Efficiency and other Factors of Success.1
- Author:
Lightner Witmer, Ph.D.
There is a great deal of doubt as to what psychology really is.
Not long ago a visitor to our laboratory said to me, “I came all the way from Florida to see you because you are a psychologist. I am a psychologist, too, I can psychologize, and so can my wife.” They turned out to be professional hypnotists.
“Oh, yes, I have heard of tests like that being made on baldheaded men,” someone recently exclaimed, as I was speaking of a very common laboratory experiment, the assumption apparently being that when a man is minus hair on the top of his head you can get a little bit nearer to his mind.
It is difficult to state just what psychology is, but I can tell you what the psychologist studies. He studies just what you are compelled to study every day of your life, the behavior of human beings. We study mental abilities through the performance of those whom we observe. When I test a student in my psychological laboratory, or when parents bring children to me for the purpose of having them examined, all that my tests do is to provide a material means or agency by which I cause the child to perform in my presence, so that I may observe what he can do and what he can’t do.
That is the reason why psychology is so closely in touch with human life, and that is the reason why the word “efficiency” is one which we have regularly used in the field of psychology. Mr. Taylor has made this word very well known to all of us, and I think he uses the word in its proper sense. There is also the problem of efficiency of school management which was first proposed by a superintendent of schools who subsequently became an efficiency expert for a whiskey trust.
Since the war has been on, this term efficiency has come very much to the front. Some say, “Now that the Allies have won, we know that they have greater efficiency that the Germans.” Others say, “Now that the Germans have been beaten, thank God we shall hear no more about efficiency’” Evidently there is lack of agreement as to what this much-used word actually means. On my way back from Italy last June, I had a talk in London
1 Tuesday Luncheon Address, given at the Engineers’ Club of Philadelphia, December 3, 1918, and reprinted with a few corrections as originally published, from the stenographic notes, in the Journal of the Engineers’ Club
with the head of the Welfare Department of the Munitions Bureau about the kind of work they were doing for the workman. As a result of that enlightening conversation, I said, “I see that you are not interested in efficiency at all; you are interested in what I call competency.” He asked, “What do you mean by efficiency?” After explaining to him my use of the two terms, he said, “You are quite correct. In this department we are not concerned with a maximum output in the minimum amount of time. We are only interested in seeing that the laborers are in a fit condition to do satisfactory work.” I believe clear thinking is essential to successful work, whether in the school or in the business of earning a living. Certain concepts in connection with our study of the human problem are coming out of this war which it is extremely important for us to try and define a little more precisely. One of these is the word efficiency. Another much misused term is the word intelligence. We hear of “intelligence testing” and we hear of “efficiency management.” There is an aspect of every human performance which requires us to use the term efficiency, the one wherein we look upon the performance as an operation which has as its purpose the production of a desired result. We examine the expenditure of time and effort in securing that result. Efficiency exists only when the result is related to the expenditure of time and effort, and this relation is quantitatively measured. The attainment of maximum efficiency is only one way of achieving success. Another way of achieving success is through the exercise of intelligence. I use the word intelligence to mean invention, the ability to solve a new problem. In its hightest manifestation it is what we call genius. In its lowest manifestation it is what we call cunning. It is possessed by the young as well as by the old, and by the lower animals as well as by man.
We are constantly confronted with performances where we must distinguish the relative efficiency of individuals from their relative intelligence. It has been, to my mind, a conspicuous result of the achievements of this war that the Germans, despite their greater efficiency in industrial and military organization, have been beaten by the superior intelligence of the allied peoples. To my mind it does not help us in analyzing the situation to say that because the Allies have won the victory it means they had the greater efficiency. When, for examples, Hippomenes and Atalanta ran their famous race and Atalanta stooped to pick up the golden apples, it did not prove that Hippomenes was the more efficient runner, but that he had a higher intelligence than Atalanta. And so with another famous race?that of the hare and the tortoise. When the tortoise won the race because the hare went to sleep, the tortoise did not prove that he was the more efficient runner, but only that he stuck to his job and the hare trusted too much to his superior ability. Efficiency can be acquired only as the result of-discipline through constraint, training, and practice. It is the result of the same performance done over and over again until the maximum amount of output is obtained with a minimum amount of effort. We do not like efficiency, because it exists in an atmosphere of monotony and requires us to put forth strenuous effort. We like our employees to be efficient, our students to be efficient; but, as for ourselves, we prefer to be intelligent, that is to say, we like to achieve success by our wits and not by work.
