The Power of Two-Way Thinking
Walter Russell’s Lecture series to Executives and Employees of I.B.M., 1927 – 1939
Ideas never before even known are coming into being. New ideas meet with great resistance because they have no such earmarks for recognition as old ones have. Yet all old ideas were once unrecognizable new ones. I wish to present new ideas for adding greater benefits to IBM.
New ideas and new knowledge that have heretofore been unknown come from the creative minds of those who have the power to reach out into the Universal Consciousness and bring new concepts into material form for man’s use. One little idea at a time transforms man’s necessarily changing world from static death to dynamic life. These new ideas do not come from books, for such books have never been printed. They do not come from teachers, for such new ideas are unknown to teachers. New ideas come only from the minds of creative thinkers.
Knowledge of Universal Law teaches us that Nature unfailingly expresses action in two opposite directions in which each opposite force is equal. Ninety-nine or more percent of men express themselves primarily in one direction and waste most of the force generated by the other. For example, the rebound of the ball from the wall has a force equal to that with which the ball was hurled against the wall. A man expends energy in hurling a ball against the wall. The rebound costs him nothing, for the wall provides the energy, but he profits nothing from the rebound unless he catches the ball.
Each man of IBM expends immense energy exerted in the direction of his achievement and of his wages, but he cannot see the rebound which awaits him to enrich his life, so he misses the ball; and IBM loses the greater efficiency it should naturally have at the same cost output.
Mr. Watson’s two-way thinking of man-building and machine-building is his expenditure of effort in hurling the ball against the wall. The Watsonian Principle is the rebound which should be caught and not missed. The rebound is worth more money to the business than the earning from the effort of the initial action. It is also worth more to Mr. Watson in recognition of his genius during his lifetime instead of posthumously. As head of a business, he receives but surface recognition. Higher honors come from the rebound.
This principle in action is also worth more to the world because of the leavening effect of Mr. Watson’s higher ethics seeping through civilization. IBM is demonstrating the Watsonian Principle in one direction. Through my knowledge of the Law of Universal Balance, I wish to point out how IBM, Mr. Watson, and every individual can double the effects by making use of the rebound as a by-product.
BACK TO BEGINNINGS
IBM is the result of the vision, imagination, and inspiration of Mr. Watson. He reached out into the unknown and got his vision as a formless idea. His whole concept flashed to him in essence when he first conceived it. Little by little he unfolded its details as a master painter adds brush-stroke after brush-stroke to his creation. Little by little he built around him men to whom he could pass these ideas forward for the purpose of giving them form and substance. The men he chose were necessarily those who could fashion his ideas into products and sell them. Such men became necessary extensions of himself, for, obviously, he could not physically fashion the many multiplications of his one idea and distribute them without so extending himself.
THE IBM ONE-WAY TRADITION
Now comes an important observation, which has had a determining effect upon IBM policy, IBM Board decisions, and IBM training. Many men taking up Mr. Watson’s idea with the intent of production and distribution have learned to think in the one direction that leads from the man to the product. The habit of one-way thinking has found its way into every IBM expression. All of the school literature is designed to integrate man into the purpose, but none of it integrates the purpose into the man for his inspiration, enthusiasm, and betterment. The rebound is lost to IBM and to each man except by inference.
IBM builds men to build machines. It should also build machines to build men. IBM building should start with purpose and go through man in the direction of his understanding. Hope, happiness, security, inspiration, and creative thinking should be the foundation for his efficiency. IBM machine building should start from the wellspring of man’s understanding and go out through himself to purpose. Product and earnings are merely the end effects of men’s spirit and understanding. Earnings come out at the end of the system according to what is put in at the beginning. Increase man-power by man-building and the product of man will increase. As Edwin Markham says, “In vain do we build the city if we do not first build the man.”
Mr. Watson reaches out into space for those inspired imaginings which make him the dominating central light of a great system. This place he holds as rightly as the sun holds its central position in our solar system. In order for Mr. Watson to have been able to integrate himself into his purpose, he had to first have the purpose, just as the sun of our solar system first had to generate its light in order to radiate it.
