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SOME CLUES TO YOUR ACHIEVEMENTS YOU CAN'T KEEP A GOOD MAN DOWN—OR CAN YOU?

When tradition says you can't keep a good man down, it is referring to a man who knows he is good, has confidence in his abilities, and has the courage to rise again. To that extent tradition and I are in agreement, but after that the break is sharp. There is something painful to me in visualizing a good man constantly climbing up after one defeat on top of another. I can admire his fortitude, but must deplore his career planning.

But rise he does, proving it can be done. To present another side of the picture that I have seen too often, a man doesn't have to know he's good in order to rise, if he just thinks he is. History is loaded with cases of "successful" men, including many a conqueror and business tycoon, who were no good at all but thought they were. Success under those circumstances seem merely a matter of attitude, so easily attainable it can be had for nothing more than an illusion. Unfortunately, success reached through an illusion is nothing but an illusion when reached, and no envy need be wasted on those who got "it" without having "it" inside to start with.

Those of us concerned with career planning cannot ignore the recoveries of good men who refuse to be kept down, nor can we overlook the often spectacular ascents of the pretenders.

SOME CLUES TO YOUR ACHIEVEMENTS

Both offer convincing proof that to rise, or make money, or achieve power, one must have as a chief ingredient a real or imagined confidence in one's self. By the same token, many a good man is down, and is being kept down, by lack of that ingredient.

To tell a good man he would do better if he had more confidence in himself is about as useless as telling an alcoholic he would feel better if he quit drinking. "All right, so I'm a good man," he is willing to admit, "but what am I good for?" And until he knows the answer to that question no amount of confidence is going to take him anywhere.

That's where past achievements come in. In coming to know them, and coming to know yourself, you come to know what you are good at. Once that is accomplished, you won't have to be told to have confidence in yourself. You'll already have it. What is more, because you will know how to base your success on your achievements, you won't be falling into the unplanned pitfalls from which the "good man" is constantly rising, his "head bloody but unbowed." Nor will you, like the pretenders, climb ruthlessly over others to reach what in the end is only a hollow victory. Real success is based on enjoying the challenges one meets in reaching a goal that brings mutual benefit to one's self and others, and that is what you will find.

There is sufficient evidence to prove that you were born with many of your talents, and some of them manifest themselves early in life. Most of these, as I have pointed out, are in the visible fields—the juvenile chess wizard, the child prodigy at the piano, the dancer who kicks to music in the crib, the kindergarten artist who paints realistic cows at five. But what about the rest of us who may have been born with talents of equal value, but which do not "show up" so early in life? Some valuable talents, in fact, are so inconspicuous that they remain unsuspected for years if detected at all. Other talents, though recognized, might be too expensive to develop, or too dangerous for childish tinkering. Ben Franklin flew a kite, and brought down electricity from the sky. Today we don't wonder that he produced an electric spark from his brass key. We marvel that he wasn't fried to a crisp. Today any father seeing his young electrical genius out playing with thunderbolts or trying to dismantle the family fuse box is more apt to wallop him than encourage his "suicidal tendencies."
There are some who condemn this attitude as over-protective, but they are not being realistic. Our grandfathers could operate on the theory that what a boy didn't know couldn't hurt him. Today the boy's opportunities for self-destruction—with the possible inclusion of his family and a few neighbors—are limitless, and so many of his most active talents are sternly smothered "for his own good." Piano playing—yes, but mixing up a batch of rocket fuel—even the government moved in to squelch that.

Nevertheless, these talents, though suppressed, continue to exist. Constantly they reveal themselves through your achievements, but most often they are so thoroughly disguised that only in recent years have they been recognized for what they are. For that reason every achievement that was the result of something you enjoyed doing and brought you satisfaction when accomplished should be listed. As of the moment you don't know what promises it might hold.

Let's consider the case of Albert Wilkins, 43, who came to me after ten years in a department store. His story is typical of thousands whose careers had been stunted at the start by the Great Depression.

"It was rough, Mr. Haldane," he said, "but no rougher on me than the rest of the fellows. We used to say that if a job lasted ten weeks, it was permanent. When I finally did get a job in a furniture factory that looked good for life, I was so grateful I didn't even mind hating the job. I'd still be there if I hadn't been drafted."