Success is not achieved solely through efficiency. Because American business men and American professional men have achieved success and acquired wealth and honors is no proof that they are efficient. Efficiency is one thing; the employment of intelligence in order to accomplish a result without efficiency is a very different matter. These are two distinct aspects of every performance and they stand with respect to each other at the opposite end of the poles. There is nothing which differs so much from efficiency as this mental quality which I call intelligence.
Knowledge, we are told, is power. Knowledge is acquired by the exercise of memory: which means, again, either the training of the memory and the acquisition of ideas at some relatively low intellectual level for the purpose of producing efficiency or the acquisition of knowledge in order to arrive at new ideas. For example, the new discoveries with respect to by-products and the introduction of by-products in the manufacturing industries, do not add to efficiency. It is the introduction of a new bit of knowledge by virtue of which a new line of performance is carried on.
Now, as we make so many of our successes through acquiring new knowledge, it is of great importance that we should consider what kind of knowledge is to be acquired and what will be its results and consequences.
There is a certain kind of knowledge called professional knowledge?professional skill?which comes fairly close to efficiency, but which, in the higher regions of intellectual thought, does not involve efficiency at all, but processes that had better be called imagination, which brings it a little closer to this other capability which I call intelligence. A man’s knowledge may be professional knowledge and lead him to success in his line of work; or, on the other hand, his knowledge may be of human character. A man may succeed as an engineer or as a doctor?not because he is a good engineer or a good doctor per se, but because he understands human nature, can pass a good bluff, or has a lot of good friends.
There is one kind of knowledge which, as a university man, I consider extremely important: that is, knowledge for its own sake? the possession of a certain amount of knowledge for the sake of acquiring new knowledge?knowledge which forms a basis for further investigation. In my opinion, the great advances of the world have come, through men of intelligence, men of genius, who have employed in specific sciences such knowledge as they were able to acquire in order to gain new knowledge. Other persons may subsequently have carried their results to a successful conclusion. For example, the aeroplane was invented by an American?Professor Langley, who barely achieved success; yet, nevertheless, he did succeed. Others took the idea and advanced it. It is said that the submarine is not a German invention, nor mustard gas, but Germans took the idea and developed it. That is what I mean by knowledge further developed in the direction of efficiency; and our institutions, should be ready to develop and apply all kinds of knowledge. In addition, some corner of the institution should be reserved for those who are interested in acquiring new knowledge for its own sake; for, after all, it is to this fountain spring that those who develop and apply knowledge must come. There is another factor which enters into all our work, a factor of great importance, and that is what I can only vaguely call judgment. Good judgment is only to be acquired as the result of experience. I observe good or bad judgment employed by every individual I examine. It comes out in his attempts at solving the simplest test. He must choose certain methods of operation if he solves the test which I put before him, and he will display good or bad judgment in solving it.
Then there are certain principles which underlie good judgment which are mainly balance and common sense. I think it is commonly admitted of the French as of the English, that throughout their political development there has been manifest a faculty of common sense. They both say, “Believe in this ideal, but do not believe in it too strongly;” “do this, but do not do it too hard.” Some find in this, something of hypocrisy and something of the cult of the amateur. But, on the other hand, it leads to compromise. This has come out distinctly in the war. What the Germans did was to choose a certain principle of action. People, whether individuals or nations, must choose certain principles to govern their actions. The Germans chose force?a good idea, an idea which appeals to many of us. We do not reject force. But the Germans elevated force to an ideal? to something which was to be made irresistible and which was to be carried out to the limit, no matter what humanity or morality might have to say against it. On the other hand, other nations said, “We believe in discussion, argument and compromise, but with force always in the background.”