Mr. Watson’s inspirations are the foundations of his purpose and not the reverse. The directions of his inspirations are toward his higher Self. The direction of his self expression is outward from his inspirational source toward purpose, where the illumination of his light contacts men and reflects outward from them to purpose. Perhaps one percent of his light finds the inward direction to inspire men far removed from him, and possibly ten percent radiates to those close to him.
IBM is Mr. Watson’s instrument upon which he interprets his purpose. The perfection of his purpose is not in his product. It is in his concept. For this reason, he can never be satisfied, because the inexhaustible fountain from which his product springs is ever revealing greater depths to him.
It is his very life and inspiration, of which his enthusiasm and effervescence are but surface indications. He could not generate enthusiasm from surface alone. It must come from the depths. He constantly urges the necessity of enthusiasm in every man, forgetting that those far removed from him have not the man-building training as a foundation from which enthusiasm effervesces. Their surfaces are slightly stirred for the time being, but they all too soon relapse into their own normalities. If their imaginations were stimulated, their enthusiasm would be self-effervescent.
IBM should be the instrument upon which every IBM man expresses himself. Looking only in the one direction of IBM, he is more liable to think of IBM as a job in which he is helping to make another man powerful and successful. Just as a thousand pianists can express their own individual inspirations upon one instrument evolved by a Steinway, so should every IBM man learn that he is expressing his own individuality on the kind of instrument evolved for him by IBM.
Mr. Watson’s inspirational direction of thinking is too often interrupted by the many who demand a reversal of his direction of thinking to their opposed ways. He should have two cabinets, one for IBM and one to catch the rebound of the world influence of his thinking. He should lead in the world desire for a unitary civilization which his philosophy would hasten.
I believe Mr. Watson is helping to unfold the design of life in this dangerous age. I believe that Mr. Watson’s only way of spreading this doctrine of internationalism, which must lead to a unitary civilization some day, is to first balance his machine-building power with an equal man-building power. This would multiply IBM and balance the Watsonian Principle. It would then spread that principle throughout the world to raise the standard of ethics.
The Watsonian Principle is the philosophy which has radiated from IBM practice. It is a philosophy which could stabilize the world at this time when such a philosophy is needed. All people who employ men for their own purposes alone are exploiters of other humans. The Watsonian philosophy offers men the opportunity to find their own life purposes. It does not exploit men, it elevates them to heights determinable by themselves. It gives them the foundation of their own self-power.
IBM is a system in which every planet has an orbit appropriate to its own potential. It is a friendly family of mutual interests. IBM product is a liberator of man’s labor burden, an eraser of man’s drudge.
TWO-WAY THINKING IN GENERAL
Every expression of man evolves by that process of adding one little thing to another. We call it growth. We also call it expansion and unfoldment. The vast majority of people think only in the direction of growth or expansion of idea. Give these people the idea, and they can repeat it or add to it, but their visions are closed to the direction from where the idea appeared. A few think preponderantly in the direction of growth and to a small extent in the direction from which the idea unfolded. And perhaps fewer think equally in both directions. It is these people who bring inspiration into the world for the enrichment of all.
If thought is given to his training, every man may be taught to bring about a better balance between the two directions of his thinking. The more he can be trained to use his dual consciousness, the more valuable he is to himself and to his associates.
IBM has to train practically every man for his job. IBM machine and sales power is no better than its total of man-power. To increase production and earnings, men should not be added in number, but man-power should be multiplied. The way to multiply man-power in man is to give him understanding of the inward direction of his thinking. The very fountains of inspiration should be opened in every man. He should be made to know that he is climbing to heights set by himself and that there is no limit to the heights that he can set for himself.
The school should have a department and a literature which is as perfectly worked out in the creative direction as it is in the repetitive, technical direction. The engineering department should have its drudgery transmuted to ecstasy. There is tremendous waste in the one-way thinking of a department that should balance its technical thinking with creative, inventive thinking. The tired and bored engineer, to whom work is a drudge, and the clock his great hope, costs as much as the inspired engineer for whom time races and who knows no fatigue.
