a
speaker presented a paper on the most helpful
order of presentation of topics for a course in
psychology. He simply called our attention to
certain facts which we had all experienced as
teachers of psychology. He then combined
these abstracted elements in a new unity in
such a way that I was enabled to form a reflective
judgment as to the order of presenting
topics in psychology. Without his suggestion
I probably never would have been able to make
the analysis necessary for the reflective judgment.
We need all the help we can get to assist us
to analyze our own experiences. To this end
we employ with great profit such agencies as
conferences with fellow-workmen, conventions,
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visitations, trade journals, and technical discussions
upon our own problem (cf. Chapter
XI).
3. Verbal expression. We cannot well unite
factors of previous experience into a new whole
unless we have some symbol to stand for the
new unity. As such a symbol, a word is the
most effective. Animals never carry on reflective
judgments and never can, since they do
not possess a language adequate to such demands.
The attempt to express one’s thought
in words is in reality often a means for creating
the thought as well as a means for its expression.
A few years ago I prepared a paper on
the subject, “Making Psychology Practical.”
In my attempt to express myself I clarified
my thinking, formed new generalizations, and
therefore was enabled to do with full consciousness
(with reflective judgments) what previously
I had done but blindly.
It is a most helpful practice to attempt to
express in words just what one is trying to
accomplish; what are the conditions necessary
for success; what the conditions that are lower-
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ing efficiency; and what are the possibilities of
the work, etc. The method of analysis and
expression assists wonderfully in abstracting
the aspects of one’s experience necessary for
the generalization, abstraction, and principle
used in reflective judgments.
_Special Conditions Favorable to the Formation
of Expert judgments_
There are no clearly defined special conditions
for increasing one’s capacity to apply expert
judgments. The general conditions discussed
on page 278@@@ seem to cover the case. If I have
provided, as an executive, for all these conditions
for developing expert judgments:—
(1) if I have good vigorous health,
(2) if I am working with enthusiastic application,
(3) if I have the right attitude towards my
work,
(4) and finally, if I am having frequent
experience in making practical and theoretical
judgments,—I am then fulfilling the conditions
most favorable for the development of expert
judgments.
CAPITALIZING EXPERIENCE—HABIT FORMATION
AFTER spending four years in an Eastern
college, a young graduate was put in
charge of a group of day laborers. He
assumed toward them the attitude of the athletic
director and the coach combined. He set
out to develop a winning team, one that could
handle more cubic yards of dirt in a day than
any other group on the job.
He had no guidebook and no official records
to direct him. He did not know what the
best “form” was for shoveling dirt, and he
did not know how much a good man could
accomplish in an hour. With stop watch
and notebook in hand, he began to observe
the movements of the man who seemed the
best worker in the group. He counted the
different movements made in handling a
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shovelful of dirt, and the exact time required
for each of the movements. He then made similar
observations upon other men. He found
that the best man was making fewer movements
and faster movements than his companions.
But he also discovered that even
this best workman was making movements
which were not necessary, and that he was
making some movements too slowly and thus
losing the advantage of the momentum which a
higher speed would have produced, and which
would have enabled him to accomplish the task
with less effort.
The young collegian then set about to standardize
the necessary movements and the most
economical speed for each movement required
in the work of his group. He instructed his
best man in the improved method of working,
and offered him a handsome bonus if he would
follow the specifications and accomplish the
task in the estimated time. The man, eager
to earn the increase, followed the directions
closely, and in a few weeks was enabled to
accomplish more than twice the work of the
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average workman. The improved habit of
working was then taught the other workmen,
and the result was a winning team.
The success of the young collegian did not
get into the colored supplements of the daily
press, but it was heralded by mechanical engineers
as marking an epoch in the industrial
advance of humanity. It made manifest
the necessity of a study of habits, the elimination
of the useless ones, and the acquisition
of those most beneficial.
The study of habit has not received from the
practical business man the attention which it
deserves because he has too often looked upon
habit as something detrimental to efficiency.
The possession of any and of all habits has at
times been regarded as a misfortune.
An employer of men for responsible positions
recently made this inquiry concerning each
applicant for a position, “Does he have any
habits? If so, what are they?” This employer
confused all habits with such things
as habits of intemperance, habits of slovenliness,
habits of dishonesty, and habits of loafing.
