The Game

The Game

Chapter VIII

As A Means Of Increasing Human Efficiency

THE motives discussed in previous chapters are fairly adequate for developing efficiency in all except the owner or chief executive. The employee may imitate and compete with his equals and his superiors; he may work for his wage, and he may be loyal to the house. To increase the industry and enthusiasm of the head is a task of supreme importance. Interest and enthusiasm must be kindled at the top that the spark may be passed down to the lower levels. It can never travel in the opposite direction.

How, then, is the president to light his fires and transmit his enthusiasm to his managers and other subordinates? Not by working for money alone, nor through imitation, competition, or loyalty to the works of his own hands. All these may be essential, may be powerful subordinate incentives to action, but singly or collectively they are not adequate. In any organization, the head who attains the maximum of success must depend for his enthusiasm upon an instinctive love of the game.

The subordinate possessing such love of the game and independent of others for his enthusiasm is sure to rise. The subject is, therefore, of vital importance both to the executive and to the ambitious employee. Every employer feels the need of such an attitude towards work, both in himself and in his men.

An attempt will be made in this chapter to comprehend this instinctive love of the game, to discuss to what extent it is inherited and to what extent subject to cultivation, and to analyze the conditions most favorable for its development in respect to one's own work as well as that of his employees.

The love of the game is in part instinctive, and its nature is made clear by consideration of certain of the instincts of animals.

The young lion spends much time in pretended stalking of game and in harmless struggles with his mates. He takes great delight in the exercise of his cunning and in his strength of limb and jaw. Fortunately for the young lion this is the sort of activity best adapted to develop his strength of muscle and his cunning in capturing prey. However, it is not for the sake of the training that the young lion performs these particular acts. He does them simply because he loves to. In like manner the young greyhound chasing his mates and the young squirrel gathering and storing nuts have no thought beyond the instinctive pleasure they find in performing these functions. To each there is no other form of activity so satisfactory.

Man possesses more instincts than any of the lower animals. One pronounced instinct in all normal males is the hunting instinct. Grover Cleveland went fishing because he loved the sport, not because of the value of the fish caught. Theodore Roosevelt did not hunt big game in Africa because he was in need of luscious steaks or tawny hides. He was not working solely in the interest of the Smithsonian Institute nor to secure material for his book. Doubtless these were subsidiary motives, but the chief reason why he killed the game was that he instinctively loves the sport. He endured the hardships of Africa for the same reason that fishermen spend days in the icy water of a trout stream and hunters lie still for hours suffering intense cold for a chance to shoot at a bear.

For some men, buying and selling is as great a delight as felling a deer. For others the manufacture of goods is as great a joy as landing a trout. For such a man enthusiasm for his work is unfailing and industry unremittent.

He is suited to his task as is the cub to the fight, the puppy to the chase, the squirrel to the burying of nuts, or the hunter to the killing of game. His labor always appeals to him as the thing of supremest moment. His interest in it is such that it never fails to inspire others by contagion. For such a man laziness or indifference in business seems anomalous, while industry and enthusiasm are as natural as the air he breathes and as inexhaustible as the air itself.

By classifying the love of the game as an instinct, we seem to admit that it is born and not developed; that some men possess it and others do not; that if a man possesses it, he does not need to cultivate it, and that if he does not possess, he cannot acquire it. There is doubtless much truth in this, but fortunately it is not the whole truth.

Some instincts are specific--even stereotyped --and not subject to cultivation or change. Thus the bee's instinctive method of gathering and storing honey is very specific and definite. The bee is unable to modify its routine to any great extent. The bee which does not instinctively perform the different acts properly will never learn to.

There are other instincts not so stereotyped in manner or constant in degree. The instincts of man are much more variable than those of the lower animals and are much more subject to direction, inhibition, or development. If this love of the game were solely a matter of inheritance, if the business genius were born and not made, and if it could not be cultivated and developed, our hope for the improvement of the race would be small.

Potential geniuses exist in large numbers but fail of discovery because they are not developed. Instincts manifest themselves only in the presence of certain stimulating conditions. They are developed by exercise and stimulated further by the success attending upon their exercise.

Thus certain conditions, more or less definite, are effective in determining the line along which instincts shall manifest themselves, and the extent to which the instincts shall be developed and then ultimately supplemented by experience and reason.

Fortunately we have reason to believe that although the business genius must have a good inheritance, yet the inheritance does not determine what its possessor shall make of himself.

Many persons are inclined to overestimate the influence of inheritance in determining success in business. The folly of this attitude is every day becoming more and more apparent.