Publix Opinion (May 16, 1930)

x PUBLIX OPINION, WEEK OF MAY 1é6rx, 1930 TALK ON PERSONNEL STIRS MEETING! MANPOWER IS COMPANY’S BIGGEST ASSET, SAYS BARRY Although manpower’ s valuation i is noe included 1 in the financial statement of the company, it is the company’s greatest asset, according to John F. Barry, Personnel director, who delivered one of the most important talks at the Boston meeting from an institutional fact-angle. “Know Your Organization” viewpoint, that it was highly commended by Mr. Katz, and other Home Office executives. Mr. Barry’s talk in full follows: : Any discussion of personnel before the members of this Division is particularly appropriate, and, because of what happened last night, particularly opportune. More assistant managers have become managers, more managers have become district managers, more district managers have become division managers, from this division in the last year than in any other division of the company. Besides that, last night you saw the most striking example of what might be called the possibilities of a career with Paramount-Publix, and that is why I say now that ny discussion of man-power and ersonnel is particularly opportune and apppropriate here. Mr. Katz has said that manpower is the company’s greatest asset, and when he says all this he says it ,advisedly. The assets of the company, as far as equipment, leaseholds, and properties are concerned, are set down in hundreds of millions of dollars. No one has ever seen the assets of the company’s manpower included in any of the company’s financial statements. Why? The value of some assets are not easily calculated. Mr. Katz’ appraisal of the value of manpower is convincing enough. It should make each of you realize your responsibility. I will try to help you to that realization in the few things I have to say, so, as I talk, do not sit listening and saying, isn’t that very interesting, but apply it right to yourselves, because I feel every sentence hits right home to each of you. Record Kept One function of the personnel department, in which you will be interested, is the record, the week ~by week record that is kept of every man in the company. This is a real incentive to the man who knows he is doing his job, because he knows he cannot be lost in the shuffle. He knows that every week a careful, detailed, specific report of just what he is doing in his job is brought to the attention of the home office executives. It also puts a certain sanction on the work of every man because he realizes that negligence, carelessness and ignorance just cannot £0 undiscovered. It has been said that Paramount Publix is looking for manpower. Now, do not let that statement be misinterpreted. Right now 60 men, experienced men, are completing training and awaiting assignments. 36 men at the managers’ school will soon complete their training and be ready for assignment. 44 assistant managers are getting ready for the company’s next call. So, do not let the statement that ParamountPublix is looking for manpower lull anybody into a certain false security that is dangerous. We all appreciate the part taken by the members of this Division in helping to train men for the company’s needs. The facts I have given—the number of trained and experienced men available for assignments — should really be an incentive. Why? Every expansion of the company brings you f So significant was this talk from a more new opportunities. The fact that trained and experienced men are ready, and will be ready, to meet any expansion, only emphasizes how clear the way is for your own promotion. I wish you could sit in the office in New York where every day men apply for an assignment with this company. I do not refer to men who are out of work, so-called experienced theatre managers, who could not make the grade with other companies whose standard is much lower than your own, and consequently could never make the grade with Paramount-Publix. Those men deserve no serious consideration. But I am talking of successful theatre men, men employed right now with other companies, who seek every day an assignmeht with your company. Why? We naturally ask them that question, and their answer will be very interesting to you. They say, ‘‘Your company is the leader. It offers a man more opportunity. It gives every individual theatre, manager services which managers of other circuits never get. It promotes men faster. It gives them a certain latitude in operation so they can apply their own initiative and their own ingenuity and their own originality. It gives them elbow room.” And, as one man said, “Anyone who wants to work and knows this business wants to get with Paramount Publix.’’ Sitting in the rear of the room is such a man, an experienced theatre manager with three or four years’ experience, who applied to us not so long ago and who is now in this territory becoming familiar with Paramount-Publix routine. He happens to be, as we learned later on, the brother-in-law of Roxy. The day he joined Paramount-Publix Roxy called on long ‘distance and congratulated him. The application of that is quite significant. This morning—TI asked him—how he liked his work, what he thought of the company, and he told me he found here what he found nowhere else, careful, well calculated, business-like approach to every problem of theatre operation. Not only experienced theatre Managers are seeking assignment with your company, but men from every business who realize that here in this business with this company men who want to work and men who want to think can get somewhere. An average of 3,000 such men every three months seek assignment with your company. They feel. that there is no mystery in this business. They are right. They feel that a man who will work and think can make his presence felt. This business—as no other business—offers opportunity for those who like the challenge of new problems every day, and the speed and originality and ingenuity which the business demands. They know that eventually the investment of their time and| effort will pay them dividends. Men from practically every college alumni association in the country have been attracted to the business. Such men are trained as you know first at the company’s theatres and then at the managers’ school, and that brings us to/a discussion of the managers’ school. Managers’ School | Such a discussion of the managers’ school is particularly appropriate here, because more men from the managers’ school are working now in this division than in other divisions. More men are now training at the managers’ school from this division than from other divisions. In the short time that has elapsed since the organization of that school we have had one division advertising manager, six district managers, six district advertising managers, and nine men have won assignments in home office departments, besides, over 75 managers of important theatres of your company —all trained at the Managers’ School. I listened to Mr. Katz’ talk this morning, and I heard mention of many things that have reference to training. Mr. Katz is the teacher at the school. I heard him mention such things as principles, system, methods—You heard him say educational processes. You heard him mention organization, you heard him stress a systematic approach to your problems and all these things are only part, as you know, of any educational system— of any training. ‘The company, as no other company, seems to feel that the trained theatre manager is the man to fill the position today rather than the so-called showman who has nothing to learn. By that I mean: the showman who feels that somehow or ‘Other God gave him some special gift at birth, some special angel picked him up and put in his mind something no one else could get unless they got it likewise, that he was born back stage, and when in short pants: be became an usher, and after that went right along, and as soo nas he had his checked suit and his false diamond, he was a showman, and any method of training, any method of businesslike approach to his problems’ had ,no interest to him, it just had no place in the business because he was God’s gift to the world, he had that God-given gift called showmanship he need not learn. In this company you find some | thing quite different. Every home office department, as Mr. Katz said a few minutes ago, sends out information definitely calculated to -help train you, and the managers’ school, and more recently the district managers’ meetings, and the Chicago convention and this meeting all emphasize that facts. and not guesses are essential in your = N00 Do you. PUT TAKE BRAINi POWER The official pas BRAINPOWER EXCHANGE is your weekly issue of slutilix © Opinion Ll elec IITA TUT AUNT It’s only fair that you contribute at least once a week in order to make the weekly collection of its hundreds of career — building showmanship helps! KICK IN! NOW! F ceca Coco oT RUN Vindividual business. The president of the Drake Hotel wrote in that he was much impressed by the serious attitude of the men assembled there. Now, do not think because you did not happen to go to the managers’ school that the training that we talk of here does not apply to you. Hach of you have at your theatre a school. Every time the seats are empty there is the lesson, why? Here is a lesson for the man who wants to think. Why didn’t they come?. What could I have done to bring them there? What mistake did I make in trying to bring them? When the seats are filled, there is another lesson: Why are they filled? How can I use that same factor of drawing people that I used to get them here next week and the week after? And every time you sit down to your weekly report and study expenses you are studying, and I use the word advisedly. You trace out the results of each expenditure. You study ways of more ingeniously and effectively determining expenses. You study product, program arrangement, the copy and coverage of advertising campaigns. All this is only an evidence of the thinking attitude, and I know every one of you agrees with me that the manager of even the smallest theatre is attending a school. Every time he goes down to the theatre he starts the school session and ‘when he leaves the theatre at night he is ready for problems of the next day. Someone has said, this is a young man’s business. Young men are not men of 20, 25, 30, 35, or 40. I have met young men of 25 who were old, and I have met old men of 40, 50, and 60, who were young, because their attitude was young, they had an enthtusiasm and they had an energy and they had a freshness of viewpoint, and they had what we might