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Little did he suspect that the habits of the men
were in reality their strongest recommendation.
He did not realize that the capitalized experience
of these men was funded in the masses of
useful habits which they had acquired.
Habits are but ways of thinking and of acting
which by reason of frequent repetition
have become more or less automatic. We are
all creatures of habit; we all possess both good
and bad habits.
In performing an habitual act we do not pay
attention to the individual separate steps included
in the act. So we are liable to think of
our habitual acts as those done *carelessly, and
of other acts as those performed with caution
and consideration. The folly of such a criticism
of habit is made apparent by the study of
any act which may be performed by one person
as a habit and by another person as an act
every step of which demands attention. A
barber stropping his razor is a familiar
illustration of the working of habit. An adult
attempting to strop a razor for the first time
and compelled to give attention to each step
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in the process is a typical illustration of an act
demanding attention in contrast with an
habitual act which needs no such attention.
We are also inclined to deprecate habits on
the ground that the man in the grip of habit
is hopelessly in the *rut, that the man who has
reduced his work to habit ceases to be original
and is incapable of further improvement.
On the contrary, the grip of habit is but a
support. The editor could not write his
trenchant editorials, and the advertiser could
not write his compelling copy, unless in the act
of writing each could turn over to habit the
manipulation of the pen, the formation of the
letters, and the spelling of the words. The
attorney cannot make his most logical arguments
and the salesman cannot make the best
presentation of his goods, unless they can depend
upon habit for correct verbal expressions,
unless their thoughts clothe themselves
automatically in appropriate verbal forms.
When we are in the grip of habit, if it be a good
habit, we are not so much in a rut as on the
steel rails where alone the greatest progress is
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made possible. We are not enslaved by good
habits, but rather might it be said that no
man is truly free to advance and to make
rapid progress till he has succeeded in establishing
a mass of useful habits.
HOW HABITS ARE FORMED
Modern physiological psychology has dealt
with the problem of explaining the possibility
of the formation and maintenance of habits.
The explanation is found in the mutual development
of the mind and the nervous system
and in the dependence of thought and
action upon the nervous system, and particularly
upon the brain. To understand habit
we must look beyond thought and action and
consider some of the fundamental characteristic
features of the nervous system. One
such characteristic is the plasticity of the nervous
substance. If I bend a piece of paper and
crease it, the crease will remain even after the
paper is straightened out again. The paper is
plastic, and plasticity means simply that the
substance offers some resistance to adopting a
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new form, but that when the new form is once
impressed upon the substance it is retained.
Some effort is required to overcome the plasticity
of the paper and to form the crease, but
when it is once formed the plasticity of the
paper preserves the crease.
Modern conceptions of psychology have
emphasized the intimate relationship existing
between our thoughts and our brains. Every
time we think, a slight change takes place in
the delicate nerve-cells in some part of the
brain. Every action among these cells leaves
its indelible mark, or crease. Just as it is
easy for the paper to bend where it has been
creased before, it is likewise easy for action to
take place in the brain where it has taken place
before.
The brain may also be likened to the cylinder
or disk used in a dictating machine and in
phonographs, and a thought likened to the
needle making the original record. It takes
some energy to force the needle through the
substance of the cylinder, but thereafter it
moves along the opened groove with a mini-
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mum of resistance. In a similar way it is
easy to think the old thought or to perform
the old act, but it is most difficult to be original
in thinking and in acting. When an idea
has been thought or an act performed many
times, the crease or groove becomes so well
established that thinking or acting along that
crease or groove is easier than other thoughts
or actions, and so this easier one may be said
to have become habitual. In a very real sense
the thoughts and actions form the brain by
means of the delicate physical changes which
they produce; and then, when the brain is
formed, its plasticity is so great that it determines
our future thinking and acting.
HABIT SHORTENS THE TIME NECESSARY FOR A
THOUGHT OR AN ACT
Human efficiency depends in part upon the
rapidity with which we are able to accomplish
our tasks. It is surprising to us all when we
find how rapidly we can accomplish our habitual
acts and how slowly we perform the tasks to
which we are compelled to give specific atten-
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tion. I find that I can repeat the twenty-six
letters of the alphabet in two seconds. I do
not give attention to the order of the letters)
but all I seem to do is to start the process, and
then it says itself. If, however, I attempt to
pronounce the alphabet backward, my first
attempt
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