Chapter - 11

HowTo Get Your Raise And Promotion

How To Know When A Raise Is A Raise

Within the last 50 years a man's productivity, and hence earning power, has increased so enormously that salary raises are handed out with what seems to be automatic regularity for a variety of reasons. Of course labor and management see nothing automatic about the process, leaders of the former trying to "better conditions for the workingman" and leaders of the latter trying to "hold the price line to stop inflation." I don't intend to enter that debate. Some of the highest-priced brains in the world have been working on that problem from both sides of the fence, and the fence seems to be just as strong as ever. In fact, when our future generation arrives to colonize Venus, I am sure it will take up the labor-management problem at about where it was when the first man went to work for another.

My concern is exclusively with the individual who wants to make a habit of success. He faces some new problems seldom studied, and then only rarely understood. Management has its problems, and labor has its problems, and if the individual caught in between has his problems, well—that's his own lookout, or so goes the general line of thinking.

Yet the success-minded individualist is the backbone of our creative civilization. And today, faced with periodic pay raises to meet increased costs of living, faced with pay raises based on seniority, faced with pension plans, and Social Security, and medical benefits, he is finding it far easier to "take what is coming to him" than exercise his God-given talents. This can be boiled down to the fact that the biggest obstacle in the course to success today is the comfort we can heap on mediocrity.

I do not believe that a salary adjusted to meet an increased cost of living is a raise. I do not believe a salary increase based on length of service is a raise. And I must deplore the continued employment of men on jobs made obsolete by technical advances—featherbedding is the usual term—for two reasons: In the first place a man not carrying his own weight reduces the productivity average of his associates, and in the second place, the featherbedder suffers enormously in damaged morale, knowing that he is drawing good wages for a job that serves no useful purpose.
What does this mean to you? Much! When raises are handed out at periodic intervals to meet increased living costs or the demands of seniority, the man whose contributions to increased efficiency entitle him to a raise is more apt to be reminded of the raises he has already received than the raise he deserves. Where featherbedding is practised, his increased productivity is needed to meet the drain of men who produce nothing. And while it is true that only mediocrity is encouraged when people can get pay raises by virtue of increased living costs or seniority, regardless of initiative, little is being done to alleviate this situation. As a matter of act, the man whose superior talents entitle him to a raise is too often regarded as a problem. If he is granted the raise because he has earned it, all of his associates will want raises because group raises have become a fixture in group thinking, and no employer likes to choose between a group raise or a discontented crew.

The net, and much more serious result, is that extra effort and the employment of superior talent tends to be discouraged.
 
As "group-thinking" has it, there is just so much money in the pot to be parceled out in raises. If one man gets an individual raise, there is that much less when the time comes to "slice the turkey/' No one knows this better than management, and to keep the peace, they would rather have one somewhat discouraged top performer on their hands than a score or more of his discontented associates demanding to know why the company couldn't afford to give them raises if it could give him one.

Most books and articles on how to become successful are helpful in telling you what to do while omitting to tell you what you are up against. The advice may be good, but it loses its effectiveness if you are still working in the dark. Labor has developed some techniques to win increased salaries for all. Management has developed some techniques to protect itself from the more exorbitant features of increased salary demands. Abuses of these techniques exist on both sides, and crushed in the middle is the ambitious individual who would proceed on personal merit.

Your top executive in management was such a climber. Your top labor leader was such a climber. Both climbed to the top by asserting their individualism and making the most of then-talents, and yet both seem to be united in reducing individualists to conformists who can be more easily regimented.

Management Wage Policy

Maybe they figure that if an individual has the energy and ambition, he will find his way to the top as they did, but I would put it this way: So swiftly have conditions changed in the last 15 years that if the men now occupying top positions in labor and management had to start over, many of them would find themselves regimented in subordinate positions by the very practices they helped originate. Let me list a few of these practices so you will recognize them if you meet them.
 
First would be the "annual review," a procedure through which management scrutinizes the payroll once a year and re-evaluates salaries, usually upping them. Theoretically, you are thus assured that your salary will be examined at annual intervals and your contributions to company efficiency will then be recognized and rewarded.