call the spirit of this particular business that you are in. The young man, no matter what his age, who is in a rut is old. The man of many years, no matter how many, who is not in a rut, but who brings every day to his work that freshness of viewpoint which has been emphasized so often for you is young. In this business there are no time clocks. In this business there cannot be ruts. In this business there are no yawns, and there is no monotony. The only man who finds any phase of theatre work monotonous is the old man. The young man can never find it monotonous because he realizes that he must be reborn every day, and that every day a new business is born with new problems and now difficulties which are all the time stimulating him with the realization that here is a chance for a man with any originality, and ability and with any desire to get anywhere to meet the challenge of new problems. Someone has said that circuit operations—and Mr. Katz mentioned it this morning—limit the manager’s ingenuity. Critics of circuit operation speak of some mysterious red _ tape that binds the theatre manager’s hands and stops his thinking. Will you do me a favor? Will you sit down tonight and take up one by one the functions of your home office departments and your district department and your division department, and then see how much time and effort these functions take from you so that you can now devote yourself to the real essentials of the business? You will be startled, It will be amazing to learn how many things you would have to do if you were an independent operator, which are now done for you so your time is available for real theatre management. Many Services ‘Available | Look at is from another angle. Consider how many services come to you almost as easily as pushing a button, services, information, specialized expert advice, which SCHAEFER SEES BIG FUTURE IN MANAGEMENT “If I were starting in the picture business today,’ declared George J. Schaefer, eastern division sales manager for Paramount Publix, at the New England Division meeting, May 7, “I would go — into the theatre’ management end of it. From the distributor’s view— point, you are just beginning where we started ten years ago, and the opportunities for success are limited only by the assets of the individuals in it.’’ This statement served as an in— troduction to a talk on product — for the coming year. With a record year behind it, the production department is all set for the most ambitious schedule in its history. Schaefer pointed out that the closer affiliation between /Paramount and Publix that he just been established will find an immediate reflection in picture prod— uct which even more than ever will be designed for their box-office value. expected to keep within his own skull, and because all this is done for you any man with circuit operation assistance should be able to make any one theatre pay much more than any independent operator could make it pay. dependent operator gives to his -work a certain enthusiasm that you do not give, it may be that you forget what differences there are. He has to eat regularly, and the independent theatre manager knows that a check will not come every week no matter what he does, but he has to get out and hustle. Where is your incentive? Why, this: The record of promotion, the climax of that brilliant career to date which you saw last night, the $380,000 in prizes that the company has offered to you men for your efforts during this quarter, insurance paid for by the company, given to every manager who has been with us for six months, the opportunity to buy stock in the company at a price far below the market—do you need any other incentive? The very business that you areinisan incentive and any man who can stand outside his theatre at night and see tired fathers who went in © with their worries of the day’s ! work marked on their faces, com ing out happy, does not need any other incentive. Any man who can stand in his theatre and see the mothers and daughters of the community safe there and. happy there because of his efforts, does not need any other incentive. I often wonder if we realize our responsibility and our privilege. A new trade mark has come into existence, the Paramount| Publix trade mark. Many years ago it was said —and it still is—If it is a Paramount picture | it is the best picture in town. It has been said, and justly said, if it is a Publix theatre it is the best theatre in town; and of the Paramount-Publix manager it will aways be said, if he ‘is a Paramount-Publix manager, he is the best manager in town. What that ParamountPublix trade mark is going to mean will not depend so much on the millions of dollars in advertising, it will not depend so much upon the ‘elaborate theatres, but it will depend, beyond all other things, on the contact of 1,500 managers every day with millions of people all over the country, and they, and they alone, can make that newly established trade — mark, Paramount-Publix, carry the message that it really stands for. You know the privilege that is yours. You know the opportunity that is yours. What I say is only what all of us here feel and what — every one of you men feel. The responsibility is heavy, the privilege is priceless; you measure up no one man in the world could beto it. If the in—