فصل 05

Part Two

Basic Techniques in

Analyzing Worry

Chapter 5 - How to Eliminate Fifty Percent of Your Business Worries

If you are a business man, you are probably saying to yourself right now: “The title of this chapter is ridiculous. I have been running my business for nineteen years; and I certainly know the answers if anybody does. The idea of anybody trying to tell me how I can eliminate fifty percent of my business worries it’s absurd I.”

Fair enough I would have felt exactly the same way myself a few years ago if I had seen this title on a chapter. It promises a lot and promises are cheap.

Let’s be very frank about it: maybe I won’t be able to help you eliminate fifty percent of your business worries. In the last analysis, no one can do that, except yourself. But what I can do is to show you how other people have done it and leave the rest to you!

You may recall that on page 25 of this book I quoted the world-famous Dr. Alexis Carrel as saying: “Business men who do not know how to fight worry die young.”

Since worry is that serious, wouldn’t you be satisfied if I could help you eliminate even ten percent of your worries?…Yes?…Good! Well, I am going to show you how one business executive eliminated not fifty percent of his worries, but seventy-five percent of all the time he formerly spent in conferences, trying to solve business problems.

Furthermore, I am not going to tell you this story about a “Mr. Jones” or a “Mr. X” or “or a man I know in Ohio”—vague stories that you can’t check up on. It concerns a very real person Leon Shimkin, a partner and general manager of one of the foremost publishing houses in the United States: Simon and Schuster, Rockefeller Centre, New York 20, New York.

Here is Leon Shimkin’s experience in his own words:

For fifteen years I spent almost half of every business day holding conferences, discussing problems. Should we do this or that do nothing at all? We would get tense; twist in our chairs; walk the floor; argue and go around in circles. When night came, I would be utterly exhausted. I fully expected to go on doing this sort of thing for the rest of my life. I had been doing it for fifteen years, and it never occurred to me that there was a better way of doing it. If anyone had told me that I could eliminate three-fourths of all the time I spent in those worried conferences, and three-fourths of my nervous strain I would have thought he was a wild-eyed, slap-happy, armchair optimist. Yet I devised a plan that did just that. I have been using this plan for eight years. It has performed wonders for my efficiency, my health, and my happiness.

It sounds like magic but like all magic tricks; it is extremely simple when you see how it is done.

Here is the secret: First, I immediately stopped the procedure I had been using in my conferences for fifteen years a procedure that began with my troubled associates reciting all the details of what had gone wrong, and ending up by asking: ‘What shall we do?’ Second, I made a new rule a rule that everyone who wishes to present a problem to me must first prepare and submit a memorandum answering these four questions:

Question 1: What is the problem?

(“In the old days we used to spend an hour or two in a worried conference without anyone’s knowing specifically and concretely what the real problem was. We used to work ourselves into a lather discussing our troubles without ever troubling to write out specifically what our problem was.)

Question 2: What is the cause of the problem?

(“As I look back over my career, I am appalled at the wasted hours I have spent in worried conferences without ever trying to find out clearly the conditions which lay at the root of the problem.)

Question 3: What are all possible solutions of the problem?

(“In the old days, one man in the conference would suggest one solution. Someone else would argue with him. Tempers would flare. We would often get clear off the subject, and at the end of the conference no one would have written down all the various things we could do to attack the problem.)

Question 4: What solution do you suggest?

(“I used to go into a conference with a man who had spent hours worrying about a situation and going around in circles without ever once thinking through all possible solutions and then writing down: ‘This is the solution I recommend.’)

“My associates rarely come to me now with their problems. Why? Because they have discovered that in order to answer these four questions they have to get all the facts and think their problems through. And after they have done that they find, in three-fourths of the cases, they don’t have to consult me at all, because the proper solution has popped out like a piece of bread popping out from an electric toaster. Even in those cases where consultation is necessary, the discussion takes about one-third the time formerly required, because it proceeds along an orderly, logical path to a reasoned conclusion.

“Much less time is now consumed in the house of Simon and Schuster in worrying and talking about what is wrong; and a lot more action is obtained toward making those things right.”

My friend, Frank Bettger, one of the top insurance men in America, tells me he not only reduced his business worries, but nearly doubled his income, by a similar method.

“Years ago,” says Frank Bettger, “when I first started to sell insurance, I was filled with a boundless enthusiasm and love for my work. Then something happened. I became so discouraged that I despised my work and thought of giving it up. I think I would have quit if I hadn’t got the idea, one Saturday morning, of sitting down and trying to get at the root of my worries.

1. I asked myself first: ‘Just what is the problem?’ The problem was: that I was not getting high enough returns for the staggering amount of calls I was making. I seemed to do pretty well at selling a prospect, until the moment came for closing a sale. Then the customer would say: ‘Well, I’ll think it over, Mr. Bettger. Come and see me again.’ It was the time I wasted on these follow-up calls that was causing my depression.

2. I asked myself: ‘What are the possible solutions?’ But to get the answer to that one, I had to study the facts. I got out my record book for the last twelve months and studied the figures. I made an astounding discovery! Right there in black and white, I discovered that seventy percent of my sales had been closed on the very first interview! Twenty-three percent of my sales had been closed on the second interview! And only seven percent of my sales had been closed on those third, fourth, fifth, etc., interviews, which were running me ragged and taking up my time. In other words, I was wasting fully one half of my working day on a part of my business which was responsible for only seven percent of my sales!

3. ‘What is the answer?’ The answer was obvious. I immediately cut out all visits beyond the second interview, and spent the extra time building up new prospects. The results were unbelievable. In a very short time, I had almost doubled the cash value of every visit I made from a call!”

As I said, Frank Bettger is now one of the best-known life-insurance salesmen in America. He is with Fidelity Mutual of Philadelphia, and writes a million dollars’ worth of policies a year. But he was on the point of giving up. He was on the point of admitting failure until analyzing the problem gave him a boost on the road to success. Can you apply these questions to your business problems? To repeat my challenge they can reduce your worries by fifty percent. Here they are again:

1. What is the problem?

2. What is the cause of the problem?

3. What are all possible solutions to the problem?

4. What solution do you suggest?

Part Two In A Nutshell

Rule 1: Get the facts. Remember that Dean Hawkes of Columbia University said that “half the worry in the world is caused by people trying to make decisions before they have sufficient knowledge on which to base a decision.”

Rule 2: After carefully weighing all the facts, come to a decision.

Rule 3: Once a decision is carefully reached, act! Get busy carrying out your decision and dismiss all anxiety about the outcome.

Rule 4: When you, or any of your associates are tempted to worry about a problem, write out and answer the following questions:

a. What is the problem?

b. What is the cause of the problem?

c. What are all possible solutions?

d. What is the best solution?