the architect called for four stories and a basement. When it came time to discuss arrangement of space, it was found that one department would have to go in the basement. There were objections from all sides.

The manufacturer ended up by taking the problem home with him to TAKE TO PIECES and put together again.

He began—fortunately—with the final objective. "What's this new building for?" Obviously, to provide more space for enlarged operations.

"How much space is needed?"

He went over the figures and plans and found the four main floors weren't enough.

"Then why not a fifth floor?"

As long as a bigger building was to be built, why not make it big enough? Why not another full story instead of a basement?

Why not, indeed! Come to find out, no one knew just why a basement had been considered. The old building had one, and apparently that was the only reason for proposing one for the new building. A full story would give all the general storage space of a basement and also give regular working quarters for the department crowded out of the four upper floors.

And when the architect was consulted, it was found that with the extras for excavation, waterproofing and the like, the cost of a basement was considerably more than the cost of another full story.

Yet, but for the manufacturer's analysis of the building problem from the point of final objective, the basement would have gone in—simply because NO ONE HAD STOPPED TO THINK, and think clearly and logically.

Logical thinking is a trait that can be cultivated. Every problem thought through by means of some such simple help as we have suggested, makes the mind more ready to tackle the next problem.

Some men's minds grow so keen by practising that sort of thinking that they AUTOMATICALLY TAKE THINGS TO PIECES as they listen. Before you finish talking to them, they have already analyzed your statement and are planning on its execution—or are ready to reject it. Sometimes it's intuition. But rarely. Usually, it is nothing more than cultivated KNACK.

Cultivate ACCURACY first. SPEED OF ANALYSIS will come of itself.

Don't start until you know exactly where you're going.

There is no task so trifling, no business so large, that its management does not need to ANALYZE EXACTLY WHAT THERE IS TO DO.

II

Planning

In the preceding chapter we have been busily engaged in taking things to pieces. Now we've got to put them together again. Our house of blocks has been resolved into its component parts, not by aiming a swift kick at its midriff, but by starting at the top and working backwards. Now to REBUILD.

Our first care, at this stage of the game, is to remember that ANALYSIS IS NEVER AN END but simply the MEANS TO AN END.

The immediate end, this time, is to rearrange the pieces so that the job to be done can be done in the most effective way—the way that saves the most effort, the most time, the most money—the way which, in your business—and in yours and YOURS—leads to NET PROFITS.

Again it should be emphasized that NET PROFIT, in any job of managing, is the ultimate goal.

Our danger, then, is that we may find ourselves down on the floor surrounded by our blocks—and with never a trace of a PLAN for rebuilding the house, and rebuilding it in the simplest, most economical way.

In short, we must be sure we are taking things to pieces, not for the sake of taking them to pieces, but purely and simply to find out what has to be done.

Like the golfer who played golf so much in order to keep fit for golf, we have here a good old-fashioned beneficent circle. ANALYSIS without a PLAN isn't worth a whoop in Hades. It's time kissed goodbye. Wasted effort. And, in like manner, a PLAN without an ANALYSIS isn't worth the paper it's typed on.

Psmith in your office is a great "planner". He always has something on the fire. But somehow or other he never quite puts things over. His plans don't get across. Why not? Oh, just because he doesn't bother to analyze his problem—because he sets out to do what has to be done even before he knows what has to be done. He doesn't base his plan upon an actual need.

Pbrown, on the other hand, is a keen analytical thinker. A student. He's a shark at taking things to pieces and finding out what has to be done. But when he's done that, he's all done. He lacks the initiative that starts things moving. He hasn't that divine spark of something or other that gets things done. A stick of dynamite wouldn't do a bit of good. He simply hasn't the knack of building a plan. He knows what has to be done. He doesn't know how to do it.

Psmith and Pbrown—or Pbrown and Psmith—would make a fast team. But Psmith without Pbrown's analytical ability, or Pbrown without Psmith's capacity for planning how to get things done, isn't worth his weight in gold to any business enterprise.

A manufacturer friend tells an amusing yarn about a Pbrown he hired as sales manager.

"He went around analyzing everything from soup to nuts—the gadgets in our line, our markets, our competition, our salesmen.

"He was an analyzer de luxe. And all I ever got out of all his analyses was a distinct feeling that something was wrong with every gadget we made, that our markets were saturated, that our competitors had us backed off the map, and that our salesmen were a bunch of ribbon clerks.

"So," he continues, "I did a little analyzing all my own. And analyzed him out of his job. Today he's managing a filling station where they drive in for the most part and take it away from him. But in his place I got a man who found out what was wrong with gadgets, markets, salesmen—and right away he built a plan which sold goods."

Thus the futility of ANALYSIS without PLANNING.

There's the danger, too, of getting away from the SIMPLICITY OF TRUE ANALYSIS.

A job undertaken by an advertising agency for a rubber manufacturer supplies a case in point. Stripped of all the details, the task was to find out whether or not the manufacturer might profitably engage in the making of hard rubber tires for industrial trucks and trailers. If names are changed and products substituted, think nothing of it. The principle's the thing.

The agency began by analyzing the business to a fare-you-well. Everyone and everything got cross-examined.

It took three months. And when the analysis was done it told the manufacturer everything from where the rubber grew to where the money went to and came from. The trouble was, he knew all that before—or as much of it as he wanted to know. The report, in the words of a Chicago columnist, was just "64 dam pages." It didn't tell him one blessed thing he wanted to know. Or rather it was so full of plunder that he couldn't make head nor tail of it.

It wasn't SIMPLE. And because it wasn't SIMPLE, it was a far, far cry from TRUE ANALYSIS.

Well, well, the rubber manufacturer went out in the byways and got him a young man who was told to find out, if he could, whether or not there was any market for hard rubber tires on gas and electric industrial trucks, tractors and trailers, and allied equipment.

He found, for example, that there were 40,000 trucks and tractors in service; that annual sales were about 3,200 units. He discovered that, of trailers and hand lift trucks, 125,000 each were in service; annual sales were 12,000 and 10,000 units respectively. But when he came