Continually study the small facets and extensions of your present job. Study them in relation to the larger goals of your company. Listen and learn from those more experienced than you. Listen also to the greenhorns who have just arrived on the scene; they may be more in touch with new developments than you. Read constantly the trade-related magazines and papers to keep up with any new discoveries or market changes.
Most mediocre company men will instinctively follow these principles of job-survival, but you must do more. If you keep up only with the developments in your own field, you will have moderate job security; but if you are to be chosen for higher positions you must expand your horizons. Leam as much as you can about the difficulties and techniques of the other departments in the company. Learn to look at the problems of suppliers as your own.
Even more important, broaden your general education daily. Whether you received a formal liberal arts education or not, continue to acquire an informal one now. Because of the survival pressures in big business, many men tend to narrow their sights within their own field. These men, if they reach the top, become increasingly dull and tend to stagnate their companies.
I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his court ship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.
Your learning goals should likewise always be in front of you. This is a secret not only of education and business, but also of a happy life.
Experts on Learning
I make progress by having people around me who are smarter than I am-and listening to them. And I assume that everyone is smarter about something than I am. - Henry Kaiser
Specialized training alone is not enough. It may get you that first job; but if it is all you have to offer an employer, it may also bury you in that first job. - Henry Ford II
Quite frankly, I don't care how much education you have or how many degrees you have earned, you still can't come into business and hold your own if you expect to depend solely on your schooling or what you learned from books. Business doesn't just move; it flies. What you learn from textbooks, the details in textbooks, may be of little use to you by the time you try to use them. No amount of formal education can make anyone a profit or pay a dividend, until it is adapted to his particular business and to the demands of his immediate market. - Herman W, Lay
There is no such thing as a completed education in this complex, changing world. We hear a great deal about high school drop-outs and college drop-outs, but not enough about executive drop-outs. The manager who stops learning stifles his personal growth and the profit growth of his company. It is a prime responsibility of the president to act as a kind of academic pacesetter and to establish in the company an environment of healthy respect for the accumulation of knowledge. - W. F. Rockwell, Jr.
The young man of native ability, the will to work and good personality will, in the long run, get the equivalent of a college education in the tasks he will set for himself. If he has ability and determination, he will find ways to learn and to get ahead. - Edward G. Seubert
Many men absorbed in business show such a rare quality of culture that we are surprised at it. The reason invariably is partly because hard work and even the weariness it leaves carry a nobility with them, but also because there is no room in such lives for inferior mental occupation. - Ernest Dimnet
Future management development will doubtless make use of formal academic courses. Businessmen who need to bring their knowledge up to date in science, technology, or economic and political affairs can often do so best by going back to the campus. The same is true of specialists who show management potential and need a broader educational background. This is the human counterpart of investment in modernizing plant and equipment, and the returns on it can be just as important. In return, business must and will find more ways of being useful to the academic community. - M. J. Rathbone
Computers aren't replacing anybody, but people who know how to use computers will likely be replacing those employees who don't know how to use them. The term "use" here, should be properly understood. It doesn't mean that every employee is going to require professional proficiency in the precise operation of computers. Generally, it means that the employee who wants to advance in his field and move up in his form is going to be the employee who knows how to organize his work so that it can be processed by computers. - Louis T. Rader
Reading is, in fact, the principal means by which one is able to continue his self-education in life. I agree also that it is essential to find a certain amount of time for reading books not related to one's vocation, and there is probably nothing more useful than this to develop the "whole man" that is needed in our society today. - John S. Reed
Education gives a man a great opening wedge; there is no question about that. But there is always the fellow who had to go to work, who never had the college education, who seems to shinny up between these fellows just the same. Good basic education is a very important thing. If I had had it, I might not be where I am. I might be twice as far ahead. - Howard Johnson