How I long to give new life and sources of hope to that fine body of engineers, half of whom are unsatisfied men in whom something is lacking which need not be. They need inspiration and knowledge of the power to transmute their technical training into an objective, and make a life design of it. Each one of them has been equipped with capital for a journey to fame and fortune, but many have chained themselves to a treadmill. Of all the departments, this one needs a greater understanding of the Watsonian Principle and of Self-searching.
The salesmen are wonderfully trained in the technical direction. The only suggestion in the creative direction which I could find in a list of those characteristics which a good salesman should have is self-analysis. As he knows practically nothing of self, asking him for success in that direction would be like asking him to make a chemical analysis of an oil used in a machine or a metallurgical analysis of an alloy in a wheel. One great necessity of salesmen that could come from training in that direction is the art of fast thinking.
Salesmen have a particular need for thinking ahead, and also for thinking in at least one inner layer and one outer layer simultaneously. Salesmen would close many more orders if they could cultivate a duality of thinking so as to anticipate what one has to say before he says it. There is no miracle or guesswork about knowing other’s thoughts before they have been completed in words. As soon as a man thinks a thought, it exists. The high-speed intuitive thinker can sense the thought in the very attitude of the man or in the expression on his face. There are more ways of getting a man’s thoughts than by his words. Salesmen should have an intensive training in this respect.
As you come higher and higher in the executive chain of the great thinkers of the organization, this ability to make quick and certain decisions is more and more marked, as is the ability of the greater thinkers to eliminate nonessentials from their thinking. Mediocrity is burdened with nonessentials. A masterpiece of any kind is one from which all nonessentials have been eliminated.
Nonessentials consume time, which fatigues, because they are not inspirational. The more one can eliminate them, the more value IBM is getting from the man, and vice versa. IBM should make a special point of teaching its men to so design their lives that this waste can be saved.
All life is expressed by a series of decisions. The salesman, more than any other people in the organization, needs to learn to shift his thinking into the high speed in which he can keep ahead of his prospect’s thinking and always anticipate his response. A salesman’s life needs to be expressed by quick decisions.
Success is based on wise decisions. Wise decisions in slow speeds consume too much time. Fully half of a salesman’s failures are caused by unwise decisions arrived at too quickly. The Super-thinker, to whom flashes of inspiration come by the way of intuition, has so much time to make quick and wise decisions, that he is apt to have his next decision formulated while still waiting for the speaker to finish.
Technical training is necessary, but anyone can become technically trained. It represents but twenty percent of a sale at best. The other eighty percent of a sale lies in the direction of intuition. Sadly, one hundred percent of effort is expended in training salesmen to perfect the technical twenty percent.
SUGGESTIONS FOR CHANGES
All executives who go out to stimulate men and sales should take an intensive course in the philosophy of the Watsonian Principle, of Universal Law, of the Law of Balance, and the qualities which bring out the genius in all men. The pep-talks that hypnotize men into surface activity for a while and multiply their actions without multiplying their thinking should be replaced by balanced power talks which inspire. There should be character talks, manner of expenditure of leisure talks, and talks which build up inspirational foundation upon which each man can learn to erect his own structure. Every worker at every level within the organization should be given a foundation for himself, for greater efficiency yields its proportionate dividends.
It might be a good idea to start a factory workers’ monthly magazine, limited to the number of workers, to bind them together and stimulate them to greater effort through recognition of their achievements, just as salesmen are stimulated. The psychological value of printing a man’s name and his picture to tell others of his achievement is a recognizable part of the Watsonian Principle. It helps the business and it helps the man. The factory workers, too, have a loyalty to IBM, which permeates to their very roots. They have a social life of their own which could be given a place in their own paper. The salesman’s achievements are broadcast to the whole world, while the factory worker’s achievements are buried in files on cards.
