ORGANIZATION 63
by him only. If he can and does make himself respected,
loved, and feared, his organization has an
excellent start toward team work.
58. Admiral Mahan said that a chief can give orders
properly only by having a close knowledge of details
and then by ignoring them. What he meant was, not
that the chief should ignore details, but that he should
sum them up into their final resultant, and then give
his orders accordingly.
Personal experience of the details, and habits acquired
by gradual progress through the grades of authority
give the ability to do that, but present conditions
continually force upon the man in general management
the charge of work of which he has had no
personal experience. An engineer rises through grades
in which his work has been purely technical, until he
becomes works manager and finds himself responsible
for an accounting department. A salesman rises to be
sales manager, still dealing with problems of selling
only; but merit there makes him general manager, and
he at once finds himself in authority over manufacturing.
Either may go on to be president of the company,
and become the superior of its treasurer. Besides
this, progress is continually filling in processes
and methods behind and beneath a man, which were
unknown when he was at that stage of his development,
and with which he no longer has time to acquaint
himself in detail. The only way to deal with this situation
is by being willing to take advice, and not only
that, but by seeking it diligently from competent
counsel.
What, for example, does the retail druggist know
about the confectionery business? Yet competition
forces him to be a good deal of a confectioner. If he
