COOPERATION
In the sixteenth century, the great writer John Donne penned the immortal words, “No man is an island.” Perhaps those very words inspired Dr. Hill to count Cooperation as one of the backbones of his philosophy. Also referred to as teamwork, cooperation is the thirteenth principle.
How can such a simple, obvious thing be so important? Consider this: very few, if any, substantial or lasting achievements have been, or ever will be, made by one man or one woman working alone. We all need others. Even the proverbial lone-wolf inventor needs other people with production experience to manufacture and package the invention he’s created during years of isolation in his basement or attic. To get his invention to his customers, he needs marketers to advertise and promote it as well as salesmen and retailers to offer it.
What human organization do you know—a home, school, government, or industry—that can truly succeed without its members working harmoniously together toward a common goal? Cooperation is such a powerful idea because it involves the development and utilization of a particular aspect of the human spirit. A part of our spirit recognizes the oneness of people and the fellowship of all humankind. True cooperation allows no room for selfishness or greed.
There are two kinds of cooperation, one based upon force or coercion and the other based upon voluntary action (and driven by motive).
Most circumstances of cooperation are based upon some form of force or coercion. For instance, most employees cooperate with their employer, but there’s a certain amount of coercion in it. There’s a fear that if they don’t cooperate, they’ll not have their jobs anymore. Of course, there are circumstances in which the employees’ cooperation with the employer has made it so beneficial that they do it willingly.
Any kind of cooperation that’s forced or coerced, or based on any type of coercion, is not desirable. People only cooperate on that basis as long as they have to, and when they get to the point they don’t have to do it any longer, they kick over the traces.
Relatively speaking, there’s a small percentage of employers throughout the United States who understand the advantage of having their employees cooperate with them on a willing basis. There’s friendliness in those companies, and it’s based upon benefits that they extend to their employees.
Cooperation is different from the mastermind principle when that cooperation is based upon coordination of effort, or when it doesn’t necessarily involve the principle of definiteness of purpose or the principle of harmony. For instance, an army of men working under their superior officers in the military service represents a tremendous amount of cooperation, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s harmony, or that they like what they’re doing. There’s a certain amount of enforced coercion; they’re doing what they have to do. Sometimes they like to do it, but sometimes they don’t like to do it.
It’s true that willing cooperation is part of the mastermind principle, the medium by which great personal power may be attained. No one has ever acquired such power without the aid of these two—the principles of cooperation and mastermind—making them both indispensable.
Cooperation is indispensable in four major relationships: in the home, in one’s job or profession, in social relationships, and in supporting our form of government and free enterprise. If every citizen cooperated in those four areas, this would be a better country than we have now.
Let me give you examples of cooperation that do not involve the mastermind principle: 1) Soldiers, working under army regulations; 2) employees, working under rules of employment; 3) government officials, working under laws of the nation; 4) professional men (such as lawyers, doctors, and dentists), working under rules of ethics of their profession; 5) citizens of a nation, living under a dictator.
Cooperative effort assumes great power when the principle of cooperation is combined with the mastermind principle, which involves harmony and a shared motive. I’ll explain this by using the example of government officials, when working in harmony with and supported by a majority of the people.
During Roosevelt’s first term in office, the emergency of an economic depression supplied motives for harmony—a desire for economic recovery for all people. I have never seen a finer illustration of power attained through a combination of the principles of cooperation and the mastermind than I witnessed in the Roosevelt administration. We all had a motive in getting behind the president, and that motive was self-survival. We were in danger; there was an emergency. We had to close ranks and get behind the president, whether we agreed with his political principles or not, and we did that. We did it on a grand scale for a time, but as soon as the emergency passed or was softened, the combination of the mastermind principle and cooperation began to disintegrate. Before Roosevelt finally got out of office, there was an upheaval, a lack of harmony, and a lot of other things that caused a lot of people worry and annoyance, not to mention loss.
Employers and their employees can have a motive such as that which inspired harmony in the Arthur Nash Clothing Company, when the company faced bankruptcy. During the time I was publishing The Golden Rule magazine, I got a “Hurry up!” call from Mr. Nash, of the Nash Clothing Company in Cincinnati. He wanted me to come over to Cincinnati and see him, and when I got over there I found he was in trouble. He was bankrupt. For no reason that he could explain, his business, which had been going profitably for years, suddenly became unprofitable, and the business dropped off to where they didn’t have enough to pay the payroll.
As I went over the situation with Mr. Nash, I said, “There is only one thing that can save your business. You have to work out a plan whereby the employees will take a new lease on life, put their heart and soul in the business, and help you save the business.” We worked out such a plan whereby, at the end of the year, in addition to their regular salaries, they would receive a bonus consisting of a percentage of the profits. There were quite a lot of details that I’ll not go into, but that was the sum and the substance of it.
