A man cannot impart motion to a very heavy rock by violent impact of his own body against it; but he can separate it into fragments, and move each fragment by itself. In like manner, no attempt should be made to change all the methods of an industrial organization at one stroke. Separate it into elements, and take one element at a time, beginning with the simplest. Apply your cost─keeping system to that element──it may be only the hauling of materials with teams──and effect the change desired. Then take another element of the organization, and apply the system to it. Continue thus, fragment by fragment, and you will overcome the opposition that would otherwise resist your greatest effort. =Respect Your Own Ability.= One of the most common mistakes made by managers lies in assuming that a skilled workman necessarily knows better how to perform work than does the manager himself. A manager should first aim to familiarize himself with the methods used by the best workmen, and then, by an itemized time study, he should set his own wits to work to improve the methods. Workmen, for the most part, do their work just as robins build their nests──by the pattern of precedent. They put little or no brains into improving the process, because it usually means no money in their pockets to effect an improvement, and because they reason that an improvement that effects a saving in time may actually result in the discharge of some of their fellow workmen. It should be a cardinal law of management to give very little weight to the claims that workmen make as to their own skill or knowledge; and the same holds true as to foremen. Because a man has blasted rock for twenty years, should not make his opinion of such force as to prevent a manager from undertaking to show that man how to do rock─blasting more economically. We have frequently effected great economies in rock─blasting after a time study occupying fewer weeks than the blaster had occupied of years in the same sort of work. The trained mind of the Cost─Analysis Engineer enables him to analyze costs and methods, and to develop improvements which no amount of so─called "practical experience" can effect. Weigh carefully every _reason_ against any proposed change in method, and act accordingly; but pay no attention whatsoever to predictions of failure that are bare of reasons. Do not be influenced even by many positive statements that your proposed method has been tried and has failed; for its failure may have been purposely brought about, or some small condition essential to its success may have been absent. Therefore, respect your own ability. The manager who cannot improve upon methods used by his men is not fit to manage.