Actually the procedure is a handy way of avoiding the consideration of raises during the other months of the year, a special hardship on men of ability who progress faster and contribute more than their associates. It is also hard on the new employee hired just after the annual review and whose talents might have to wait another twenty months for recognition. And while management tries to establish the fact that raises are for those who earned them, they are usually so widely distributed to keep everyone happy that little or no difference is drawn between the bench warmers and the hard players. The unhappy result—the incentive to achieve excellence is lowered, and the hard players soon learn to "join the team" on the bench.

Then there is the time-honored practice of "Management by Exception," advocated by most of the standard books on business management. The business graph on the wall, made famous by cartoonists, is a part of it. The graph is supposed to indicate the course of sales or production, usually hopefully upward, and any deviation from the chart up or down—any exception—is thereby instantly revealed, and instantly acted upon. In the same way, records are kept of what each employee is expected to produce, and the alert supervisor is supposed to detect immediately any exception to the norm.

Theoretically, the supervisor should be as happy to detect a superior performance as a sales manager would be to detect signs of a boom, but it does not work out that way in the majority of instances. Most supervisors think of themselves as "fire fighters" or "trouble shooters," and in that frame of mind they are alert to detect any signs of inefficiency that threaten to give their department a bad name. The lazy or inefficient worker is soon dealt with. The average worker who does what is expected of him is considered to be "no problem" by the supervisor. The gifted, or "exceptional" man should be, according to the rules, as much of a problem as the below-par man. He should be recommended for promotion, and another man brought in to take his place, all of which involves a lot of paper work and training that the supervisor would rather not face.

Far better, in his opinion, to have a superior man around to help out in emergencies than to promote him and face breaking in another man who might be of no value whatever. Thus while "Management by Exception" does serve to weed out the incompetents, it usually continues to breed mediocrity by failing to give recognition to merit.

Another hurdle in the path of personal progress is the established belief in many companies that the cost of promoting a man and "breaking him in on the new job" exceeds his worth for months or even years. At one time it was believed that a graduate engineer had to spend two years in the field before he earned back his first year's salary. I know it is often the case that management spends thousands of dollars over and beyond a man's salary in breaking him in on a new job, but I consider this extravagance a case of pure short-sightedness on the part of management.

Either it failed to prepare a man properly for his new responsibilities, or it did not know how to select the right man for the job. In either case, management deserves to pay extra for its deficiencies. But while I can't feel sorry for management under such circumstances, I do regret that it has made management, on the whole, hesitant about handing out raises and promotions as rapidly as it should for its own good.

What these practices all add up to is a serious case of management inertia. It believes that if it gives a raise to one, it must give corresponding raises to others, and it is cheaper to let one man suffer than raise the whole crew. It believes that if a superior man is doing a good job, he is usually no problem and so can be left where he is. It believes that promoting a man entails all sorts of training expenses and uncertainties, not to mention the paper work, so why take the risk that he will flop? Laboring under this negative attitude, it is loathe to move at all.

When And How To Get A Raise

Well, it is the job of placement counsellors to find the problems so we can provide solutions, and this we have done. Now I'm going to give you the techniques for getting your raise in spite of the aforementioned obstacles, techniques that have worked consistently for thousands of people in all kinds of work.

I’ll summarize the four steps first, and then supply the details:

(1) Be sure you have earned your raise.

(2) Be sure your supervisor knows you have earned it.

(3) Be sure he knows that you know you have earned it.

(4) Be sure he knows you know he knows.

That's all there is to it. Brief enough to be easily memorized, and well worth it.

The first thing the above summary does is return the problem of getting a raise to the one man who wants it—you. No one else wants problems, and least of all do they want someone else's. Are you fully informed on what you have been doing, and how well you have been doing it? The great probability is that if you have been performing with above-average ability, you have been placed in a 'let well enough alone" category, and so have heard few words of praise or condemnation on which to base an opinion. Until you make your own appraisal of your situation, you won't know where you stand.

Well, "Management by Exception" is not a procedure limited to management. You have the same prerogative. Keep a written record of what is expected of your job, and especially keep track whenever your performance has exceeded that which was expected of you. In that way you can document your claim to having earned a raise. The next, and more diplomatic step, is to let your supervisor know you have earned it.

