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Recently the top executives of a major manufacturing found in the Chicago area were asked to survey the role that listening plays in their work. Later, an executive seminar on listening was held. Here are three typical comments fabricated by participants:

  • "Frankly, I had never idea of listening as an important subject past itself. Simply now that I am enlightened of information technology, I recall that possibly 80% of my work depends on my listening to someone, or on someone else listening to me."
  • "I've been thinking dorsum about things that take gone wrong over the by couple of years, and I suddenly realized that many of the troubles accept resulted from someone not hearing something, or getting it in a distorted way."
  • "It'southward interesting to me that we accept considered so many facets of communication in the company, only have inadvertently overlooked listening. I've about decided that information technology'south the almost of import link in the company'southward communications, and it's evidently also the weakest 1."

These comments reverberate function of an awakening that is taking place in a number of management circles. Business is tied together past its systems of advice. This communication, businessmen are discovering, depends more on the spoken word than it does on the written discussion; and the effectiveness of the spoken give-and-take hinges non so much on how people talk as on how they listen.

The Unused Potential

It tin be stated, with practically no qualification, that people in general practice not know how to listen. They have ears that hear very well, but seldom have they acquired the necessary audible skills which would allow those ears to be used effectively for what is called listening.

For several years we have been testing the power of people to sympathize and call back what they hear. At the University of Minnesota we examined the listening ability of several thousand students and of hundreds of business and professional people. In each case the person tested listened to short talks past faculty members and was examined for his grasp of the content.

These extensive tests led the states to this general determination: immediately after the average person has listened to someone talk, he remembers only near half of what he has heard—no affair how carefully he thought he was listening.

What happens every bit time passes? Our ain testing shows—and it has been substantiated past reports of research at Florida Country University and Michigan State University1—that 2 months after listening to a talk, the average listener volition retrieve merely nigh 25% of what was said. In fact, later we accept barely learned something, nosotros tend to forget from one-half to one-tertiary of it within 8 hours; it is startling to realize that ofttimes nosotros forget more than in this starting time short interval than nosotros do in the next six months.

Gap in Grooming

Behind this widespread inability to listen lies, in our stance, a major oversight in our organisation of classroom instruction. We have focused attention on reading, considering it the main medium past which nosotros learn, and we have practically forgotten the art of listening. Most six years are devoted to formal reading instruction in our school systems. Piffling emphasis is placed on speaking, and almost no attending has been given to the skill of listening, strange as this may be in view of the fact that so much lecturing is done in college. Listening preparation—if it could be called grooming—has oft consisted only of a series of admonitions extending from the get-go grade through higher: "Pay attention!" "Now get this!" "Open your ears!" "Listen!"

Certainly our teachers experience the demand for practiced listening. Why and then have then many years passed without educators developing formal methods of teaching students to listen? We have been faced with several false assumptions which accept blocked the teaching of listening. For example:

(1) We take assumed that listening ability depends largely on intelligence, that "bright" people mind well, and "tedious" ones poorly. There is no denying that low intelligence has something to exercise with disability to heed, but we have greatly exaggerated its importance. A poor listener is not necessarily an unintelligent person. To be good listeners nosotros must apply sure skills that are acquired through either experience or grooming. If a person has not acquired these listening skills, his ability to empathize and retain what he hears will be low. This can happen to people with both high and low levels of intelligence.

(two) We take assumed that learning to read will automatically teach one to mind. While some of the skills attained through reading apply to listening, the assumption is far from completely valid. Listening is a unlike activity from reading and requires dissimilar skills. Inquiry has shown that reading and listening skills practise not ameliorate at the same charge per unit when only reading is taught.

This means that in our schools, where petty attention is paid to the aural element of advice, reading power is continually upgraded while listening ability, left to stammer along on its ain, actually degenerates. As a off-white reader and a bad listener, the typical pupil is graduated into a order where the chances are high that he will have to listen about three times every bit much equally he reads.

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The barriers to listening training that accept been built upwardly by such false assumptions are coming down. Educators are realizing that listening is a skill that tin exist taught. In Nashville, for example, the public schoolhouse system has started training in listening from unproblematic grades through high school. Listening is also taught in the Phoenix school organization, in Cincinnati, and throughout the state of North Dakota. About 2 dozen major universities and colleges in the land now provide courses in listening.