Mr. Nash called all his employees together, got up, and told them what he had in mind. He said, “First of all, I think I should tell you all that the company’s bankrupt. We don’t have enough money to pay this coming week’s salary or payroll.” He said, “For a long time, this business has been going downhill. I noticed the employees were losing interest, and the enthusiasm that used to prevail is no longer here. The spirit of the thing’s gone, and unless we can recapture that spirit, that willingness of enthusiasm for everyone to jump in and do something, why we’re all in the same boat, which is namely bankrupt. But, I have a plan and I think it’ll work because it’s based upon the Golden Rule.
“Here’s the plan. You’ll come down Monday morning and start in on a new basis—the same mental attitude that you were in ten years ago when we were thriving. I’ll pay your wages as soon as we can make the wages, including the back wages that I’ll not be able to pay you this coming week. If we make a go of it, at the end of the year, we’ll divide the profits on a basis that’ll give you the same standing as a stockholder in the company. I’m going to leave the room so you can talk it over frankly and decide what you want to do. When you want to see me, you send for me.”
He and I went to lunch, and after about an hour, the messenger came over and pulled him away from the luncheon. They went back and Mr. Nash was told what had happened. The employees all got together and decided not only were they going to accept his proposition, they also had an idea of their own. They came in the next day—with their savings. Some of them had money in old socks, some of them in tin cans, some of them in savings accounts. They laid $16,000 in cash on his desk and said, “There it is, Mr. Nash. If that’s the way you feel about us, this is the way we feel about you. We earned this money down here just as much, but if it will do any good, use it. When you can pay it back, pay it back. And if you can’t pay it back, that’s all right, too.”
Every one of those employees found the spirit of real cooperation. The company began to thrive, and before Mr. Nash died some ten years later, it became the most prosperous mail order clothing business in the whole United States. As far as I know, it still is that today, despite the fact that he’s gone. Imagine the same business, at the same location, making the same kind of clothes, with the same people doing the work—failing one day and starting to succeed on a grand scale the next day. What happened was a change of mental attitude. What caused them to change the mental attitude? It wasn’t fear that they’d lose their jobs. It was a motive. Mr. Nash had inspired them with his sincerity and he had a purpose in making that kind of an offer. They were touched by it. They knew it was sincere, and they made up their minds they were going to be just as a good a sportsman as he was. They were not going to let him outdo them.
When you get any group of people together on the basis of motive, I don’t care what their problems are; they’ll meet those problems successfully. They always do. The Rotary Clubs and their members throughout the world give us a marvelous illustration of the mastermind principle and the harmony in the ranks. I belonged to the first Rotary Club ever organized in Chicago. I was a member of the original group Paul Harris organized. The original purpose included building up his legal practice in a way that wouldn’t violate his ethics, but we finally outgrew that purpose. The purpose of the Rotary Club that exists now is based on the idea of developing fellowship among the members. The Rotary Club spread all over the world and it’s become an outstanding influence for good wherever it has touched.
You don’t do anything in this world without a motive; there must be a motive to inspire everything that you do. The only person that does anything without a motive is an insane person, because he doesn’t really have to have a motive.
The opportunity to get increased compensation and promotion is one of the most outstanding motives for gaining friendly cooperation. Whenever that motive has been put into use in any business, there’s always a very beneficial and a very profitable return.
Being recognized for personal initiative, a pleasing personality, or outstanding work is a strong motive to inspire cooperation. Give a person recognition when he does a good job; say so, and do something about it.
I know an employer who has the birthdays of his employees, their wives, and all of their children. On their birthday, they get a present and a card personally signed by him. In this way, he’s made his organization into one great big family. As he has built himself up in the hearts of those people, you can just imagine what that does to each person.
A powerful motive for gaining friendly cooperation is to take an interest in the problems of people that you’re associated with, or working with, and help them solve their problems. A lot of people say, “My problems are mine but the other fellow’s problems are his.” I’m not interested in that. You have the right to do that if you want to. But I can tell you that attitude won’t be beneficial to you, and it won’t be profitable either. If you want to have a lot of friends and a lot of cooperation, you’ll make it your business to look around and, wherever you can, start being of help to people.
You can create a system of friendly competition between departments, and between individuals within the same department. In either case, the system is based on friendly cooperation. In a sales organization, for instance, if you can have one group competing with other groups in the same organization (on a friendly basis, that is), they’ll all strive to do their very best in order to win. They’ll do it because of good sportsmanship. Good sales managers often set up that kind of motive to inspire their salespeople to do better jobs.