I was fortunate enough to learn about this step on my first job by doing it all wrong. Even then, at 19, I was opposed to hard work, having some elementary idea that jobs should supply a lot of enjoyment and money. Part of my work was to check billings to customers. Another part was to check with the warehouse foreman on the delivery of materials, and a third part was to accept telephoned orders from customers. That last part was complicated by the fact that before I could assure the customer his order would be filled, I had to shout back to the foreman to find out if the merchandise was in stock.

I followed procedure for a month or so to solidify my hold on the job, and then I began to hunt for easier ways out. Today we would say I began "seeking ways to increase efficiency." I began keeping track of incoming stock and out-going orders on opposite pages of a cheap notebook. It was not an original system but, never having studied bookkeeping, it was original with me, and I was proud of it. Within a month I knew as much about the merchandise we had left in the warehouse as did the foreman, and no longer had to shout back to him to ask if such-and-such an item was in stock. I was saving both of us a lot of work, but that is not the recognition I got.

I was in trouble. I had gone over the foreman's head. By filling orders without consulting him first, I had left him uninformed of what was going on in his own domain, and that was bad. True, he could see from my record what was coming in and going out, but he didn't want to have to "consult with a kid" to discover what was going on. He reported me to the owner of the wholesale house, claiming that I was a spy keeping secret records of the company's business, "For no good purpose, 111 warrant."

The next I knew, the boss came storming in and snatched my notebook right out from under my hand as I was making an entry, leaving a large scrawl across the page. "Now I’ll find out what kind of a trick you are up to," he shouted, and stormed out. I sat out the rest of the day, knowing I was fired, but afraid to leave for fear it would look like some kind of an admission of guilt. Shortly before quitting time the boss returned, this time in a calmer mood.

"You had better explain this to me," he said. "It looks like an auditing system I'm interested in, but the way you have it here, I can't make it out."

We were able to get together then, and when he discovered my system was not a nefarious plot to sell his business secrets to some rival concern, we were able to talk until way into the night.

In the end he said, "All right, I'm going to approve of your system, and make it a part of our company records. But never take off on your own again without consulting me first. You made an enemy of the foreman, one of my oldest employees, but I think I can square that when he gets the orders from me instead of you. Just stay out of his way for a while, and he'll calm down. And if you happen to get a raise in your salary, don't say anything about that, either."

The above anecdote illustrates another of the big obstacles in your way to a salary increase—the ignorance of your immediate superior of what you are doing. You may think you are doing him a favor and saving him a lot of unnecessary work, as I did, but unless he knows that that is what you are doing, his reaction is apt to be quite hostile.

When you take your talents for granted, you assume that they are equally obvious to others, and this is rarely the case. The foreman didn't know if I was saving him work, or trying to beat him out of his job. Had I informed him about my plans —and the best way to do that is through asking his advice about them—I would have won him over as a friend and an ally. As it was, it was some weeks before I could convince him I was not plotting to undermine his job.

Nevertheless, I had done something that had improved the stock-handling procedure of the company. My foreman had brought my work to the attention of the owner—not, I'll admit to get me a raise but to expose my "plot"—and when my contribution proved to be of value, I got my raise.
Of course there was a lot of "luck" connected with my first raise. I really didn't know I had done anything special. I thought of my inventory system as something developed "in the line of duty," and would have thought myself presumptuous had I called it to the attention of the owner. Not until later, when I began to hunger for a second raise, did I realize that Lady Luck was not going to come around with raises as often as I might like.
It was then that I sat down to write a list of reasons, based on my contributions to the company, as to why I had earned another raise. When my list also included the fact that my foreman had handled some $50,000 more in merchandise than he had during the previous year, and at no additional cost to the company, he was quite willing to pass the information on to the owner. We both got raises.

Ever since then I have been a strong advocate of the four steps previously enumerated. Before you can ask for a raise, you've got to know you have earned one, and this you can learn only by keeping written records. In today's business world, few are the supervisors who will tell you when your performance is above average and hence deserving of a raise. At best they'll let you know you are doing as well as is expected of you, and hope you'll let it go at that. Most people will. When all the emphasis is on "making good" instead of "doing better," the majority of men are more concerned about making a mistake—slipping below what is expected of them—than they are with special contributions. That still doesn't stop the contributions from being raise-worthy and praise-worthy if they are recognized and written down.

