My concern is exclusively with the individual who wants to make a habit of success. He faces some new problems seldom studied, and then only rarely understood. Management has its problems, and labor has its problems, and if the individual caught in between has his problems, well-that's his own lookout, or so goes the general line of thinking.
Yet the success-minded individualist is the backbone of our creative civilization. And today, faced with periodic pay raises to meet increased costs of living, faced with pay raises based on seniority, faced with pension plans, and Social Security, and medical benefits, he is finding it far easier to "take what is coming to him" than exercise his God-given talents. This can be boiled down to the fact that the biggest obstacle in the course to success today is the comfort we can heap on mediocrity.
I do not believe that a salary adjusted to meet an increased cost of living is a raise. I do not believe a salary increase based on length of service is a raise. And I must deplore the continued employment of men on jobs made obsolete by technical advances-featherbedding is the usual term-for two reasons: In the first place a man not carrying his own weight reduces the productivity average of his associates, and in the second place, the featherbedder suffers enormously in damaged morale, knowing that he is drawing good wages for a job that serves no useful purpose.
What does this mean to you? Much! When raises are handed out at periodic intervals to meet increased living costs or the demands of seniority, the man whose contributions to increased efficiency entitle him to a raise is more apt to be reminded of the raises he has already received than the raise he deserves. Where featherbedding is practiced, his increased productivity is needed to meet the drain of men who produce nothing. And while it is true that only mediocrity is encouraged when people can get pay raises by virtue of increased living costs or seniority, regardless of initiative, little is being done to alleviate this situation. As a matter of fact, the man whose superior talents entitle him to a raise is too often regarded as a problem. If he is granted the raise because he has earned it, all of his associates will want raises because group raises have become a fixture in group thinking, and no employer likes to choose between a group raise and a discontented crew.
The net, and much more serious result, is that extra effort and the employment of superior talent tends to be discouraged. As "group-thinking" has it, there is just so much money in the pot to be parceled out in raises. If one man gets an individual raise, there is that much less when the time comes to "slice the turkey." No one knows this better than management, and to keep the peace, they would rather have one somewhat discouraged top performer on their hands than a score or more of his discontented associates demanding to know why the company couldn't afford to give them raises if it could give him one.
Most books and articles on how to become successful are helpful in telling you what to do while omitting to tell you what you are up against. The advice may be good, but it loses its effectiveness if you are still working in the dark. Labor has developed some techniques to win increased salaries for all. Management has developed some techniques to protect itself from the more exorbitant features of increased salary demands. Abuses of these techniques exist on both sides, and crushed in the middle is the ambitious individual who would proceed on personal merit.
Your top executive in management was such a climber. Your top labor leader was such a climber. Both climbed to the top by asserting their individualism and making the most of their talents, and yet both seem to be united in reducing individualists to conformists who can be more easily regimented.
