Music Trade Review

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Four Buckets of Paint For Keeping
Your White House White in Competition
By KENNETH McFARLAND, Topeka, Kansas
Educational Consultant & Lecturer for General Motors
I
HAVE never seen our American
people so appreciative of the
right kind of meetings as they are
now. I think it is because they have
never been so confused. The need does
not seem to be so much for new infor-
mation, as for meetings that will help
us organize the information we already
have, and formulate it into a personal
philosophy.
Fortunately, more and more Ameri-
cans are beginning to see that the
thing we are in now is not another
Pearl Harbor. In January, 1951, mil-
lions of Americans thought they were
going to see 1942 repeated all over
again. There would be shortages of
everything, we would lay off the sales
forces, and throw the rule books away
for another ten years. By January.
1952, Americans were taking a second
look at the situation. Men had not yet
unwrapped the two dozen extra white
shirts they bought the year before; fur-
niture and appliance men were still
trying to find storage space for all the
extra merchandise they bought in the
1951 market. It was beginning to be
plain that the situation is different this
time. What was needed was more in-
formation as to why it is different, and
what to do about it.
Perhaps the significant thing for
Americans to grasp is that for the first
time in our history we are embarked
upon maintaining a great military es-
tablishment in what is theoretically
peace time. Always before we waited
until they attacked Pearl Harbor, until
they sunk the Maine, or fired on Fort
Sumter. Then we plunged into a great
war effort, saw it through, signed some-
thing, and the guns all quit firing at
once. None of these conditions prevails
this time. As far down the road as we
can see now, the Washington govern-
ment alone will spend one third of all
our national income—if we can remain
as prosperous as we are now. Everyone
else will be competing for the $2 of
national income where there used to be
$3. We are going to keep 31/2 to 4 mil-
lion of our young men perpetually un-
der arms. And, verv significantly, in
the decade since Pearl Harbor we have
doubled our productive capacity. In
THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW, AUGUST, 1952
cedure, we follow the policy called
"keeping the white house white." It is
based on the simple premise that if
you want a white house, you paint it
white. But it will not stay white for-
ever. Sometime later you have to paint
it again. It is the same stuff and you
put it on the same way, but if you
want a white house you must keep on
putting it on. I should like today to
give you a few buckets of paint for
keeping your white house white enough
to compete successfully in the totally
unprecedented conditions under which
we are now destined to operate.
DR.
KENNETH
McFARLAND
1942 we had to produce either guns or
butter; this time we are producing both
simultaneously. For the rest of our
lives we are apparently going to be liv-
ing in a mixed economy—part war, and
part peace. This is the best thing that
can happen to us. This precludes the
possibility of all-out war.
Learn our Fundamentals
In this new situation we must go
back and learn our fundamentals. If
we are going to stay in the game un-
der these new conditions, we are going
to play the rules as we have never had
to do before. The problem is vastly
more difficult because so many of our
people never heard the rules, and so
many more have forgotten them. In the
depression decade there were no jobs
and in the fabulous forties there were
too many. Now, for the first time in
twenty-one years we have reached the
point where the fundamentals apply
again. Yet, by scientific survey, we
have reached the point where the funda-
mentals apply again. Yet, by scientific
survey, we know that two-thirds of our
people cannot remember anything
about twenty-one years ago; and the
other third has forgotten. Thus, we
must start at scratch and teach certain
basic concepts of personnel administra-
tion, sales, and administrative organiza-
tion.
To illustrate the need for this pro-
First Bucket
The first of these buckets of paint
is this: We must teach people again
that you do not stop looking for work
after you find a job. We must get back
the concept of total responsibility.
That means that in the last analysis,
whether we like it or not, each person
in an organization is responsible for
the welfare of the entire organization,
and the entire organization's welfare
is inextricably bound up with that of
each person in it. We bat one at a
time, but they mark up the score for
the team—or they mark up a fan-out
for the team. The strength of the pack
is the wolf and the strength of the wolf
is the pack. Big business is made big
by little people who buy the products
one at a time. Any business is repre-
sented at any given time by one per-
son, and so far as the customer or
prospect is concerned, that one person
is the business. If he succeeds, every-
one in the business profits; if he fails,
everyone in the organization fails, and
no one else has a chance.
Second Bucket
Secondly, we must remember that
when we pitch the hot potatoes to some-
one else, we usually lose the gravy too.
If we are going to develop people in
our organizations who are competent
to compete in the fast moving hour in
which we live, then we must have peo-
ple of personal power and stature.
This cannot be achieved by letting all
the fast ground balls zoom right on
past to somebody else. A corollary prin-