I strongly urge a more intensive application of the Watsonian Principle of man-building to all workers. Give them more dignity by putting a structure under their feet. Make thinkers of them also. It would pay large dividends. Every dollar which is harvested as IBM earnings comes from the mental decisions and actions of IBM thinkers whose decisions are no better than their ability to decide and act. This principle follows down to the lowest man in the system, for all must THINK. Even though a man acts automatically in following superior’s decision, or in stamping out a pre-designed part of a machine, he at least decides his own action. His decision has a money value as expressed in time, quality, and its effect on the man.
This should be the axiom of the Company: Every decision of every man either makes money for IBM or costs money; therefore, every possible effort should be given to help men make quick, wise, profit-making decisions. Each worker throughout the company should be cordially invited to ask written questions which would be treated in confidence, or to ask oral ones in person, as to his problems and their solutions. These questions should not be confined to business problems alone, for very often a person’s efficiency is lowered by domestic problems which he cannot solve, or to financial entanglements which worry him.
Regular inspirational courses should be formulated and put into a growing literature that should be made freely available to other industrial organizations which desire it. This would be most desirous, for in such a manner the Watsonian Principle and Philosophy could spread and do the double work of lifting business ethics and in creating good will for humanitarian effort. For a while, this should be the IBM form of advertising.
CONCLUSIONS
I intend writing an analysis of IBM as an organization, to show how its balance is evidence of the intuitive perception of its creator. Mr. Watson balanced his own preponderantly inspirational direction of thinking with sufficient men whose thinking is preponderantly in the direction of product. It is amazing with what accuracy each type of mind is unerringly fitted into its place.
Mr. Watson has built a world position for himself, personally, irrespective of his business. The ball which he is hurling against the world-wall has just struck its mark. It is ready for a colossal rebound.
The Watsonian Principle is a demonstrated, workable reality. Publicize it so it becomes known and it will sweep through man’s consciousness like a prairie fire. Do not, therefore, keep it to the level of one business, but rather as an example for all industry.
Also, do not keep Mr. Watson on the plane of an industrialist, even though a great one, but rather extend his business principles as a light to lead the world out of its darkness.
THINK: The First Principle of Business Success is available from the USP Bookstore.
Ideas never before even known are coming into being. New ideas meet with great resistance because they have no such earmarks for recognition as old ones have. Yet all old ideas were once unrecognizable new ones. I wish to present new ideas for adding greater benefits to IBM.
New ideas and new knowledge that have heretofore been unknown come from the creative minds of those who have the power to reach out into the Universal Consciousness and bring new concepts into material form for man’s use. One little idea at a time transforms man’s necessarily changing world from static death to dynamic life. These new ideas do not come from books, for such books have never been printed. They do not come from teachers, for such new ideas are unknown to teachers. New ideas come only from the minds of creative thinkers.
Knowledge of Universal Law teaches us that Nature unfailingly expresses action in two opposite directions in which each opposite force is equal. Ninety-nine or more percent of men express themselves primarily in one direction and waste most of the force generated by the other. For example, the rebound of the ball from the wall has a force equal to that with which the ball was hurled against the wall. A man expends energy in hurling a ball against the wall. The rebound costs him nothing, for the wall provides the energy, but he profits nothing from the rebound unless he catches the ball.
Each man of IBM expends immense energy exerted in the direction of his achievement and of his wages, but he cannot see the rebound which awaits him to enrich his life, so he misses the ball; and IBM loses the greater efficiency it should naturally have at the same cost output.
Mr. Watson’s two-way thinking of man-building and machine-building is his expenditure of effort in hurling the ball against the wall. The Watsonian Principle is the rebound which should be caught and not missed. The rebound is worth more money to the business than the earning from the effort of the initial action. It is also worth more to Mr. Watson in recognition of his genius during his lifetime instead of posthumously. As head of a business, he receives but surface recognition. Higher honors come from the rebound.
This principle in action is also worth more to the world because of the leavening effect of Mr. Watson’s higher ethics seeping through civilization. IBM is demonstrating the Watsonian Principle in one direction. Through my knowledge of the Law of Universal Balance, I wish to point out how IBM, Mr. Watson, and every individual can double the effects by making use of the rebound as a by-product.