At the University of Minnesota we have been presenting a course in listening to a big segment of the freshman class. Each group of students that has taken listening training has improved at least 25% in ability to understand the spoken discussion. Some of the groups have improved equally much as 40%. We have likewise given a course in listening for developed education classes made upwards mostly of business organization and professional people. These people have made some of the highest gains in listening ability of any that nosotros have seen. During one menstruum, 60 men and women about doubled their listening test scores after working together on this skill one night a calendar week for 17 weeks.

Ways to Comeback

Whatever course or any effort that will lead to listening improvement should do two things:

1. Build awareness to factors that affect listening ability.

2. Build the kind of aural feel that can produce good listening habits.

At least a start on the commencement of these two educational elements can be fabricated by readers of this article; a certain caste of sensation is developed by merely discussing factors that affect listening ability. Later nosotros shall discuss some steps that might be taken in social club to work at the second element.

Tracks & Sidetracks

In full general, people feel that concentration while listening is a greater problem than concentration during whatever other form of personal communication. Really, listening concentration is more difficult. When we listen, concentration must be achieved despite a factor that is peculiar to aural communication, one of which few people are aware.

Basically, the problem is caused past the fact that we think much faster than we talk. The boilerplate rate of spoken communication for most Americans is around 125 words per minute. This rate is dull going for the human brain, which is made up of more than 13 billion cells and operates in such a complicated but efficient manner that information technology makes the great, modern digital computers seem slow-witted. People who study the brain are non in consummate understanding on how it functions when we think, merely well-nigh psychologists believe that the bones medium of thought is language. Certainly words play a big part in our thinking processes, and the words race through our brains at speeds much college than 125 words per minute. This means that, when we listen, nosotros ask our brain to receive words at an extremely slow pace compared with its capabilities.

It might seem logical to dull downwards our thinking when nosotros mind then as to coincide with the 125-word-per-minute speech charge per unit, but slowing down idea processes seems to be a very difficult thing to do. When we listen, therefore, we continue thinking at high speed while the spoken words go far at depression speed. In the act of listening, the differential betwixt thinking and speaking rates ways that our encephalon works with hundreds of words in addition to those that we hear, assembling thoughts other than those spoken to u.s.. To phrase information technology some other way, we can mind and yet have some spare time for thinking.

The utilise, or misuse, of this spare thinking time holds the reply to how well a person tin can concentrate on the spoken discussion.

Instance of the disenchanted listener. In our studies at the University of Minnesota, we find most people do not apply their spare thinking time wisely as they heed. Allow us illustrate how this happens past describing a familiar experience:

A, the boss, is talking to B, the subordinate, about a new program that the house is planning to launch. B is a poor listener. In this example, he tries to listen well, only he has difficulty concentrating on what A has to say.

A starts talking and B launches into the listening process, grasping every give-and-take and phrase that comes into his ears. But right away B finds that, because of A's slow rate of speech, he has time to recall of things other than the spoken line of thought. Subconsciously, B decides to sandwich a few thoughts of his own into the aural ones that are arriving so slowly. And so B rapidly dashes out onto a mental sidetrack and thinks something similar this: "Oh, yes, before I exit I want to tell A about the large success of the meeting I chosen yesterday." Then B comes back to A'due south spoken line of idea and listens for a few more words.

There is plenty of time for B to do just what he has done, dash away from what he hears and then return rapidly, and he continues taking sidetracks to his own private thoughts. Indeed, he can hardly avert doing this because over the years the process has go a strong audible addiction of his.

But, sooner or afterward, on i of the mental sidetracks, B is almost sure to stay abroad likewise long. When he returns, A is moving forth ahead of him. At this signal it becomes harder for B to understand A, simply because B has missed part of the oral bulletin. The individual mental sidetracks become more inviting than ever, and B slides off onto several of them. Slowly he misses more and more of what A has to say.

When A is through talking, it is safety to say that B will have received and understood less than half of what was spoken to him.

Rules for Skillful Reception

A major task in helping people to listen better is educational activity them to apply their spare thinking fourth dimension efficiently as they listen. What does "efficiently" mean? To answer this question, nosotros made an extensive study of people'southward listening habits, especially trying to discover what happens when people mind well.

