By means of letters, books, demonstrations, and conventions the salesmen are constantly provided with educative experiences and are kept from the narrowness and lack of progress so characteristic of men in the commercial life after they have become thoroughly established and relatively efficient in their work.
In keeping with this modern tendency to
supplement practical experience with theoretical interpretation, we find a very pronounced increase in the utilization of all agencies that interpret and enrich the daily toil. Men who are fully employed (_e.g_. journeymen and salesmen) have realized the necessity of some form of theoretical instruction to enable them to profit by their daily practical experience. This fact is almost pathetically demonstrated by the multitudes who are seeking for such instruction through correspondence and evening schools. Every progressive engineer, teacher, physician, and lawyer keeps abreast of the best thought of the day by means of frequent conventions, conferences, books, and periodicals. The experience secured from such agencies is essential to progress; only by such agencies can he learn the latest and most perfect interpretation of the experience of his professional life. Likewise the non-professional man engaged in commerce or industry finds the modern world to be so complex that mere practical experience is no longer adequate to enable him to meet the demands made
upon him. The theoretical training of his youth (even though it include the college and the technical school) is totally inadequate to interpret for him the new relationships which arise from day to day. He needs a theory that grows out of his practical experience and that enables him to understand and to improve upon his practical work. The most common means for providing him with such experience he finds in his conventions and informal conferences with his peers and in his trade journals and technical books.
There is no warfare between theory and practice. The most valuable experience demands both, and the methods of procuring the most valuable experience in business and industry demand that the theory should supplement the practice and not precede it. The environment most conducive to securing and utilizing the most valuable experience is in the work-a-day world. But this is the very environment in which men become engulfed in the practical and neglect the theoretical. To the extent to which men thus neglect the
theoretical do they lower themselves and class themselves with mere machines, and so hasten the day when they shall be discarded. Whether we be apprentices or experts, employees or employers, we are all in a similar condition. In every case advance is dependent upon the proper utilization of practical and theoretical experiences--upon the practical experience which is adequately interpreted.
CHAPTER XII
MAKING EXPERIENCE AN ASSET: JUDGMENT FORMATION
WHY is it that of two men who are working at the same desk or bench the one acquires valuable experience rapidly and the other slowly?
Why is it that of two houses each employing a thousand men the one sees its employees securing experiences that enhance their earning capacity rapidly, but the other house is compelled periodically to secure new blood by importing men from rival firms?
Modern psychology teaches that experience is not merely the best teacher but the only possible teacher. All that any instructor can do is to select and to provide the conditions necessary for appropriate experiences and to stimulate the learner to make the most of them. The ignorant is changed into the learned
by means of the utilization of profitable experiences. By the same method the novice is changed into the expert; the amateur into the professional; the inefficient into the efficient; and the errand boy into the manager.
One of the most important questions any man can ask is this: What experience am I actually getting from day to day and what experience might my situation offer?
One of the most important questions the employer of men can ask is this: How much more efficient will my men be to-morrow because of the experience of to-day? How might their experience be changed or utilized so that their efficiency might be increased more rapidly?
In planning to secure permanent increase in efficiency, whether for one's self or for one's employees, we simplify our problem by considering it under the two following subdivisions:--
What Experiences are Most Valuable?
How may these Most Valuable Experiences be Secured and Utilized?
Preparatory to the answering of these two questions it will simplify matters to consider the general conditions which affect the value of experience.