Two important things happen when you begin to keep a record of your above-par work. First, you are "thinking rich" when you are looking for your highest values instead of your "get along" values. And second, when you are conscious of your written progress report, and several days pass in which you have nothing significant to record, you will begin looking over the job to see what more contributions you can make, if only to add something to the report. One of my clients became so obsessed with adding one daily contribution to his "work diary" that he was actually astonished when he found himself marked for a raise.

How Much Of A Raise Do You Want?

I've heard men say, "I really don't care how big the raise is, just so I get some recognition for my work." What hurts me is that they are sincere when they say it. They are more starved for the pat on the back that the raise symbolizes than they are for the money. My own idea is that if a man is worthy of a raise, the raise should be worthy of him.

Here you must keep in mind the fact that even the fairest of employers must profit from your enterprise. If you work out a program that saves $5,000 a year for the company, and are rewarded with a $5,000 a year raise, you haven't saved the company a cent. Or let's say you work out a routing that saves the company a thousand dollars on a costly freight shipment, and are rewarded with a $50-a-month raise. Unless you can come up with more cost-reducing procedures, and soon, your raise will devour your original savings, and the company will begin looking at you with a yellowed eye.

In the former instance, where the savings effected for the company continue year after year, you have produced the equivalent of a patented product that returns an annual profit of $5,000. A proportionate increase in salary is indicated plus, possibly, a bonus for the creation of the original cost-reducing plan. In the case of the once-in-a-blue-moon savings on a big freight shipment, I would consider a one-shot bonus of one or two hundred dollars as a fair reward for a one-shot accomplishment.

The important point is that in both cases you have to keep your own records to prove that the company has benefited, or you cannot expect to be rewarded in proportion to your contributions. Again it's a case of, "If you don't know you've done anything special, why should anyone else?"

What land of a record should you keep? The best place to start is with the date of your employment, or, if you have had raises since then, the date of your last raise. Just what were you doing then? Below are four forms to assist you. Use a separate sheet of paper for each, starting out with the questions as listed and following through on the rest of the page with the details.

Salary Increase Form No. 1

What was the date of your last salary increase?

How much was your raise? $    per (week, month or year)

List here your duties and responsibilities just after you had the raise:

Form No. 2 is intended to show where possible the difference between your job before the raise and your job after the raise.

Salary Increase Form No. 2

a. What were your job duties and responsibilities before the date given on Form No. 1?

b. Were there any special reasons for your being giventhe raise? If so, describe briefly.

Form No. 3 relates to your contributions since your last raise. It sometimes happens that increases are given in anticipation of increased results; that is why your answers on Form No. 3 may need to be considered along with your answers to Item b. in Form No. 2. In the great majority of cases, however, contributions or improvements are followed by a raise.

Salary Increase Form No. 3

Describe your contributions (alone, or in association with others—say which) since the date of your last raise.

Form No. 4 is a record of your present duties and responsibilities. This enables you to compare the changes in these which may have taken place since your last raise.

Salary Increase Form No. 4 What are your duties and responsibilities, now?

In completing the above forms, each must be considered as independent of the others. Do not refer to the answers in one while filling out the next. Not until all have been completed should they be compared, and then the comparisons should answer the following questions:

(1) Why did you receive your last raise?

(2) What have you done since that makes you feel you deserve a raise now?

(3) Why should your supervisor and other executives share your conviction that you have earned a raise?

With this information you are now prepared to take Step Two. You know you have earned your raise. Now make sure your supervisor knows you have earned it. This is sometimes difficult, and almost always delicate, but as always, honesty is the best policy. Here is how George Wiley met the situation:

George had made the jump from a small chemical company to the giant chemical concern of Dulac, Inc., with the vague idea that if he jumped from a little outfit to a big one his success would be scaled accordingly. Instead, after two-and-a-half years as a Senior Engineer and assistant to the Division Manager, he was still just that at no increase in salary. The Division Manager, within two years of retirement, had come to depend upon George, and was in no hurry to see him promoted. Quite congenially he agreed that George was deserving of a raise, but, regretfully, he had to state that George was already in the top salary bracket when one considered his age, length of time with the company, and his Senior Engineer title.
George suggested a transfer to another department and a new title that warranted an increase in salary. The old gent agreed that this was the solution, but he never found time to act on it. It was the old Army game. George could not get a promotion until his superior approved it, and the superior wasn't going to approve an act that was tantamount to severing his professional right arm.