This principle of compromise is often applied to our moral principles. “Honesty is the best policy,” we say, and so it is. That is the right ideal to put before a man as his standard of living. Yet anybody who lives in the world knows that success is conditioned not only by following that policy?it is conditioned often by making compromises with it. The same may be said of lying. It is not safe to say, as Bethmann-Holwegg said, that “Necessity knows no law.” As a matter of fact, it does know no law under certain circumstances; but that is not the proposition to put before humanity as a rule of conduct. Good judgment calls upon us to select the opposing principle, “law,” which yet permits of exceptions. We say that we are law-abiding citizens, and yet each man feels within himself the right to annul the law when it comes to certain critical situations. When I was in Italy, I had a very amusing illustration of this, which, among other things, made me say, “After all, Italians are very much like ourselves.” Several men were arrested on the train traveling from Messina down to Syracuse, along the eastern coast of Sicily, because they had kept the curtains of their windows up. The printed orders in the compartments read: “All curtains are to be drawn as soon as the lights are lit”?the reason being that there were German submarines along the coast and danger of the train being shelled. One of these men when arrested said he did not know he had to pull the curtain down. He was asked, “Didn’t you see the sign up in your compartment to the effect that the curtains must be pulled down?” “Yes,” he replied, “I saw the sign, but I also saw signs, ‘Don’t spit on the floor,’ and ‘Don’t smoke,’ and nobody ever pays any attention to them.”
In the selection of our rules of conduct and in the way in which those rules of conduct are observed, you will generally find that the principle which has brought success to some men or groups of men has been the principle of compromise. Take the uncompromising attitude of some of the socialistic minorities. Whatever we may think of their doctrines, whether we think them good or bad, the question remains of our having to deal with groups who will apparently decline to enter into any compromise at all?who either want the whole loaf or none. A certain balance and judgment, which seems to be necessary in political life, is also to be found in every single performance, whether produced by a laboratory test or as a part of any man’s ordinary life.
In all this, as I see the situation which comes before us, there are those two main questions: an external one of the operation?the man in action and our estimate of his action as such, and efficiency is a term which relates to that; 011 the other hand, there is the internal?the man himself displays certain abilities, which we indicate when we say, “He is an able man, he has intelligence, intellect, and sound judgment.”
I think it may help everyone, as it certainly has helped me, to distinguish between this external aspect of work which is efficiency and these internal attributes which constitute a man’s competency. A competent man?a healthy man?is not necessarily efficient. He has the advantage over an incompetent or sick man in being able to develop efficiency or to be trained for efficiency. If we are selecting men on whose training we are going to spend time and effort, undoubtedly we want to select the more competent men. Whenever an institution asks my advice on training young men for successful careers, I say to them, “If you are trying to give these men professional training?efficiency on the one hand and skill on the other?and you wish to fill their minds with knowledge which you hope they will put to good use, you ought to provide opportunity for the exercise of intelligence, because efficiency training tends to dull intelligence.”
That is the problem of the school, but an equally important problem, if we are going to send out into the world well-trained professional men, is to eliminate the unfit from the schools. To my mind this question is every bit as important as the curriculum and methods of instruction. We must devise some method whereby we can select those whom it is worth while to educate. Competency comes up in connection with our institutions of higher learning, just as it comes up in connection with the elementary grades. Take, for example, in the public schools, one of the problems which I have to face many times: that of the fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy or girl who has advanced only to the third or fourth grade, and who is not able to satisfy the requirements with respect to English, and therefore cannot get a working certificate until he or she is sixteen years of age. I make an examination, determine the proficiency in reading and writing, and decide that within the time of the school period the pupil can not be brought up to the level required by law. Eliminating other considerations, to my mind it is very much better to let the child go to work under, perhaps, certain kinds of guidance, than to force him to attend a school where he will simply spend another year or two doing little or nothing; because the results of the examination have shown that he has not the competency which will enable him to acquire the proficiency demanded by the school standards.
Psychological tests were employed in connection with the selection of men for the army, both as privates and as officers; and there can be no doubt that these tests will be further developed and perfected. As a result of the war and what will grow out of it, we are going to have a tremendous development of industrial organization along the lines of efficiency and applied knowledge. It is certain that our professional schools will become more numerous. Already government subsidies have been given for the establishment of such institutions in England, and America will have to follow suit. We need not fear, therefore, for the satisfactory development of professional schools; but we do need to fear for the maintenance and further development of schools that have as their main object the cultivation, the acquisition and the discovery of new knowledge for its own sake. If this is the aim of the graduate school, then it means the further development of graduate schools. Surely all professional men, but especially engineers, can appreciate the difference between the mechanic and the inventor. Some men and some institutions must live in the pursuit of new ideas, and in the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake instead of for the sake of using that knowledge to secure wealth or success.
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