I'll summarize the four steps first, and then supply the details:
- Be sure you have earned your raise.
- Be sure your supervisor knows you have earned it.
- Be sure he knows that you know you have earned it.
- Be sure he knows you know he knows.
The first thing the above summary does is return the problem of getting a raise to the one man who wants it- you. No one else wants problems, and least of all do they want someone else's. Are you fully informed on what you have been doing, and how well you have been doing it? The great probability is that if you have been performing with above-average ability, you have been placed in a 'let well enough alone" category, and so have heard few words of praise or condemnation on which to base ah opinion. Until you make your own appraisal of your situation, you won't know where you stand.
Well, "Management by Exception" is not a procedure limited to management. You have the same prerogative. Keep a written record of what is expected of your job, and especially keep track whenever your performance has exceeded that which was expected of you. In that way you can document your claim to having earned a raise. The next, and more diplomatic step, is to let your supervisor know you have earned it.
I was fortunate enough to learn about this step on my first job by doing it all wrong. Even then, at 19, I was opposed to hard work, having some elementary idea that jobs should supply a lot of enjoyment and money. Part of my work was to check billings to customers. Another part was to check with the warehouse foreman on the delivery of materials, and a-third part was to accept telephoned orders from customers. That last part was complicated by the fact that before I could assure the customer his order would be filled; I had to shout back to the foreman to find out if the merchandise was in-stock.
I followed procedure for a month or so to solidify my hold on the job, and then I began to hunt for easier ways out. Today we would say I began "seeking ways to increase efficiency." I began keeping track of incoming stock and out-going orders on opposite pages of a cheap notebook. It was not an original system but, never having studied bookkeeping, it was original with me, and I was proud of it. Within a month I knew as much about the merchandise we had left in the warehouse as did the foreman, and no longer had to shout back to him to ask if such-and-such an item was in stock. I was saving both of us a lot of work, but that is not the recognition I got.
I was in trouble. I had gone over the foreman's head. By filling orders without consulting him first, I had left him uninformed of what was going on in his own domain, and that was bad. True, he could see from my record what was coming in and going out, but he didn't want to have to "consult with a kid" to discover what was going on. He reported me to the owner of the wholesale house, claiming that I was a spy keeping secret records of the company's business, "For no good purpose, I'll warrant."
The next I knew, the boss came storming in and snatched my notebook right out from under my hand as I was making an entry, leaving a large scrawl across the page. "Now I'll find out what kind of a trick you o are up to," he shouted, and stormed out. I sat out the rest of the day, knowing I was fired, but afraid to leave for fear it would look like some kind of an admission of guilt. Shortly before quitting time the boss returned, this time in a calmer mood.
"You had better explain this to me," he said. "It looks like an auditing system I'm interested in, but the way you have it here, I can't make it out."
We were able to get together then, and when he discovered my system was not a nefarious plot to sell his business secrets to some rival concern, we were able to talk until way into the night.
In the end he said, "All right, I'm going to approve of -your system, and make it a part of our company records. But never take off on your own again without consulting me first. You made an enemy of the foreman, one of my oldest employees, but I think I can square that when he gets the orders from me instead of you. Just stay out of his way for a while, and he'll calm down. And if you happen to get a raise in your salary, don't say anything about that, either."
The above anecdote illustrates another of the big obstacles in your way to a salary increase-the ignorance of your immediate superior of what you are doing. You may think you are doing him a favor and saving him a lot of unnecessary work, as I did, but unless he knows that that is what you are doing, his reaction is apt to be quite hostile.
When you take your talents for granted, you assume that they are equally obvious to others, and this is rarely the case. The foreman didn't know if I was saving him work, or trying to beat him out of his job. Had I informed him about my plans-and the best way to do that is through asking his advice about them-I would have won him over as a friend and an ally. As it was, it was some weeks before I could convince him I was not plotting to undermine his job.
Nevertheless, I had done something that had improved the stock-handling procedure of the company. My foreman had brought my work to the attention of the owner- not, I'll admit to get me a raise but to expose my "plot"- and when my contribution proved to be of value, I got my raise.
Of course there was a lot of "luck" connected with my first raise. I really didn't know I had done anything special. I thought of my inventory system as something developed "in the line of duty," and would have thought myself presumptuous had I called it to the attention of the owner. Not until later, when I began to hunger for a second raise, did I realize that Lady Luck was not going to come around with raises as often as I "might like.
It was then that I sat down to write a list of reasons, based on my contributions to the company, as to why I had earned another raise. When my list also included the fact that my foreman had handled some $50,000 more in merchandise than he had during the previous year, and at no additional cost to the company, he was quite willing to pass the information on to the owner. We both got raises.
Ever since then I have been a strong advocate of the four steps previously enumerated. Before you can ask for a raise, you've got to know you have earned one, and this you can learn only by keeping written records. In today's business world, few are the supervisors who will tell you when your performance is above average and hence deserving of a raise. At best they'll let you know you are doing as well as is expected of you, and hope you'll let it go at that. Most people will. When all the emphasis is on "making good" instead of "doing better," the majority of men are more concerned about making a mistake-slipping below what is expected of them-than they are with special contributions. That still doesn't stop the contributions from being raise-worthy and praise-worthy if they are recognized and written down. Two important things happen when you begin to keep a record of your above-par work. First, you are "thinking rich" when you are looking for your highest values instead of your "get along" values. And second, when you are conscious of your written progress report, and several days pass in which you have nothing significant to record, you will begin looking over the job to see what more contributions you can make, if only to add something to the report. One of my clients became so obsessed with adding one daily contribution to his "work diary" that he was actually astonished when he found himself marked for a raise.
