Chapter XIV
RECORDS FOR THE EXECUTIVE
A good executive has been described as a man who decides
quickly and who is sometimes right. Probably ninety per
cent of the answers "Yes" or "No" given by a business
man are based on opinion rather than on fact. The trouble is that
the average executive cannot obtain and analyze facts quickly enough
to base his decision on them. He is forced to decide quickly and his
one hope is that he will guess "right".
The problems confronting the executives have grown, in the last few years, to such an extent in volume and in complexity that it is increasingly difficult to find men with endurance and capacity great enough to match the jobs. The executives of our corporations, the men who are mayors of our cities, and the men in active charge of the government of our country are, without exception, the hardest worked men in the world. The stoker heaving coal into the furnaces of an express steamer has a better chance for long life than the man who accepts the presidency of even our best managed railroads and industrial corporations. The stoker can at least sleep soundly at the end of his day's work. The railroad president is likely to be kept awake wondering whether his guess was a good one, whether his decision was "right".
The men now steering the courses of our big corporations are men who have come up the line, step by step, through each department. They know accurately the relation of every department to every other department in their own company. They have available, also, a tremendous fund of information as to what has been accomplished by their competitors. The present executives of corporations are fortunate, in that they have seen, in their own business experience, each of the steps toward the greater division of labor and the consolidation of executive control which have done so much to make economic production possible by large-scale production.