We plant that expert listeners regularly engage in four mental activities, each geared to the oral discourse and taking identify concurrently with that oral discourse. All four of these mental activities are neatly coordinated when listening works at its best. They tend to direct a maximum corporeality of thought to the message being received, leaving a minimum amount of time for mental excursions on sidetracks leading away from the talker's idea. Hither are the four processes:

(ane) The listener thinks ahead of the talker, trying to anticipate what the oral discourse is leading to and what conclusions will exist drawn from the words spoken at the moment.

(2) The listener weighs the evidence used by the talker to back up the points that he makes. "Is this evidence valid?" the listener asks himself. "Is it the complete evidence?"

(3) Periodically the listener reviews and mentally summarizes the points of the talk completed thus far.

(4) Throughout the talk, the listener "listens between the lines" in search of pregnant that is not necessarily put into spoken words. He pays attention to nonverbal communication (facial expressions, gestures, tone of phonation) to encounter if it adds significant to the spoken words. He asks himself, "Is the talker purposely skirting some area of the subject field? Why is he doing and then?"

The speed at which we think compared to that at which people talk allows enough of time to attain these four mental tasks when nosotros listen; even so, they do require practise before they can become function of the mental agility that makes for proficient listening. In our preparation courses we have devised aural exercises designed to give people this practice and thereby build up good habits of aural concentration.

Listening for Ideas

Another factor that affects listening ability concerns the reconstruction of orally communicated thoughts once they have been received by the listener. To illustrate:

The newspapers reported not too long ago that a church was torn downwards in Europe and shipped stone by rock to America, where information technology was reassembled in its original course. The moving of the church building is analogous to what happens when a person speaks and is understood by a listener. The talker has a thought. To transmit his thought, he takes it apart past putting it into words. The words, sent through the air to the listener, must and then exist mentally reassembled into the original thought if they are to exist thoroughly understood. Only most people practise not know what to mind for, and so cannot reconstruct the idea.

For some reason many people take great pride in beingness able to say that to a higher place all they endeavour to "get the facts" when they listen. It seems logical enough to do and so. If a person gets all the facts, he should certainly sympathise what is said to him. Therefore, many people try to memorize every single fact that is spoken. With such practice at "getting the facts," the listener, we can safely assume, will develop a serious bad listening addiction.

Memorizing facts is, to begin with, a virtual impossibility for most people in the listening situation. As one fact is being memorized, the whole, or office, of the next fact is most certain to exist missed. When he is doing his very best, the listener is likely to catch just a few facts, garble many others, and completely miss the remainder. Even in the case of people who can aurally assimilate all the facts that they hear, i at a fourth dimension equally they hear them, listening is still likely to be at a low level; they are concerned with the pieces of what they hear and tend to miss the wide areas of the spoken advice.

When people talk, they want listeners to sympathize their ideas. The facts are useful chiefly for amalgam the ideas. Grasping ideas, we have institute, is the skill on which the proficient listener concentrates. He remembers facts simply long enough to empathise the ideas that are built from them. Just then, most miraculously, grasping an thought will aid the listener to think the supporting facts more effectively than does the person who goes after facts lone. This listening skill is ane which definitely can be taught, one in which people can build experience leading toward improved aural communication.

Emotional Filters

In dissimilar degrees and in many different ways, listening ability is affected past our emotions.2 Figuratively we reach up and mentally plough off what nosotros exercise not desire to hear. Or, on the other hand, when someone says what we especially want to hear, we open our ears wide, accepting everything—truths, half-truths, or fiction. Nosotros might say, so, that our emotions act as audible filters. At times they in consequence cause deafness, and at other times they make listening birthday likewise easy.

If nosotros hear something that opposes our most deeply rooted prejudices, notions, convictions, mores, or complexes, our brains may go over-stimulated, and not in a management that leads to good listening. We mentally plan a rebuttal to what nosotros hear, formulate a question designed to embarrass the talker, or maybe just plow to thoughts that support our own feelings on the field of study at hand. For example:

The business firm's accountant goes to the general manager and says: "I take merely heard from the Agency of Internal Revenue, and…" The general manager suddenly breathes harder every bit he thinks, "That blasted bureau! Tin't they exit me alone? Every twelvemonth the government milks my profits to a betoken where…" Blood-red in the face, he whirls and stares out the window. The label "Bureau of Internal Revenue" cuts loose emotions that stop the general manager's listening.

