IGNORANCE OF REAL CAPACITY.—­Dr. Taylor has emphasized the fact that the average workman does not know either his true efficiency or his true capacity.[7] The experience of others has also gone to show that even the skilled workman has little or inaccurate knowledge of the amount of output that a good worker can achieve at his chosen vocation in a given time.[8]

For example,—­until a bricklayer has seen his output counted for several days, he has little idea of how many bricks he can lay, or has laid, in a day.[9]

The average manager is usually even more ignorant of the capacity of the workers than are the men themselves.[10] This is because of the prevalence of, and the actual necessity for the worker’s best interest, under some forms of management, of “soldiering.”  Even when the manager realizes that soldiering is going on, he has no way, especially under ordinary management, of determining its extent.

LITTLE MEASUREMENT IN TRADITIONAL MANAGEMENT.—­Under Traditional Management there was little measurement of a man’s capacity.  The emphasis was entirely on the results.  There was, it is true, in everything beyond the most elementary of Traditional Management, a measurement of the result.  The manager did know, at the end of certain periods of time, how much work had been done, and how much it had cost him.  This was a very important thing for him to know.  If his cost ran too high, and his output fell too low, he investigated.  If he found a defect, he tried to remedy it; but much time had to be wasted in this investigation, because often he had no idea where to start in to look for the defects.  The result of the defects was usually the cause for the inquiry as to their presence.

He might investigate the men, he might investigate the methods, he might investigate the equipment, he might investigate the surroundings, and so on,—­and very often in the mind of the Traditional manager, there was not even this most elementary division.  If things went wrong he simply knew,—­“Something is wrong somewhere,” and it was the work of the foremen to find out where the place was, or so to speed up the men that the output should be increased and the cost lowered.  Whether the defects were really remedied, or simply concealed by temporarily speeding up, was not seriously questioned.

Moreover, until measuring devices are secured, the only standard is what someone thinks about things, and the pity of it is that even this condition does not remain staple.

TRANSITORY MANAGEMENT REALIZES VALUE OF MEASUREMENT.—­One of the first improvements introduced when Traditional Management gives place to the Transitory stage is the measurement of the separated output of individual workers.  These outputs are measured and recorded.  The records for extra high outputs are presented to the worker promptly, so that he may have a keen idea constantly of the relation of effort to output, while the fatigue and the effort of doing the work is still fresh in his mind.