MANAGEMENT, then. Their skillful application to a business or to a job is the KNACK OF MANAGING.

To do a real bang-up job of managing, whether carrying a message or directing a million-dollar business, the first step is: Don't make a single move until you've found out exactly what needs to be done.

But our first Do turned out to be a Don't. So let's restate it. Find out exactly what has to be done before you make a single move.

You've heard that before? And it doesn't mean a thing?

Neither did it mean a thing to a bright young man who was taken on as production manager in a shoe factory. The shoes were good. Prices were right. Business was booming. The factory was full of orders.

But somehow or other shoes weren't getting shipped on time—or anything like on time. Three to four weeks late came to be the customary thing. And customers were, needless to say, kicking like steers.

So the bright young man was taken on to get things ironed out.

He pitched in with vim and vigor.

The first morning's mail brought a dozen complaints of slow deliveries. People were practically barefoot out in Kansas and Ohio. They were waiting for those shoes.

"Ha!" said the new production manager, "Nous verrons." Which means, even in English, "Now, for what we are about to see, make us truly thankful." And he went away from there to see why those orders weren't out the door.

He was out to prove something. And Providence—Rhode Island—had supplied him with enough ammunition to shoot a manufacturing organization full of holes.

Each order was traced. One was in the shipping room.

"What's holding this up?" he asked the shipping clerk.

"Haven't had time to ship it. And we got other shoes that have been waiting longer than those. It's a feast or a famine down here. Some days we just can't get 'em out."

"You're working short-handed. Get a couple more packers. You've got to get those shoes out. The customers are hollering like hell. Get 'em out!"

He found another order up in the cutting room. But why report the conversation? It varied only in the number of cusswords used. It was always the old story.

"Can't be done."

"Put more people on then. Will two be enough? Or had we better make it three?"

All down the line it went. More people. Costs went up. And did orders get out? Oh, yes, some did. But they got out at the expense of others. There was more congestion than ever. Complaints increased.

Then the big boss called him in—and down—pointed out the increasing costs and asked how come. So the new production manager went back over his trail demanding retrenchment.

"Put 'em on" was changed to "take 'em off."

The big boss tells the rest of the story.

"He had simply jumped in without finding out what it was he had to do. Maybe it was my fault for giving him too much rope.

"Anyway, he hanged himself—or rather we had to fire him. Then we took on a quiet lad who had served his apprenticeship with a large electrical supply house.

"He didn't know a twelve-iron sole from a three-quarter foxing. But he knew plenty about managing, as it turned out.

"I watched him. Things were in a bad way, you see, and getting no better fast. He did nothing much for several days but read his mail. Sat around his office. Didn't make a move to boss anyone. Stuck his nose in here and there to find out what this clerk or that clerk was up to.

"But no action. No tearing his shirt. No nothing. And the complaints were coming in with every mail. They never fazed him. One day I ran across him up in the fitting room. Another time I bumped into him he was picking lasts out of the bins. Again I saw him pushing empty racks into the heeling room elevator.

"Apparently I had picked another lemon. Looked like the best thing he did was sit around and tap his teeth with a pencil.

"He fooled me, though. One afternoon he dropped into my office with a map. He'd drawn it between taps. It was a good map with dotted lines to show just exactly what happened to an order—any order—every order. That map showed when it went into the works, where it went from there. And so on until it went out the shipping room door. That's what he'd been up to the day I saw him picking out lasts. And I tell you I never had any idea how many things could happen to an order. I never realized how shoes halted and stumbled and staggered around that factory of ours.

"There were red lines, too. They showed the changes he proposed making. Here he would stop backtracking. Here was unnecessary travel. Here was an old bottle neck and here was how he was going to crack it open. And look at those lasts lying idle with shoes upstairs waiting to be made on them!

"That wasn't half. It was actually taking four days to get orders through the office routine. He showed me how certain necessary records that took time to make could be made after the shoes were in work. Other short cuts would wipe whole days off our schedules.

"There was nothing to it—when you saw it in red ink. In fact there's nothing half so convincing as red ink. There's been none on our books for the past five years—and during that time the shoe business has been no bed of roses.

"What he proposed was simple as pie—if only someone had stopped to think. We'd simply got into bad habits. We were handling the work the same way we'd handled it back in the days when grandfather started the business. And this fellow had been smart enough to wait and wonder why. Not wonder why either. He went and found out how come.

"In thirty days we were back on earth. We were getting shoes out on time—many many days sooner than we'd even been able to before. And all because a smart young man, who didn't know a thing about shoes but a whole lot about managing, sat and tapped his teeth and drew a few pictures.—All because he had been in no hurry to act until he had found out just what had to be done."

It is so easy to jump to conclusions! If you look about a bit, you will see plenty of men who don't stop to find out what needs to be done before they start trying to do it. They're like the shortstop who hurries his play and tries to throw the runner out at first before he really gets his hands on the ball. An error is more often than not the result.

MANAGING, such men will tell you, is putting "pep" and "punch" into your work. Pep and punch were once good words. But their good qualities have been so often extolled that most of us have lost sight of the fact that all the "drive" in the world is so much wasted energy when it isn't directed along the right lines. And when it isn't so directed, it comes pretty close to being the lowest form of human endeavor. Witness the "go-getter" who really doesn't know what it's all about, but often succeeds in covering up a world of defects under a cloak of ill-directed energy.

Other men think they are finding out what needs to be done when actually they aren't even getting close to the root of the matter. With the best intentions in the world, they are grasping at the first straw the wind blows their way. Eureka! they shout when they haven't found it at all, but are merely jumping all the way over the facts to conclusions! Actually to know your business or your job demands ANALYSIS.

You have a right to duck. It's another of those words that work overtime and have suffered as a result. A certain type of superficial business executive has done analysis no good. To him the impressiveness of the word suffices—to the