World War II caught up Albert and his depression-conditioned friends, and tossed them into four more years of chaos. They had job-security, but life-security was lacking. Four years of that, from North Africa to Berlin under fire most of the way and then, in 1946, Albert was turned loose with millions of other survivors in what was the biggest, most fantastic scramble for jobs in history.

"It was any port in a storm," said Albert. "I got a job in this department store as an extra during the 1946 spring sale. When they asked me to stay on as a regular after the sale at thirty-five a week, I could hardly believe my ears."

During the next ten years he had risen to become floor manager at $95 a week, so he could not be considered a failure. In his own mind, however, he was what he called a "successful flop." The storm that had blown him into the port had long since blown over, but he was still there, afraid to venture out. "I'm doing what the company wants me to do," he said. "Not what I want to do." Was it wise, he wondered, to change courses in mid-stream?

"Certainly," I assured him. "What course do you have in mind?"

He didn't know. Furthermore, faced with the fact that a change was possible, he wasn't sure he wanted to make it. Cold doubt began to replace hopeful ambition. His memories of his years of insecurity, when even his life was in jeopardy, suddenly conspired to make his present job and pension plan look very good after all.

"I guess I was dreaming," he said finally. "At my age I can't afford to start over. Not in competition with all the young fellows coming out of college."
A perfect illustration of a man boxing himself in. But at least he had dared dream for a while, which was encouraging. I had another reason for being interested. Only the week before one of my clients had enthusiastically reported finding his course to success in a department store much like Albert's. This man, recently retired from the Army where he had achieved great success as a Post Exchange officer, claimed his new job was "exciting, stimulating, something new every minute." His buoyant enjoyment of his "new life" was as positive as Albert's resigned acceptance of his fate was negative. I knew from experience that it was now or probably never—there can be no irrevocable "never" placed on any man's career—with Albert.

I suggested that he tell me something about himself, things he enjoyed doing—and I am betraying no professional secrets when I say that is the best way to let the client hear some firsthand information about himself. (Oh, yes, I know about those who talk about themselves all the time, but those are the ones who lack the ability to listen.) The story came out hesitantly and in piece-meal, and that's fine, as long as it comes out. Reassembled in chronological order he revealed to me, and himself, that his grandfather had been a gunsmith and his father an expert tool maker. In the way of achievements he recalled that at the age of four, coached by his grandfather, he had taken apart a Springfield rifle, cleaned and oiled it, and put it together again. And, oh yes, at the age of ten his father had raised him to a dollar a week because he worked so hard in the basement metal-working shop his father ran as a side-line.

Nothing more? "No. When the depression hit, my father lost his job, I had to quit business school where I was studying accounting, and you know the rest. Anything I could get to help out, and not a good job in the lot. No achievements there. Just defeats."

And he was still defeating himself. He realized that as soon as I did and said defensively, "But I'll tell you one thing, I've got a metal working shop in my basement—my wife says I spend more on it than I do on the family—where I can make anything from a model locomotive to more machine tools for my shop—" and once off on that subject, he became a man transformed. This was no resigned floor manager before me now but a creative machinist who exulted in his work.

"But what good does that do me?" he asked, his original defeatist attitude descending again.
I suggested he do some more thinking on the subject, and return the following week with a list of more achievements. He returned with ten. Only ten achievements after 43 years of living, or should I say surviving. Included among them was the time during the war when he got a disabled tank back in to action by machining a part himself, a system he had developed for keeping inventory records of the merchandise on his floor, and—the source of his last raise—the designing of some display racks that presented his merchandise to better advantage in less space. "Nothing to amount to shucks/' he said.

Yet what a reservoir of unused talents those achievements revealed. Mechanical aptitude, a keen awareness of the flow of materials, an insistence upon clean efficiency, and an appreciation of the value of inventory records, to name fut a few.

"Have you ever thought about combining these achievements?" I asked.

Albert lost a lot of confidence in me then. "They aren't even related," he said. "How can you combine them?"

