The difference between the position of the clerk and that of the superior officer does not lie in the fact that one attends to details while the other deals with gen eral policies ; the difference lies in the kind of details each handles. The duties of the cash clerk are those of routine, repetitive in nature and involving slight re sponsibility. The manager's duties also involve de tails, but these are symptomatic details, the handling .of which involves heavy responsibilities. The clerk's error in detail caused the firm the loss of a few dollars and one customer. The manager's handling of that error was no less a detail, but the effects of a mis take on his part would have been immensely greater. In the one case, the effects of the detail are lost within the department, the office or the firm itself ; in the other, the effects lie beyond the office or the factory and involve the good-will and policies of the company.
12. Thought,the basis of administration.--The Na tional Cash R,egister Company has posted thruout its plant the notice, Think. To many executives, dis couraged by repeated efforts to awaken initiative in their employes, such a sign seems as appropriate as a display of Edison service in an institution for the blind. But telling men to think and getting no re sponse is after all no test of men's ability to think-. If there were not depths of reserve power in every man of which he is seldom conscious, it would be use less to discuss the essentials of administration. Why
urge men to think if each is already working at the upper limit of his thinking power ? Planning, giv ing orders and supervising belong to the higher planes of thinking and constitute administration. Planning, giving orders and supervising call ror outlays of energy on the part of the administrator, of which the follower of routine has not the slightest conception. That is why the office and shop men never tire of gossiping about the boss and wondering, How does he hold down his job? or, What does be do to earn his salary? Eight hours, a spot in the office or factory, a task— these constitute a "job" to most men. The energy required to do the jobs is unimportant. The men who do them soon forget that they have brains. They cease to want a position which calls for adminis trative qualities. Yet because thousands of others have deep layers of energy and reserve powers for reasoning, it is worth while to point out the essentials of administration—the goal toward which every think ing business man has a right to work, a field that is always open to those men who, tapping the hidden sources of their energies, are ever ready to mature plans, give orders with judgment and supervise effi ciently the affairs of a big business.