In the meantime, the accountant may go on to say that hither is a chance to save $3,000 this year if the full general director volition take a few unproblematic steps. The fuming general managing director may hear this—if the accountant presses hard enough—just the chances are he volition fail to comprehend information technology.

When emotions make listening too piece of cake, it unremarkably results from hearing something which supports the deeply rooted inner feelings that we hold. When we hear such support, our mental barriers are dropped and everything is welcomed. We ask few questions about what we hear; our critical faculties are put out of committee past our emotions. Thinking drops to a minimum because we are hearing thoughts that we have harbored for years in support of our inner feelings. It is practiced to hear someone else remember those thoughts, so we lazily enjoy the whole experience.

What can we do nigh these emotional filters? The solution is not easy in exercise, although information technology can be summed up in this simple admonition: hear the human being out. Following are ii pointers that often help in training people to practice this:

(1) Withhold evaluation—This is one of the nearly of import principles of learning, especially learning through the ear. It requires self-control, sometimes more than than many of us can muster, only with persistent practice information technology can be turned into a valuable habit. While listening, the main object is to comprehend each indicate made by the talker. Judgments and decisions should exist reserved until after the talker has finished. At that fourth dimension, and only then, review his master ideas and assess them.

(two) Chase for negative prove—When nosotros mind, it is human to go on a militant search for evidence which proves usa correct in what we believe. Seldom practice we brand a search for bear witness to testify ourselves wrong. The latter type of effort is not like shooting fish in a barrel, for behind its application must lie a generous spirit and real breadth of outlook. Nevertheless, an important part of listening comprehension is found in the search for negative evidence in what nosotros hear. If we make up our minds to seek out the ideas that might testify us wrong, too as those that might prove u.s. right, we are less in danger of missing what people take to say.

Benefits in Business

The improvement of listening, or simply an attempt to make people aware of how of import their listening ability is, can exist of great value in today's business. When people in concern fail to hear and sympathise each other, the results can be plush. Such things as numbers, dates, places, and names are especially easy to confuse, simply the most straightforward agreements are often subjects of listening errors, too. When these mistakes are compounded, the resulting cost and inefficiency in business communication become serious. Building awareness of the importance of listening among employees can eliminate a large percentage of this type of aural error.

What are some of the specific problems which ameliorate listening can help solve?

Less Newspaper Work

For 1 thing, it leads to economic system of communication. Incidents created by poor listening ofttimes give businessmen a existent fearfulness of oral communication. As a result, they insist that more and more communication should exist put into writing. A great bargain of communication needs to be on the record, just the pressure to write is oftentimes carried besides far. The smallest detail becomes "memoed." Paper work piles higher and college and causes part of the tangle nosotros call red tape. Many times less writing and more than speaking would exist advisable—if we could program on proficient listening.

Writing and reading are much slower advice elements than speaking and listening. They crave more than personnel, more equipment, and more space than practise speaking and listening. Often a stenographer and a messenger are needed, to say cypher of dictating machines, typewriters, and other writing materials. Few people ever feel it is safe to throw away a written communication; so filing equipment is needed, along with someone to do the filing.

In oral advice in that location are more human senses at work than in the visual; and if at that place is expert listening, more than can often be communicated in one message. And, peradventure most important of all, there is the requite-and-have feature of oral communication. If the listener does not understand a message, he has the opportunity to straighten matters out then and in that location.

Up Communication

The skill of listening becomes extremely important when nosotros talk about "upwards communication." There are many avenues through which management can send messages downward through a business organization, merely there are few avenues for motility of information in the up direction. Perhaps the well-nigh obvious of the upwards avenues is the man chain of people talking to people: the man working at the demote talks to his foreman, the foreman to his superintendent, the superintendent to his boss; and, relayed from person to person, the information eventually reaches the meridian.

This communication chain has potential, but it seldom works well because information technology is total of bad listeners. There can be failure for at least three reasons:

  • Without good listeners, people practice not talk freely and the flow of communication is seldom fix in motion.
  • If the catamenia should start, only ane bad listener is needed to terminate its motion toward the top.
  • Even if the menstruation should go on to the top, the letters are probable to be badly distorted along the way.

It would be absurd to assume that these upward communication lines could be made to operate without hitches, merely there is no reason to call up that they cannot exist improved by improve listening. But the first steps must be taken by height management people. More than and improve listening on their part can prime the pumps that offset the upward flow of information.