"Maybe they weren't related when you were a boy," I said, "but they are now. Have you ever heard of production controls— the business of getting the right parts to the right machines at the right time to keep the assembly line going? It isn't even a job any more—it's an art."

"So what chance does a floor manager have in a job like that?" he asked, still boxing himself in, but brightening considerably.

"Not as a floor manager, no," I agreed. (I was not forgetting my ex-Post Exchange officer who had now risen to floor manager and was going great guns. The point is that the job that was for him was not for Albert.) "But as a man who knows machines, who can keep the materials flowing, and is a demon for efficiency—well, figure it out for yourself."

The details will be filled in later, when you learn more about using your own achievements, but for the moment I'll assure you that Albert is the best production control manager, at twice his floor manager's salary, his machine-tool company has ever had.

In ranging through your achievements, sort of trying them on for size for the first time, you will find yourself saying, "Oh, no, not that one. I felt good about it at the time, but now I realize it was really pretty small stuff." When you do that, evaluating a previous experience in the light of what you know now, you are boxing yourself in. Each achievement must stand on its own in terms of what it meant to you at the time. This calls for recreating the period in which the event took place, and then looking at it in as much detail as is possible through the eyes of the person that was you at the time.

When Albert Wilkins first mentioned as an achievement his machining of a part that restored a tank to action during World War II he was inclined to minimize it. It was a small part linking two treads together, and compared to the work he was doing now in his basement shop, it was crude to the point of being childish. Then he began living that day over again.

It began with a dawn, strafing attack, with the German planes coming in low over the hedgerows. One lucky shot through the treads, and a tank was crippled. In a demolished French garage he found an old engine lathe, but there was no electricity to power it. To turn the ancient belt-and-pulley system he had to recruit manpower, and then, jerkily, proceed to turn out the link. By the time he had relived that experience, smelling again the reek of the high explosives that had demolished the garage, and hearing again the blue language of the soldiers who blistered their hands turning his lathe, he could see that his achievement was not to be judged by the size of the part he had made, but its importance, and the resourcefulness he had used in getting it made.

In going through your achievements, don't hesitate to list those that are freshest in your memory, but don't stop there. Go back as far as memory permits. Einstein's interest in magnetism, which in turn led to his discovery of the theory of relativity, was revealed at the age of four. In like manner Indira Gandhi, the great political leader in India, lined up her dolls as a captive audience when she made her first speeches at the same tender age.

No period of your life should be neglected in your search for your achievements, nor should any one period be overemphasized. When tradition says that the child is father of the man, it is stating a half-truth only. For centuries the boy who showed signs of becoming a good farmer—having little opportunity to show signs of becoming anything else—usually ended up as a good farmer, and so on through the other trades to which boys were apprenticed early in life. Then the boy was indeed the father of the man, and the belief was strong that a man's career was "settled for life" before he was 21. There was a saying to describe men who shifted about, hunting for something more congenial: "A jack-of-all-trades, and master of none."

The major break with that tradition arrived after World War I, announced by, of all things, a popular ditty that went: "How you gonna keep 'em, down on the farm, after they've seen Paree?" Nor were farm boys the only ones influenced by that war. Men taken from all walks of life were exposed to influences they had never anticipated, and gone forever was the theory that the child had sired his own career and was stuck with it.
A theory had been seriously challenged for the first time, but nothing constructive had been offered to take its place. What of the child whose achievements promised to sire a highly successful career? For instance, one of my clients listed as his first achievement the fact that at seven he had stayed in the saddle of a run-away horse. No one can say how many children, confronted with a like emergency, clung to their saddles like leeches rather than take a header, but we can be sure most of them were more terrified than thrilled. This man, now a successful breeder of Arabian horses, could never get the enjoyment of that wild ride out of his mind. Always after that he had longed to be with horses, raising them and breaking them in himself. Of course he had other achievements that have aided him in becoming a successful horse breeder, but this we can state with finality: If he hadn't thrilled to his first achievement, if, instead, he had found horses to be terrifying creatures, he would not be in his present business today. One achievement does not make a career, or even indicate the direction it might take. It is merely a point, and more points are needed before a course line can be drawn to your success. Thus the importance of listing 20 achievements to be used as reference points.