When George came to me, he was ready to quit. Prices were rising, he said, and his salary wasn't. His wife was bitter because they couldn't afford to join the country club that was a status symbol separating the successes from the failures. George didn't care about the club, but he did object to the fact that many of his college fraternity brothers of less talent were ahead of him in prestige and salary.

I knew Dulac was a good company, and after I had heard all of George's story, I was convinced he could find his success there if he could get himself out of the trap into which he had jumped. If only he had taken the time to analyze the job before jumping—! But jumped he had, and trapped he was. Nevertheless, business traditions are made by men, and what men have made, men can change. That has to be true, or there would be no change, no progess, at all.

Remember that if you run into a stone wall. As the whole world changes from hour to hour, so must change the rules that have nothing to support them but tradition. Any time you hear the words, "It's a rule around here not to—" or "It is company policy to—" you know something is in need of up-dating, and you might get an additional raise for doing so.

I had George go through all the procedures described in this book, from the analysis of his achievements and Functional Self-Analysis to the completion of the four forms prescribed in this chapter. Amazingly, for a man of his education and experience, he knew very little about Dulac, Inc., beyond the limits of the job that had absorbed all of his time.

He knew, of course, that the company was expanding rapidly in the fields of chemicals, plastics, paints, and fertilizers, but not until he had completed his research in company history and had "functionalized" several jobs in various departments did he realize what a wide range of opportunities it offered a man of his ability. And more surprisingly, not until he had "functionalized" his own job in terms of corresponding jobs did he realize that he was actually functioning as a Division Administrator, a job about three levels above that of Senior Engineer. His crusty old boss, coasting on the downgrade to retirement, had eased out of most of his responsibilities and was 'letting George do it" with a vengeance.

We agreed that George's boss was not going to be very cooperative in advancing George's cause. At the same time, "lines of command" were firmly established at Dulac, and to go over a supervisor's head was a breach of etiquette that could lead to serious trouble. That meant we had to go over the man's head without appearing to do so.

I suggested that George develop a forecast of his carreer for the next twelve months, documenting it in the same way the company documented its own annual forecast. He began with a summary of the talents and values he had brought to the company at the date of his hiring. This was followed by detailed descriptions of the contributions he had made since. Thanks to the careful analysis of his functions, this list showed a steady increase of responsibilities, up to and including the responsibilities normally assumed by a Division Administrator. It made a fine record of accomplishment—an onward and upward report that stood out in sharp contrast to a job title and salary that showed no change whatever. Then he headed the report with a title page which read:

"To Mrs. George Wiley from George Wiley.

"Subject: Financial and progress forecast for the next twelve months, with alternatives for improvement, on the occasion of our tenth wedding anniversary."

(Experience has proven that the use of anniversary dates is one of the most disarming techniques in getting around "lines of command." Almost any anniversary can be used—the birthday of a key executive; the date you joined the company, the company's "founder's day," or date of incorporation; the birth of a child and the subsequent passing out of cigars, and similar occasions.)

Under favorable circumstances, George could have taken his "anniversary promise to his wife" to his boss with a smiling suggestion that he check it for accuracy. That step being out of the question, George put in a phone call to the key executive who had had the final word on hiring him.

When that dignitary answered, George said, "My wife and I had a long talk last night about my work here. You came into the picture because you were the one who hired me and assigned me to my job. You gave me such an inspiring talk that day that I wish there was some way I could talk things over with you again."

"Nothing easier," replied the executive. "I see I've got a luncheon open next week. Make it then."

George handed over the report, without comment, as the table was being cleared, and before the coffee was served. The executive read it unsmilingly, and handed it back.

"What do you want me to do about it?" he asked.

"I don't know that you can do anything," said George. "I don't seem to have any alternative but to leave, much as I like the company as a whole. What I really want is your advice."

Between being flattered by the request for his advice, and challenged by a situation about which he might be helpless, the executive said, "Let me borrow that report of yours for a few days. I'm getting a couple of ideas I can't talk about now, but 111 call you Monday if not sooner. My only advice right now is not to do anything until you hear from me."

And on Monday George began a series of interviews within the company that brought him a $2,200 raise.