Human Relations

People in all phases of business concern need to feel gratis to talk to their superiors and to know they will be met with sympathetic agreement. Merely too many superiors—although they announce that their doors are always open—neglect to heed; and their subordinates, in the face up of this failure, do non feel gratis to say what they desire to say. Every bit a result, subordinates withdraw from their superiors more and more. They neglect to talk about of import problems that should exist aired for both parties' benefit. When such bug remain unaired, they ofttimes plow into unrealistic monsters that come back to plague the superior who failed to listen.

The remedy for this sort of aural failure—and information technology should exist applied when subordinates feel the need to talk—is what we have called "nondirective listening." The listener hears, actually tries to understand, and later shows understanding by taking activity if it is required. Above all, during an oral discourse, the listener refrains from firing his ain thoughts back at the person talking or from indicating his displeasure or disapproval by his mannerisms or gestures; he speaks upwards but to inquire for clarification of a indicate.

Since the listener stands the adventure of hearing that his most dearly held notions and ideas may be incorrect, this is not an like shooting fish in a barrel thing to exercise. To heed nondirectively without fighting dorsum requires more courage than most of us can muster. But when nondirective listening can exist applied, the results are usually worth the effort. The persons talking take a take a chance to unburden themselves. Equally important, the odds are improve that the listener tin can counsel or act effectively when the fourth dimension comes to make a move.

Listening is simply one phase of human relations, simply one aspect of the ambassador's job; past itself it will solve no major problems. Yet the past experience of many executives and organizations leaves no doubt, in our opinion, that better listening can pb to a reduction of the human frictions which aggress many businesses today.

Listening to Sell

High-pressure salesmanship is quickly giving fashion to depression-force per unit area methods in the marketing of industrial and consumer goods. Today's successful salesman is likely to center his attention on the customer-trouble approach of selling.

To put this approach to piece of work, the skill of listening becomes an essential tool for the salesman, while his vocal agility becomes less of import. How a salesman talks turns out to be relatively unimportant because what he says, when information technology is guided by his listening, gives power to the spoken give-and-take. In other words, the salesman'due south listening becomes an on-the-spot course of customer enquiry that can immediately be put to piece of work in formulating any sales talk.

Regardless of the values that listening may hold for people who live past selling, a smashing many sales organizations seem to hold to the conviction that glibness has magic. Their efforts at improvement are aimed mainly at the talking side of salesmanship. It is our conviction, withal, that with the typical salesman the ability to talk will virtually take intendance of itself, just the ability to heed is something in existent need of comeback.

In Briefing

The most important affairs in concern are conducted effectually conference tables. A great deal has been said and written well-nigh how to talk at a conference, how to compromise, how to go problem-centered, and how to cope with sure types of individuals. All these things can be very of import, but besides frequently the experts forget to say, "First and foremost you must learn to listen at a conference."

The reason for this is simple when we think of the basic purpose for holding almost any conference. People get together to contribute their unlike viewpoints, knowledge, and experience to members of the group, which then seeks the best of all the conferees' thinking to solve a common trouble. If there is far more talking than listening at a conference, nonetheless, the oral contributions made to the group are hardly worth the jiff required to produce them.

More and ameliorate listening at whatever conference is certain to facilitate the exchange of ideas so important to the success of a coming together. It also offers many other advantages; for example, when participants do a proficient job of listening, their conference is more likely to remain centered on the problem at hand and less probable to go off on irrelevant tangents.

The first steps toward improved briefing listening can be taken by the group leader. If he will merely make an opening statement calling attention to the importance of listening, he is very likely to increase the participants' aural response. And if the leader himself does a good task of listening, he stands the adventure of beingness imitated by the others in his group.

Determination

Some businessmen may want to accept steps to develop a listening comeback program in their companies. Here are 14 suggestions designed to behave on what nosotros hope this commodity has already started to practice—build awareness of listening.

(one) Devote an executive seminar, or seminars, to a discussion of the roles and functions of listening as a business tool.

(2) Use the filmed cases now becoming available for direction training programs.3 Since these cases present the problem every bit it would appear in reality, viewers are forced to practice practiced listening habits in society to be sure of what is going on—and this includes non only hearing the audio track but also watching the facial mannerisms, gestures, and motions of the actors.