THE KEY TO SUCCESS FACTOR ANALYSIS

Through the listing of 20 achievements you have made a start on what is to grow into a highly rewarding experience. With this list in front of you, you know that more achievements are not only possible but inevitable. But now doubt creeps in. If you have experienced all of these achievements, and still haven't made a habit of success, of what value are more achievements?

Up to now, as a survey of your list will show, your achievements arrived at unplanned intervals. That is not to be wondered at. Without clear objectives in mind, and with no chart to be used for reference, the results may seem to add up to little for one very good reason; they were never added up. Nevertheless, certain values are there, undiminished by weeks, months or years. Now to chart them and add them up so future achievements will arrive with regularity, and become a habit.

Out of your list, pick the ten that mean the most to you, your ten greatest. Now from your new list of ten, pick your greatest achievement and mark it Number One. Do the same with the remaining nine, numbering them in order of their importance to you. Take your time. Many years of greater success rest on the few hours you spend discovering yourself now.

An achievement is a composite of many things—talent, aptitude, attitude, and even instinct—as in the case of a client who leaped into an ice-choked river to save a child without even considering the fact that he couldn't swim. So now we must analyze your achievements in terms of their parts. Start with Number One and describe it. Write down as many details as you can easily recall. You probably will not have to strain your memory for this.

Here is an example from my files as it was written by a man who is now a top executive: "When I was hired as a Time Study Engineer, the plant was getting an average production of 400 units weekly with a work force of 10 supervisors and 80 bench workers. By means of meetings, organizational work, gaining recognition for the supervisors, etc., I was recognized by the supervisors as their superior—while not yet promoted to that capacity. Within two months management promoted me to Plant and Production Manager, telling me they had no alternative since I was doing the work anyway. I was 28 at the time, and the youngest man in the plant by far. Six months later, using the same facilities and work force, we were producing 850 units weekly. The product was also of higher quality, and morale throughout the plant was much improved. The result was accomplished by reorganizing existing departments, by obtaining teamwork, by installing production incentives, and mostly by making supervisors feel they were important components of the management team."

We will return for a detailed analysis of what he, at the time, considered to be his greatest achievement. In the meantime, with that example before you, describe in about the same detail each of your ten achievements.

Use a separate page of your notebook for each. Some may have arrived as the result of thorough planning; others, like boating a giant marlin, may have been a combination of acquired skill plus the luck of having the big fish come along. And some might have found you rising to meet a challenge that seemed to arrive purely by chance. Give to each the special attention it deserves, regardless of how unlike the others it might seem.

As you are now about to discover, dissimilar though your achievements may be, in them are to be found certain factors that crop up often enough to form a pattern. At the end of this chapter you will find a chart listing the 52 factors that appear most frequently in the lives of successful men. The ten columns provided with the chart, numbered from one to ten, are for analysis of your ten greatest achievements, already numbered in order of importance.

We start with your greatest achievement, proceeding down Column One and consulting the list of factors at the left. What factors appear most sharply in your achievement? Did it involve analysis of a problem? Artistic talent? Ownership, words, figures, memory, showmanship, systems-procedures? The list of factors is not meant to be limiting, so add some more of your own if they seem to have a more direct application. Place a check in Column One next to those factors that apply most directly to your achievement. If, for instance, your achievement was the creation of an effective display advertisement, you could check such factors as creative, design-art, ideas, showmanship, words, writing, and perhaps others. If it was a record-breaking ski-jump, you could check energetic, observant-attention, outdoors-travel, persevering, and showmanship.

In that previously mentioned case of the time-study engineer, he checked the following success factors: things, people (getting along with others), leader, production-controls, organizer, human relations (getting many people to get along with each other), figures (incentive pay), systems-procedures, problem solving, words (meetings), and then added as an extra factor, teamwork.
His had been a production job, a "things" job facilitated by his ability to get along with people. In his analysis of the success factors involved, he had been quite justified in adding teamwork as an important factor. You will notice also that he combined two factors on the list, controls and production, to describe production controls as applied to his job more accurately. At the same time he omitted to check quality and drive, two factors that were certainly important to his achievement.

