Accent on Living

I’VE been thinking of shifting Meeker to Little Rock,” the sales manager said, “and putting him in charge there. But first I thought I‘d better take a look at his fitness-capacity quotient.”

The personnel man opened a file. “We haven’t run any GFC’s lately,” he said, “but there’s nothing against Meeker in the UDI — that’s the new Urgent-Derogatory Index. His flickerfusion threshold is high, Rorschach inconclusive, hematocrit 42 — all in all. Meeker looks like a fairly good risk.”

“What do you get from his thematic apperception test?”

“A shade too aggressive. That was the interpretation, at any rate, but it came from Hodgkins and we all remember what his electro-encephalogram showed. No, I think you’re safe in going ahead with Meeker, at least for the Little Rock job.”

“I don’t want to seem too old-hat,” said the sales manager, “but it happens that Meeker comes from down that way. He’s well connected there, and I thought —”

The trouble is that what the sales manager was about to say would seem painfully old-hat to a personnel sharp. It would be one of those rule-ofthumb opinions, based only on what used to be called common sense and experience, and no such unscientific reason would be tolerated today in any well-managed company.

Business, so I am told, has entered a new epoch. There was a time — when production first began to expand — when the emphasis was on the executive who could make the stuff, the man who knew how to produce more drop forgings than the other fellow, the great steel makers and auto makers. These were followed by the supersalesman, the genius who could create a market for any old product and a bigger market for his own than anyone else had ever dreamed of, the success-story hero who began with a paper route and wound up in a walnut-paneled office with imitation coals glowing in the fireplace. Next came the era of the financial genius, who made more money for the company by reorganizing and borrowing and floating and splitting and merging than it had ever made from its own products.

All three of these types had their heyday and all have been succeeded by the newest ideal of what the high command ought to be — the Personnel Man. (I need not add that it was a Personnel Man who so kindly explained to me the sequence which I have just set down.)

This is the age of Personnel, of rounding and squaring each human peg to fit snugly into its job-socket. If the pegs organize a union, it is Personnel to whom labor relations are entrusted; Personnel must devise incentives for all sorts of improvements and increases; and it is up to Personnel to convince everyone that in putting the company’s interest ahead of his own he is really putting his own interest first — a curiously circular sort of proposition, this last, and one to be expounded only by experts. It becomes inevitable that, having mastered such great problems as these, Personnel must extend its sway into the higher reaches of management and indeed take over management itself.

On its way to the top, Personnel has naturally become more and more scientific. There is a machine on the market, for instance, that is believed to evaluate an interview between the applicant for a job and the company’s man by measuring the frequency and duration of the applicant’s utterances. If they are few and protracted, it means one thing; if few and terse, something else; and if he talks more or less all the time, still another. The machine may sound a bit dreamy in what it is supposed to achieve, but at least it‘s a machine and just that much more impersonal and scientific than the impressions jotted down in a notebook by the interviewer.

It need not surprise us if Personnel continues to use more machinery and more scientists. As one rather eminent consultant to management explained it to me, “They seem to be falling for all sorts of these tests — ink blots, little pictures, and so on — and even if nobody knows quite how to interpret them, they do no harm. And what’s the difference, so long as the applicant gets an ordinarily competent interview anyhow?”

But as I read about the conference between a group of personnel men from industry and the Menninger brothers, on what lies ahead in “industrial psychiatry,” I was reminded of the old story about the company president who summoned the sales manager for a momentous conference. I realize that Personnel is becoming very scientific, yet I hear from time to time of companies to which the story still seems applicable. However that may be: —

“George,” the company president began, “when you went to work for us eight years ago you started at the bottom, in the shipping department.

“Two years later you were traffic manager. Your progress was equally striking in production, and you were the youngest plant superintendent in the history of the company. As head of the sales department, your record is no less distinguished. It is true that government orders have absorbed most of our output, but I know how highly your associates rate your ability.

“Now comes a time when I must consider once again the company’s future. I have made an important decision, and in making it I have tried, as always, to put the interests of the company first, ahead of my own.

“Effective immediately, I am resigning the presidency of the company in order to open the way for a younger man. I shall become chairman of the board, and I am happy to inform you that you are to succeed me as president.”

The sales manager blushed and gulped. “Gee! ” he responded. “Gee, thanks, Dad.”