(three) If possible, bring in qualified speakers and inquire them to hash out listening with special reference to how information technology might apply to business. Such speakers are available at a number of universities where listening is existence taught as a part of communication preparation.

(iv) Carry a self-inventory by the employees regarding their listening on the job. Provide everyone with a simple form divided into spaces for each hour of the day. Each space should be farther divided to allow the user to keep track of the amount of time spent in reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Discuss the results of these forms afterward the communication times have been totaled. What percentage of the time do people spend listening? What might improved listening mean in terms of job effectiveness?

(v) Requite a test in listening ability to people and evidence them the scores that they make. There is at least 1 standardized test for this purpose.4 Discuss the meaning of the scores with the individuals tested.

(vi) Build upwards a library of spoken-word records of literature, speeches, and so forth (many can be purchased through record stores), and make them available in a room that has a record player. Likewise, lend the records to employees who might wish to take them dwelling house to enjoy them at their leisure. For such a library, material pertinent to the employees' jobs might be recorded so that those who are interested can mind for educational purposes.

(seven) Record a number of actual conference sessions that may be held by plant superintendents or others. When new people go to work for the company, ask them to listen to these sessions as function of their initial training. Check their comprehension of what they hear by means of cursory objective tests. Emphasize that this is being done because listening is important on the new jobs.

(8) Set role-playing situations wherein executives are asked to cope with complaints comparable to those that they might hear from subordinates. Ask observers to comment on how well an executive seems to heed. Do his remarks reflect a good task of listening? Does he go on himself from becoming emotionally involved in what the subordinate says? Does the executive heed in a way which would encourage the subordinate to talk freely?

(9) Ask salesmen to divide a notebook into sections, one for each customer. Later making a telephone call, a salesman should write downward all useful information received aurally from the customer. As the information grows, he should refer to information technology before each return visit to a customer.

(10) Where a sales arrangement has a number of friendly customers, invite some of the more clear ones to join salesmen in a group discussion of sales techniques. How do the customers feel about talking and listening on the part of salesmen? Effort to get the customers to make listening critiques of salesmen they encounter.

(eleven) In a preparation session, plan and agree a conference on a selected problem and tape-record it. Afterward, play dorsum the recording. Discuss information technology in terms of listening. Practise the oral contributions of dissimilar participants reflect good listening? If the briefing should go off the track, try to clarify the causes in terms of listening.

(12) If there is time after a regularly scheduled conference, concord a listening critique. Ask each member to evaluate the listening attending that he received while talking and to report his assay of his own listening performance.

(thirteen) In of import management meetings on controversial problems try Irving J. Lee'due south "Procedure for 'Coercing' Agreement."5 Nether the ground rules for this process, which Lee outlined in detail in his article, the chairman calls for a menses during which proponents of a hotly debated view tin state their position without interruption; the opposition is express to (a) the request of questions for clarification, (b) requests for data concerning the peculiar characteristics of the proposal being considered; and (c) requests for information as to whether it is possible to check the speaker'south assumptions or predictions.

(14) Sponsor a serial of lectures for employees, their families, and their friends. The lectures might be on any number of interesting topics that have educational value also every bit entertainment features. Point out that these lectures are available as role of a listening comeback program.

Non all of these suggestions are applicable to every situation, of form. Each house will have to adapt them to its own particular needs. The most important thing, yet, may not be what happens when a specific suggestion is followed, merely rather simply what happens when people become aware of the trouble of listening and of what improved aural skills can do for their jobs and their businesses.

one. Run across Due east. J. J. Kramar and Thomas B. Lewis, "Comparison of Visual and Nonvisual Listening," Journal of Advice, November 1951, p. 16; and Arthur W. Heilman, "An Investigation in Measuring and Improving Listening Ability of College Freshmen," Speech Monographs, Nov 1951, p. 308.

2. See Wendell Johnson, "The Fateful Procedure of Mr. A Talking to Mr. B," HBR January–Feb 1953, p. 49.

iii. Encounter George Due west. Gibson, "The Filmed Instance in Direction Training," HBR May–June 1957, p. 123.

4. Dark-brown-Carlsen Listening Comprehension Test (Yonkers-on-Hudson, World Book Company).

5. HBR January–February 1954, p. 39.

A version of this commodity appeared in the September 1957 issue of Harvard Business Review.