You, too, will probably be omitting factors in your first efforts to analyze your achievements, just as I hope you will be able to add factors not on the list. Continue by checking in the second column the factors that figure prominently in your second greatest achievement. Don't rush yourself. In sounding this warning I am reminded of a lady client who admitted, "When I saw my success pattern forming before my eyes, I got so excited about finding out who I was that in my rush to finish I guess I checked out the wrong person."

You will find the same thrill in seeing the same success factors appear in one achievement after another, but this can lead to a pitfall I described earlier as "statistical hypnosis." Having seen a factor like imagination checked in five achievements, you begin to look for it in achievement No. Six, and could have just enough imagination to find it there even though the dominant factors are budgets, controls, and figures. What you must try to maintain throughout the analysis of each achievement is a scientifically detached attitude. For example, imagination certainly could be important to your success. Without it you would not be able to imagine yourself being more successful than you are now, and so would have no incentive to move. But is it a dominant factor, as it has to be in conjunction with such success factors as creative, ideas, design-art, inventive, and their like, or is it only a minor contribution, as in such other factors as figures, memory, and their like?

In all fairness to yourself, check only those factors that are of outstanding importance to the achievement concerned.

Your ten achievements have now been analyzed in terms of 52 success factors or more. Add up the check marks for each success factor and write down the score in the column marked, "Total." Of the 52, some eight or more will register high scores. Within this group of high-scoring factors—four check marks or more—will be found your Success Pattern.

We use the term Success Pattern to define the area in which your success factors are most heavily concentrated. Its value lies in narrowing the search for the ultimate in your success. Now we can concentrate on those factors that have produced your greatest achievements and enjoyment in the past, with the assurance that they can be made to do so in the future.

Study now the factors that fall within your Success Pattern, paying special attention to those that have been checked six times or more, or might even have been so dominant as to appear in all ten achievements. As of now the various success factors have been checked only because they applied to a certain achievement, with no effort made to put a higher value on one factor over another. To use our time-study engineer as an example again, he checked 11 factors on the list provided, overlooked two, and added one of his own—teamwork. The check marks gave no indication of the values of the factors, his ability as leader and his ability with figures being checked with the same kind of X.

As the next step I asked him, as I ask you, to go over the success factors and achievements again, this time giving a double check mark to those that were of vital importance to the achievement. He had checked among his factors leader, people, and human relations. Was he a dominant leader, using his lesser abilities in dealing with people and in human relations to support his position, or was he dominantly a gregarious person who found himself in the position of leader because he could get along well with others? It may seem like a small distinction, but it is not. As an amiable person able to work pleasantly with people, he could have made a good boss without raising production or improving the quality of the product an iota. But as a leader, double check mark, he was able to use his other factors of people, human relations and organizer, single check
mark, to more than double production, improve quality of product and increase morale.

I might point out that he did not casually put a double check after leader. Always before he had thought of himself as a time-study man, a production man, a pusher. The fact that time-study men seeking to improve the efficiency of labor were not generally loved by workingmen may have accounted for part of his attitude. He had thought he had been able to push through his ideas because of his congenial way of getting along with people. That he was not pushing, but leading had not occurred to him until it was inescapably brought out in an unbiased analysis of his success factors. Since then, recognizing that dominant success factor, he has risen, as already mentioned, to a top executive post with his company.

I want you to use the same unbiased detachment in placing double-checks after those factors that contributed most to each of your achievements. The values of some you may already know. The values of others will require closer study. Some, like discovering that the old and loved portrait of Grandpa on the wall is a genuine Whistler, may come as a complete surprise.

Now then, you have carefully analyzed your success factors and placed double checks after the few that are most important. These we call your Career Directional or Dynamic Success Factors. Unlike the strong factors that determine your Success Pattern, these point to the field in which your opportunities are greatest. The how and why of it will be made clear in the next chapter. But just for the sake of arousing your curiosity, how many of your Dynamic Success Factors are being used in your present occupation? And how much time are you devoting to chores that fall not only outside your Dynamic Success Factors but outside your Success Pattern? Before telling you how to integrate your success factors, suppose you spend another hour or so studying once again the chart you have filled out on the next two pages. Believe me, the time will be well spent. It is yourself and your successful future that are to be found there.

Success