BACK TO BEGINNINGS
IBM is the result of the vision, imagination, and inspiration of Mr. Watson. He reached out into the unknown and got his vision as a formless idea. His whole concept flashed to him in essence when he first conceived it. Little by little he unfolded its details as a master painter adds brush-stroke after brush-stroke to his creation. Little by little he built around him men to whom he could pass these ideas forward for the purpose of giving them form and substance. The men he chose were necessarily those who could fashion his ideas into products and sell them. Such men became necessary extensions of himself, for, obviously, he could not physically fashion the many multiplications of his one idea and distribute them without so extending himself.
THE IBM ONE-WAY TRADITION
Now comes an important observation, which has had a determining effect upon IBM policy, IBM Board decisions, and IBM training. Many men taking up Mr. Watson’s idea with the intent of production and distribution have learned to think in the one direction that leads from the man to the product. The habit of one-way thinking has found its way into every IBM expression. All of the school literature is designed to integrate man into the purpose, but none of it integrates the purpose into the man for his inspiration, enthusiasm, and betterment. The rebound is lost to IBM and to each man except by inference.
IBM builds men to build machines. It should also build machines to build men. IBM building should start with purpose and go through man in the direction of his understanding. Hope, happiness, security, inspiration, and creative thinking should be the foundation for his efficiency. IBM machine building should start from the wellspring of man’s understanding and go out through himself to purpose. Product and earnings are merely the end effects of men’s spirit and understanding. Earnings come out at the end of the system according to what is put in at the beginning. Increase man-power by man-building and the product of man will increase. As Edwin Markham says, “In vain do we build the city if we do not first build the man.”
Mr. Watson reaches out into space for those inspired imaginings which make him the dominating central light of a great system. This place he holds as rightly as the sun holds its central position in our solar system. In order for Mr. Watson to have been able to integrate himself into his purpose, he had to first have the purpose, just as the sun of our solar system first had to generate its light in order to radiate it.
Mr. Watson’s inspirations are the foundations of his purpose and not the reverse. The directions of his inspirations are toward his higher Self. The direction of his self expression is outward from his inspirational source toward purpose, where the illumination of his light contacts men and reflects outward from them to purpose. Perhaps one percent of his light finds the inward direction to inspire men far removed from him, and possibly ten percent radiates to those close to him.
IBM is Mr. Watson’s instrument upon which he interprets his purpose. The perfection of his purpose is not in his product. It is in his concept. For this reason, he can never be satisfied, because the inexhaustible fountain from which his product springs is ever revealing greater depths to him.
It is his very life and inspiration, of which his enthusiasm and effervescence are but surface indications. He could not generate enthusiasm from surface alone. It must come from the depths. He constantly urges the necessity of enthusiasm in every man, forgetting that those far removed from him have not the man-building training as a foundation from which enthusiasm effervesces. Their surfaces are slightly stirred for the time being, but they all too soon relapse into their own normalities. If their imaginations were stimulated, their enthusiasm would be self-effervescent.
IBM should be the instrument upon which every IBM man expresses himself. Looking only in the one direction of IBM, he is more liable to think of IBM as a job in which he is helping to make another man powerful and successful. Just as a thousand pianists can express their own individual inspirations upon one instrument evolved by a Steinway, so should every IBM man learn that he is expressing his own individuality on the kind of instrument evolved for him by IBM.
Mr. Watson’s inspirational direction of thinking is too often interrupted by the many who demand a reversal of his direction of thinking to their opposed ways. He should have two cabinets, one for IBM and one to catch the rebound of the world influence of his thinking. He should lead in the world desire for a unitary civilization which his philosophy would hasten.
I believe Mr. Watson is helping to unfold the design of life in this dangerous age. I believe that Mr. Watson’s only way of spreading this doctrine of internationalism, which must lead to a unitary civilization some day, is to first balance his machine-building power with an equal man-building power. This would multiply IBM and balance the Watsonian Principle. It would then spread that principle throughout the world to raise the standard of ethics.
