The Llano colonist. [volume] (Llano, Calif.) 191?-1937, 1922-08-12
The Scientific Management
Of Cooperative Production
MANAGING INDUSTRY BIZ FAcTs.

4
Llano Colony on Thursday night, Aug
ust 3. Comrade Pickett read portions
| of letter written by former Llano
Colonist who has thrown in his for
tune with the industrial ventures to be
made in the Kusbas Basin in far off
Siberia, who acknowledged that some
of the methods to be applied in Kus-
bas resulted from his experience at
Llano. Pc
In the Kuzbus Bulletin of July 20,
is contained an interview with Chas. P.
Steinmetz, Americas foremost eIectri-
cal engineer. What Steinmetz said with
respect to Kuzbus applies with equal
force to LIano Colony, and it is for this
reason that we bring the following ex-
cerpts SO applied:
Your most important product al
ILlano Colony will be talent. Skill and
always more skill, is the essential pro-
duct. All the wealth in the world is
ivalueless if you lack the talent to util-
ize it.
But you must organize this skill.
And if your scheme of organization is
not sound, Llano is not sound and can
not succeed. If your organization must
depend upon what are called strong
men, it will not be sound. But if it is
built upon industrial skill and proceeds
according to an impersonal program it
cannot fail.
Before engineers began to study the
management of industry, and to ascer-
tain the facts and state them clearly,
everything depended upon personal
judgement. This meant that man, a
person had to stand at the head Of the
works and say, do this, or don't do that,
he didn't know the facts and had 10
guess. Or he may have known the
facts. But his orders were obeyed not
because he represented the engineers
knowledge, but because he was
strong man-that is, man who i'm
pressed others with his capability as a
leader, whom it were good to follow.
Nov right there is where the trou-
bic begins. Even if the strongest man,
the biggest personality, is at the head,
there is always someone else nearly as
strong, and this other person also has
his following who prefer him as leader
and there sooner or later arises friction
and even open dissension between the
leaders and their following. So the
State and industry went ahead as best
they could, making mistakes and hav-
ing to put up with and pay for the fight
between the strongest man and the man
who was almost as strong.
But the engineer and the scientist
don't guess. You never have heated
discussion between engineers as to what
are, the facts-not if they are compe-
tent engineers. They know that you
can't DETERMINE WHAT is THE
FACT BY TALKING AND VOTING,
OR BY FIGHTING, OR BY A JURY.
You must go to the laboratory or the
works and find out impersonally. The
function of the engineer is to ascertain
the facts and to state them so clearly
that there, can be no question or con-
fusion in anyone's mind. Then THE
LMPERSONAL FACT DOES THE d.
RECTING AND is THE MANAGER.
But you carry cut the direction, not
because the one personality OF the 9th
gives the direction but because imper-
sonal engineering study has shown this
The best way to do it. The engineer
mas been trained to observe facts, to
record them and to make new and big
sr facts out of the old facts. Making
bigger and newer facts is program max
ng. "a blue print of the respective
But right there you must be care
ul. It's hard work to make programs,
md it is much easier to order someone
o do something than to do it yourself,
lont understand, because then you can
blame him, and not yourself, if there
5 a failure. If the engineers are to
make programs, they should be made /
o state them so clearly that there can
'e no misunderstanding. If the pro-
rams are clear, then everyone knows
What he must do if he is to get what he
wants. He can see just where he fits
lto the scheme of things. 1t will not
re necessary to order him to do it. His
iscipline will be perfect. because it will
ot depend upon his loyalty to the
trongest man, or to the man, who is
lmost as strong as the strongest man.
will be an impersonal loyalty, 10y
lty to THE FACTS. loyalty to So
lety.
THE engineers of the General Tech
ical Staff should not be heads of de-