THE demand for trained and experienced
men is never supplied. Most business
and industrial organizations find their
growth impeded by the dearth of such men.
To employ men trained by competitors
or by inferior organizations is expensive and
unsatisfactory. A man trained till he has
become valuable to his "parent" organization
is not likely to be equally valuable to other
organizations that might employ him at a
later time. In general, the most valuable
men in any organization are the men who
have grown up in it.
The man who is "a rolling stone" secures,
in a way, more experience than the man who is
developed within a single organization, but his
wider experience does not of necessity make
him a more valuable man. It is not mere
experience that educates, develops, and equips
men, but experience of particular sorts, and
acquired under very well defined conditions.
"Scientific management" has taken seriously
the problem of providing and utilizing
the most valuable experiences. But the viewpoint
of the leaders in this modern movement
is that of the employer seeking the most valuable
experiences for those employees whose
work is mainly mechanical, e.g. machine
tenders, stenographers, etc. Scientific management
has conclusively demonstrated the
fact that it is poor economy to depend upon
haphazard experiences for the development
of those employees whose excellence depends
upon the speed and accuracy of their occupation
habits. It has thus done great service
in demonstrating the kind of experience most
valuable in developing men for positions of
routine work. But it has done little for men
whose welfare depends upon judgment—in
making new adjustments and in solving the
new problems continually arising in all positions
of responsibility. It has left for others
to consider the experiences most profitable
for developing executives.
The most valuable experience in acquiring
an act of skill is frequent repetition in performing
the act.
The value of the experience continues till
by frequent repetition the act has become so
mechanical that it is performed without attention.
Further experience has little or no
value.
On the other hand it is true that every
worthy calling demands forms of activity which
could not and should not be mechanized.
There are emergencies in every form of occupation
that call for new adjustments. The
ability to make such new adjustments depends
upon richness of experience and width
of view as well as upon skill in performing
the old processes.
The difference between a machine and a
man is that the man is capable of adjusting
himself to the changed situation, while a
machine cannot do so. The machine may work
more accurately and more rapidly than the man
in routine work, but it is capable of nothing
but routine work. There is a need for much
experience to make the man approximate the
skill and accuracy obtained by a machine.
But there is also need of experience to develop
the man in that particular in which he surpasses
a machine,
i.e. in a broad experience
that enables him to form judgments and hence
to make a multitude of different adjustments
when a need for a change occurs.
A machine is constructed to perform a
particular kind of routine work in a stereotyped
way, but so soon as there is discovered a
better way of performing this work the machine
is thrown to the scrap heap because it
cannot be adjusted to new requirements.
Experience which renders human activity
machine-like is a form of experience that increases
the probability that the possessor will be
discarded and his work accomplished by the
introduction of some new tool or some new
method of work.
Experience therefore which merely increases
the skill of action without increasing the width
of horizon is necessary, but it is inadequate.
In addition to skill in routine work the man
should secure the broader experience that will
enable him to adjust himself to changed conditions
in his occupation and that will develop
the judgment necessary to enable him to
adjust his vocation to new demands. Every
form of occupation has many possibilities, a
few of which are from time to time discovered
to be significant. Advance in any sphere of
work depends upon the discovery of these
possibilities which the untrained eye of
inexperience does not detect. Although a broad
experience may enable the man to grasp the
possibilities of his occupation, it fails to secure
skill in the particulars that have already been
found to be important. While a broad experience
leaves a man incapable of present
competition, the narrow experience jeopardizes
his future.
The most valuable experience is therefore
one that equips the man to compete with the
skillful in the present and to comprehend his
task so that he may from time to time adjust
it to new relationships. It emphasizes the
formation of necessary habits, but does not
neglect the development of the judgment.
Such an experience is both intensive and
extensive; informal and formal; mechanical
and theoretical; practical and scientific. Such
experience alone meets the demands of the
increasing complexity of industrial and commercial
life.