The Watsonian Principle is the philosophy which has radiated from IBM practice. It is a philosophy which could stabilize the world at this time when such a philosophy is needed. All people who employ men for their own purposes alone are exploiters of other humans. The Watsonian philosophy offers men the opportunity to find their own life purposes. It does not exploit men, it elevates them to heights determinable by themselves. It gives them the foundation of their own self-power.
IBM is a system in which every planet has an orbit appropriate to its own potential. It is a friendly family of mutual interests. IBM product is a liberator of man’s labor burden, an eraser of man’s drudge.
TWO-WAY THINKING IN GENERAL
Every expression of man evolves by that process of adding one little thing to another. We call it growth. We also call it expansion and unfoldment. The vast majority of people think only in the direction of growth or expansion of idea. Give these people the idea, and they can repeat it or add to it, but their visions are closed to the direction from where the idea appeared. A few think preponderantly in the direction of growth and to a small extent in the direction from which the idea unfolded. And perhaps fewer think equally in both directions. It is these people who bring inspiration into the world for the enrichment of all.
If thought is given to his training, every man may be taught to bring about a better balance between the two directions of his thinking. The more he can be trained to use his dual consciousness, the more valuable he is to himself and to his associates.
IBM has to train practically every man for his job. IBM machine and sales power is no better than its total of man-power. To increase production and earnings, men should not be added in number, but man-power should be multiplied. The way to multiply man-power in man is to give him understanding of the inward direction of his thinking. The very fountains of inspiration should be opened in every man. He should be made to know that he is climbing to heights set by himself and that there is no limit to the heights that he can set for himself.
The school should have a department and a literature which is as perfectly worked out in the creative direction as it is in the repetitive, technical direction. The engineering department should have its drudgery transmuted to ecstasy. There is tremendous waste in the one-way thinking of a department that should balance its technical thinking with creative, inventive thinking. The tired and bored engineer, to whom work is a drudge, and the clock his great hope, costs as much as the inspired engineer for whom time races and who knows no fatigue.
How I long to give new life and sources of hope to that fine body of engineers, half of whom are unsatisfied men in whom something is lacking which need not be. They need inspiration and knowledge of the power to transmute their technical training into an objective, and make a life design of it. Each one of them has been equipped with capital for a journey to fame and fortune, but many have chained themselves to a treadmill. Of all the departments, this one needs a greater understanding of the Watsonian Principle and of Self-searching.
The salesmen are wonderfully trained in the technical direction. The only suggestion in the creative direction which I could find in a list of those characteristics which a good salesman should have is self-analysis. As he knows practically nothing of self, asking him for success in that direction would be like asking him to make a chemical analysis of an oil used in a machine or a metallurgical analysis of an alloy in a wheel. One great necessity of salesmen that could come from training in that direction is the art of fast thinking.
Salesmen have a particular need for thinking ahead, and also for thinking in at least one inner layer and one outer layer simultaneously. Salesmen would close many more orders if they could cultivate a duality of thinking so as to anticipate what one has to say before he says it. There is no miracle or guesswork about knowing other’s thoughts before they have been completed in words. As soon as a man thinks a thought, it exists. The high-speed intuitive thinker can sense the thought in the very attitude of the man or in the expression on his face. There are more ways of getting a man’s thoughts than by his words. Salesmen should have an intensive training in this respect.
As you come higher and higher in the executive chain of the great thinkers of the organization, this ability to make quick and certain decisions is more and more marked, as is the ability of the greater thinkers to eliminate nonessentials from their thinking. Mediocrity is burdened with nonessentials. A masterpiece of any kind is one from which all nonessentials have been eliminated.
Nonessentials consume time, which fatigues, because they are not inspirational. The more one can eliminate them, the more value IBM is getting from the man, and vice versa. IBM should make a special point of teaching its men to so design their lives that this waste can be saved.
All life is expressed by a series of decisions. The salesman, more than any other people in the organization, needs to learn to shift his thinking into the high speed in which he can keep ahead of his prospect’s thinking and always anticipate his response. A salesman’s life needs to be expressed by quick decisions.