In this case the four-point formula was modified only enough to get around a recalcitrant boss. George knew he had earned a raise. His boss knew it but refused to do anything about it. So George resorted to diplomacy to let a higher executive know he had earned a raise. And he made sure, through the presentation of his "forecast," that this top executive knew that George knew that he had earned his raise.

Every man and woman has different experiences and faces different situations in getting a raise, but the case history of Wiley will serve as a flexible guide. The general principle of filling out the aforementioned forms is to compel yourself to "think on paper." Such "written thinking" will do much to clarify your position and reveal why you are uniquely deserving of a raise even though the "annual review" might be months in the future. In their final drafts, the four forms should reveal that you have self-confidence, without arrogance or egotism. They should indicate a knowledge of your own worthwhileness, a belief in your value to the company, and a genuine concern in doing whatever may be necessary to continue your—and the company's—progress.

Raises Versus Promotions

A popular misconception is that raises and promotions are the same thing, and it is usually true that a promotion and a raise go hand in hand. But raises are far less often accompanied by promotions. A good worker gets his raise when he does the same job better as a result of increased skill and experience. The senior stenographer in the office stenographic pool makes more than the newcomer, but technically she is still a stenographer. A stone cutter with the skill and experience to carve elaborate friezes for modern buildings may command a tremendous salary, but he is still a stone cutter, and will remain so, low on the status totem pole, unless he wants to open his own shop and become a sculptor—an enormous increase in status too often accompanied by a drop in income.

A promotion is an advancement to a position with a title and responsibilities that indicate a change for the better in your prestige and power. It may be accompanied by a substantial raise, or admit you to the company profit-sharing plan, or provide an extra week's vacation, or do no more than give you a key to the executives' men's room. But unless you are "kicked upstairs" to a pretentious but empty title, as some companies do when they can't retire aging executives soon enough, a promotion is a recognition of your ability to assume responsibility for the work of others as well as yourself.

The mere fact that others are involved alters considerably your approach to your work. Whereas before you were concerned with how well you did your job, and what the boss thought about your work, you are now concerned about how well you and your subordinates do the job, what you think about them, what they think about you, and above all, what your superiors think about you in particular and your department in general.

All of which brings up the subject of company politics. The man with his nose to the grindstone can remain aloof from company politics because neither he nor his obdurate nose are going anywhere anyway. But you are concerned with your subordinates and your superiors, and where you are concerned with people, you are concerned with politics. In that spot there are no neutrals—only insiders and outsiders, and you can't help steer the ship unless you are a recognized member of the crew.

If you want to continue to be promoted up the managerial ladder, you must realize that the higher you go, the smarter will be the men with whom you must play politics. In his famous best-selling book, The Status Seekers, Author Vance Packard asserts that it is becoming increasingly difficult for non-college graduates to win top managerial positions, the implication being that college men can get along together more smoothly than their rougher contemporaries who came up "the hard way."

My own experience with both college and non-college men in approximately equal numbers gives the college men the advantage in only one easily remedied respect. The college man is trained to "think rich," and moves confidently ahead on the assurance that his diploma will carry him through. No matter that he may be poverty-stricken in the ability department; he is rich in college associates and rich in thought. What he can't do himself, his air of confidence often will help him do. Confronted with this collegiate self-assurance, the non-college man tends to go on the defensive, and few are the sales made when the pitch is in defense of the product instead of in the assertion of its merits.

Two things must be taken into consideration here. Success is an accumulative thing. The higher you go, the more responsibilities you accumulate. To the vast majority, college or non-college, this accumulation of responsibilities and the resulting "high pressure" becomes a terrifying thing, and they tend to slack off just when the going is good. At the same time, the higher you go, the more experience you have in handling responsibilities, and the more subordinates you have to handle them. And if you haven't left the selection of your subordinates to intelligence tests and letters of recommendation from "old grads," you've got a loyal crew behind you shoving you ahead for their own good.
 
If what I say next sounds derogatory to college educations, it is not because I am not in favor of colleges. I am in favor of all the education a man can get. What I do object to is the smug assumption that what a man learns in four years of ivy-walled seclusion, during which he may or may not have achieved anything worth mentioning, is going to last him the rest of his life. As the old Latin proverb has it, "A good man is always a good learner," one of the few proverbs as good today as then. The reverse of that, equally true, is that a good learner is always a good man, only in that case college has nothing to do with it.