The hope of future benefits, in the form of some yet unattained goal, can often be obtained by mutual cooperation. Maybe there’s something that you want to accomplish with a group of people, and it can only be accomplished by everyone pulling together, in the same direction, at the same time, with a spirit of harmony.
We could mention other motives. There may be a particular case in which you need the cooperation of somebody and know what kind of a motive you could plant in the mind of that person to get that cooperation. You know the cooperation you want (and hope to benefit by) can’t be gotten by force or coercion, because if you get it by that method, sooner or later the cooperation will play out and turn into resentment.
Andrew Carnegie’s method of inspiring cooperation was based on four principles. First, he established a monetary motive through promotions and bonuses. That was one of his most potent and influential motives in getting men to cooperate. All the men who worked for Andrew Carnegie knew that they had the potential of becoming an exceedingly wealthy executive. They’d seen one man after another do that very thing: start at the bottom ranks and climb right on up to the top.
His second method of getting cooperation was his question system. He never reprimanded any employee personally but, through carefully directed questions, allowed the employee who deserved it to reprimand himself (or herself). If he wanted to reprimand or discipline someone, he’d call him in and start asking him questions which could only be answered one way—the way Mr. Carnegie wanted them answered. That was very smart. If he wanted a fault brought out, he’d let the man bring it out himself, by asking questions that would force him to bring out the fault. He’d also use it to get the person to admit a lie, which the man wouldn’t want to do, especially when he knew that Mr. Carnegie knew what the lie was. That was one of the things that indicated what a smart man Mr. Carnegie was. He knew how to get the best results out of people without unnecessarily attacking them or offending them.
The third motive Mr. Carnegie used was that he always had one or more men in training for his job. Just think about an employer that has a number of men standing training for his job. You don’t think they would be disloyal, do you? You don’t think they’d lie down on the job, refuse to do their best work, or neglect to go the extra mile, do you? They’d be very silly if they did. Mr. Carnegie knew how to hang out plums for people to reach for, so to speak, and because he kept the plum just a little bit ahead of the reach of the man, he caused that man to grow stronger and build a longer arm for reaching it. That was much better than throwing fear into a man’s heart, of losing his job or something of that sort, as so many other employers had done.
Fourth, he also never made decisions for his employees but encouraged them to make their own decisions, and be responsible for the results thereof. I think it’s a wonderful thing that he would not make decisions for his executives, his under-executives, or anyone in training for executive jobs.
I was in the office of Mr. Iris H. Curtis, owner of the Saturday Evening Post, who was also one of the contributors to this philosophy, when his son-in-law Edward Bok came in. After he apologized for interrupting our meeting, he said, “I must speak with Mr. Curtis because I need an answer immediately.” I noticed he had a telegram in his hand as he hurriedly explained to his father-in-law that there was a problem in buying the supply of paper that they were going to need for the whole next year. As you can imagine, it took a tremendous amount of money to buy paper for Ladies’ Home Journal, Saturday Evening Post, and Country Gentleman magazines. He told his father-in-law what the problem was and the three things he thought they could do about it. Then he said, “What I want you to tell me is, which one shall I do?” Would you be interested to know what Mr. Curtis said to him? After he briefly analyzed each of those three solutions and considered their good points and their bad ones, Mr. Curtis said, “This is your responsibility. That’s my answer. It’s your responsibility to determine which one of the plans you’re going to adopt.” After Mr. Bok thanked him and left, Mr. Curtis said, “If he makes the wrong decision, it’ll cost us nigh unto a million dollars.” I said, “Why didn’t you give him the right decision?” He said, “If I had, I’d ruin a good executive. That’s why I didn’t.” Mr. Bok did become a good executive. He made Ladies’ Home Journal the outstanding magazine of its time. He didn’t do it by having his father-in-law make decisions. He made them himself.
Mr. Carnegie taught people to make decisions and be responsible for the decisions when they made them. That’s important. Our American system of free enterprise gets friendly cooperation as long as the basic motive of profit is intact and not interfered with by outside influences. If we took away the profit motive, it would take the roof off our whole system of free enterprise. Certain pressure groups are trying to do that very thing all the time—take away the profit motive. You have to have a motive for everything you do, and we believe that the United States has a system of free enterprise based on the finest combination of motives that exist anywhere in the world.
I don’t know what you think about this philosophy up until this point, but I want to tell you something. If you get 50 percent of the benefits that are available to you out of this philosophy—not a hundred but just fifty—you can so thoroughly change your lives that the year that’s ahead of you can be the most outstanding year of your life. From here on out, for the rest of your life, you can enjoy a controlled destiny, one that you hew out for yourself—where you’ll find happiness, pleasure, contentment, security, the friendship and the goodwill of people around you—because you’ll create circumstances leading to that end.