Success is based on wise decisions. Wise decisions in slow speeds consume too much time. Fully half of a salesman’s failures are caused by unwise decisions arrived at too quickly. The Super-thinker, to whom flashes of inspiration come by the way of intuition, has so much time to make quick and wise decisions, that he is apt to have his next decision formulated while still waiting for the speaker to finish.
Technical training is necessary, but anyone can become technically trained. It represents but twenty percent of a sale at best. The other eighty percent of a sale lies in the direction of intuition. Sadly, one hundred percent of effort is expended in training salesmen to perfect the technical twenty percent.
SUGGESTIONS FOR CHANGES
All executives who go out to stimulate men and sales should take an intensive course in the philosophy of the Watsonian Principle, of Universal Law, of the Law of Balance, and the qualities which bring out the genius in all men. The pep-talks that hypnotize men into surface activity for a while and multiply their actions without multiplying their thinking should be replaced by balanced power talks which inspire. There should be character talks, manner of expenditure of leisure talks, and talks which build up inspirational foundation upon which each man can learn to erect his own structure. Every worker at every level within the organization should be given a foundation for himself, for greater efficiency yields its proportionate dividends.
It might be a good idea to start a factory workers’ monthly magazine, limited to the number of workers, to bind them together and stimulate them to greater effort through recognition of their achievements, just as salesmen are stimulated. The psychological value of printing a man’s name and his picture to tell others of his achievement is a recognizable part of the Watsonian Principle. It helps the business and it helps the man. The factory workers, too, have a loyalty to IBM, which permeates to their very roots. They have a social life of their own which could be given a place in their own paper. The salesman’s achievements are broadcast to the whole world, while the factory worker’s achievements are buried in files on cards.
I strongly urge a more intensive application of the Watsonian Principle of man-building to all workers. Give them more dignity by putting a structure under their feet. Make thinkers of them also. It would pay large dividends. Every dollar which is harvested as IBM earnings comes from the mental decisions and actions of IBM thinkers whose decisions are no better than their ability to decide and act. This principle follows down to the lowest man in the system, for all must THINK. Even though a man acts automatically in following superior’s decision, or in stamping out a pre-designed part of a machine, he at least decides his own action. His decision has a money value as expressed in time, quality, and its effect on the man.
This should be the axiom of the Company: Every decision of every man either makes money for IBM or costs money; therefore, every possible effort should be given to help men make quick, wise, profit-making decisions. Each worker throughout the company should be cordially invited to ask written questions which would be treated in confidence, or to ask oral ones in person, as to his problems and their solutions. These questions should not be confined to business problems alone, for very often a person’s efficiency is lowered by domestic problems which he cannot solve, or to financial entanglements which worry him.
Regular inspirational courses should be formulated and put into a growing literature that should be made freely available to other industrial organizations which desire it. This would be most desirous, for in such a manner the Watsonian Principle and Philosophy could spread and do the double work of lifting business ethics and in creating good will for humanitarian effort. For a while, this should be the IBM form of advertising.
CONCLUSIONS
I intend writing an analysis of IBM as an organization, to show how its balance is evidence of the intuitive perception of its creator. Mr. Watson balanced his own preponderantly inspirational direction of thinking with sufficient men whose thinking is preponderantly in the direction of product. It is amazing with what accuracy each type of mind is unerringly fitted into its place.
Mr. Watson has built a world position for himself, personally, irrespective of his business. The ball which he is hurling against the world-wall has just struck its mark. It is ready for a colossal rebound.
The Watsonian Principle is a demonstrated, workable reality. Publicize it so it becomes known and it will sweep through man’s consciousness like a prairie fire. Do not, therefore, keep it to the level of one business, but rather as an example for all industry.
Also, do not keep Mr. Watson on the plane of an industrialist, even though a great one, but rather extend his business principles as a light to lead the world out of its darkness.
THINK: The First Principle of Business Success is available from the USP Bookstore.