As I have pointed out, the habit of success is based on a constant study of your achievements and their relation to how you want to function in life. This is no ivory-towered study to be completed in four years and then forgotten. It is an unending and ever-expanding process through which you accumulate increasingly valuable experiences. And when these achievements are written down and analyzed in terms of value to your organization and yourself, you will have living dollar signs speaking for you with far more authority than can a dusty diploma.

Finding The Line Of Power

At 31, Walter Basel was a sales engineer doing most of the field work for the Department Sales Manager. Because he was seldom in the home office, he had few opportunities to participate in office politics, and because of that, too, he was usually "out of sight—out of mind" when choice assignments came up. His Functional Self Analysis supported his ambition to become an inside executive, but how to get that idea across to his superiors when they hardly knew him by sight?

To emphasize his difficulty, Basel brought in an organization chart of the company which clearly revealed the responsibilities of every man from floor washer to president, and just who reported to whom, and for what.

"You see, my boss is sitting on top of the whole sales department," he explained. "There is no one else I can go to without crossing organization lines, and I'd get my ears pinned back if I did that."

It was a beautiful chart, almost as complicated as the geneo-logical chart of Queen Elizabeth, but I was unimpressed. "This is the way the company wishes it was," I said. "A place for each man, and every man in his place, like tools in an efficient tool room. But men aren't as easily placed as tools, and that's what makes an organization chart a pretty dead thing. It shows the line of command, but it doesn't show the line of power."

"Double-talk," said Basel.

"Not at all. Some of these executives carry their own weight in their departments, but others ride on the title while another man, usually more quiet and approachable, has most of the responsibility. You have heard something like, 'It's all right to put the requisition through channels, but if you really want action, tell Hank.' Well, Hank might not be listed on the line of command, but when it comes to getting something done, he's on the line of power. And you can reach Hank without crossing organization lines."

Basel found his "Hank" in the person of the mild-mannered man who served as secretary to the Executive Vice President. To all intents and purposes, he had no more to say about what went on in the company than did the pencil with which he took notes, but what the V.P. didn't know about the company, he did.

Basel made his first approach by borrowing a technical manual from the front office, "to bone up for his field trip." When he returned from his trip he returned the book with a note: "The company I called on is using the procedures described on Page 17, but with some modifications I think you
should know about. Looked good to me. I think Mr. K. (the head of another department) would be interested."

As Basel expected, he was called in to elaborate on his note, but when the secretary suggested he pass the information along to Mr. K. in person, he pleaded organization lines. "I don't want the word getting back to my boss that I've been going over his head."

"I get it," approved the secretary. "Just a minute, and I’ll clear it with the head man." Two minutes later Basel was in the V.P.'s office explaining the modifications he had encountered.
"I’ll be glad to write up a full report," he volunteered.

"Okay, write it up," said the V.P.

In reporting the conversation to me, Basel was emotionally upset. "It was a run-around. The head man didn't smile. He showed no interest or enthusiasm. I know he just told me to write up the report to get rid of me."

It took a little explaining, but finally Basel appreciated the fact that the V.P. had been shown nothing to get enthusiastic about. All talk, possibly constructive talk, but still nothing had actually happened.

"You got what you wanted," I said. "The head man paid some attention to you, which was more than you expected, and now your Mr. K. will be showing you some attention if you write up the kind of a report he can use. Now you’ve got to really get to work to make that report good."

During the next four months Basel made two more long field trips, borrowed six books from the secretary, and turned in two more constructive reports. The secretary knew what Basel was up to, and so did the V.P., but they appreciated his extra efforts, especially when one report led to an unexpected sale. Under those circumstances, executives will usually cooperate with the man who is making his program effective; in fact, I have hundreds of cases to prove that they will clear a path for him. They did for Basel when they made him Mr. K.'s assistant at a substantial increase in salary, and took him off the road at a substantial increase in domestic bliss.

Tradition has it that Opportunity knocks but once. How typical of tradition—waiting for something as attractive as Opportunity to come around seeking you. How much more gallant to go out seeking her, especially now that she is no longer hard to find if you know where to look. The techniques described in this chapter can be adjusted to lead you there from no matter whence you might start.

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