July 1968 — VOL. 49, No. 7 —
A Business Man's
Qualities
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The term "busness-like" is one of the most
expressive in any language. It is made up of attributes such
as efficiency, reliability, integrity, and a sense of values.
The activity to which it refers covers a wide range of human
affairs: all occupations, pursuits and callings. It involves
earning our living and spending our money to the best advantage.
It is an occupation in which brains, both human and electronic,
have to be stirred up.
You cannot become a successful man of business just because
you like the idea. You need to develop your desire by studying
and practising, so as to learn to deal not only with the routine
of everyday affairs but with the complexity which occasionally
envelops them.
This involves a good grounding in the primary principle
of business: the objective is to make things turn out beneficially
while shouldering the risk of loss. You need to have a trading
instinct so as to assess the true worth of any article or
service for which you are going to exchange your own goods
or services. An investment in anything, from a stack of shares
in a big company to a cake of soap for the kitchen sink, is
based upon the hope that your investment will produce a benefit.
It takes more than a competitive spirit to be a success
in doing business. It takes more than intelligence, too. A
person may rate high in tests of knowledge and aptitude and
all the rest, but fizzle like a damp squib in transacting
a bit of business. He may know the economic principles by
heart, but he has to know when and how to use them. It is
like playing a sonata: you cannot play a sonata simply by
pushing down all the keys on the keyboard ; the essential
thing is to play the notes in their proper turn and with melodic
variation.
This skill is developed through practice and through relating
continuous learning to one's own personal background and environment.
The information obtained by reading and learning is not yet
wisdom, but must be used for thinking through to wise decisions.
The dictionary says that wisdom is "the ability to judge soundly
and deal sagaciously with facts". It involves value judgments,
and in judging values we must keep ourselves far away from
whim, caprice and prejudice.
Use imagination
It is when we have accumulated many facts of indubitable
accuracy, and applied thought toward putting them into manageable
order, that we start to use imagination. This is the "without
which, nothing else" of the business man. It puts into service
the experiences of yesterday to anticipate the happenings
of tomorrow and to work up nebulous foreshadowings into profitable
ideas. Everyone who uses imagination knows that his mind can
be trained and guided and deliberately stocked with things
to be imaginative about.
As an exercise in using your imagination, consider the data
you have collected about some course of action, and take time
to assess its possible value. Then express it in new terms,
or old-fashioned terms, thus giving you several paths to explore.
Change the order of the data and the terms, putting things
into new connections with one another. This is the plan followed
by many inventors, all advertising people, artists, and people
engaged in research.
Break the conventional barrier once in a while. Instead
of doing a usual job in the accustomed way, toss aside the
accumulated practices, methods and techniques. Start thinking
at the beginning. You may end up with a simplified process
or procedure, or a cheaper way of doing as good work, or you
may discover something entirely new. You will, whatever the
outcome, have engaged in an exercise apart from routine, thus
brightening your working day.
Of course you must discriminate. There are some things in
which you are skilful, but this does not mean that you will
be equally proficient in other areas. A cultivated art of
discrimination will enable you to choose the fields in which
you can think and work to the best advantage. Nothing is ever
achieved except by limitation. No artist can paint all creation;
he has to confine himself to the size of his canvas. As one
writer commented: "Utterness ends in nothingness".
Work systematically
These virtues ( a trading sense, the acquirement of knowledge,
the use of imagination, freshness of approach, and discrimination
) are necessary to proper administration of business of any
sort. Operations are conducted wisely by those who have
the capacity to use the right assumptions at the right time,
and to weigh the reliability of their assumptions against
the risk.
Knowledge that has been gathered and stored in a systematic
way enables a man to discharge his duties so as to contribute
to his success. There is a difference between specialized
knowledge and systematized knowledge. Specialized knowledge
is narrow; systematized knowledge may be as wide as the world,
and its elements combine to form the generalized knowledge
which business requires.
This was given dynamic illustration years ago when a member
of the House of Commons rose to ask whether Donald Gordon,
newly-appointed chairman of the prices board, had experience
in the production and distribution of food or other commodities.
The Minister of Finance replied: "The chairmanship of the
Wartime Prices and Trade Board does not involve the production
and distribution of food or other commodities, but rather
broad executive and administrative experience."
The business man must be able to apply good standard practice
to ordinary functions, and to add a touch of genius when a
key activity seems to need something special.
Some people look upon planning as merely the outcome of
statistical forecasting. It is true that to plan we must have
reliable figures, but we need to add sound analysis, good
judgment, and confidence in our appraisal of the circumstances.
Planning is helped by system. Napoleon said: "When I want
to close off one matter, I push in its file, and pull out
another. I never get them mixed up, and they never bother
nor fatigue me."
Routine may be killing to some people, but routine is the
basis of successful operations. There comes the time when
theory and policy terminate in the cutting-edge of direct
action, and unless the basis has been well laid by planning
and routine preparation you cannot look for sure success.
It is at the point of action that craftsmanship shows itself.
There is no escaping the fact that a man must know his job
and take an interest in doing it well. He is judged on the
results of his performance. His instinct for workmanship causes
him to do well, as a matter of course, what he has undertaken
to do.
To all other qualities we must add perspicacity. Many people
wear bifocals to improve their near and far sight; our minds
need bifocal vision also. We have to examine situations in
detail and in depth so as to see the job we are doing and
its place in the world in which we are living.
Apply common sense
Having been resourceful in gathering information, having
put this knowledge into orderly form, discriminating the relevant
from the irrelevant, it is time to apply common sense thinking.
Being bright is not everything; one needs mother-wit.
Common sense has its anchor in experience. It throws a spotlight
on the problem in hand so as to show up its weaknesses and
highlight its possibilities.
The fate of a piece of business is not determined by the
quivering needles over red and black lines on dials, but by
the decision of the responsible person. Once the technical
facts have been established, the economic aspects charted
and appraised, the production problems analysed, and the human
factors weighed, you must decide to get on with the job or
not to do it.
You should know where to turn for help. There are times
when you may doubt your own judgment, when your experience
seems to be woefully short of what is needed. But you will
have established sources of information and will know people
with whom you can talk about what bothers you.
If your decision does not seem to others to be sound and
adequate, take another look at it from the beginning. There
is no dishonour in rethinking a problem, but there is disaster
in pursuing a wrong course.
It is at this point that courage determines events. Courage
is knowing how to conduct yourself in dangerous circumstances.
Timidity is a serious detriment, because it will make a man
hang back at the very moment when he should be forging ahead.
Watching the championship jumping at the Royal Winter Fair
or on television, we have seen more than one failure result
from pulling in the horse while he was leaping.
To be brave is good, but the business life is not for people
who have no consciousness of danger. They must know when the
path they are taking is risky. A man of spirit relishes encounters,
but the wise man of spirit enters upon them only after careful
reconnaissance and with his eyes wide open. Then he has every
chance of meeting challenges successfully.
Consider that day in the Battle of Britain, September 15,
1940, when, with Churchill in the operations room of the Fighter
Command Station at Uxbridge, the air force sent up its last
squadron. Churchill asked the commander: "What other reserves
have we?" The reply was: "There are none." As Churchill wrote:
"The odds were great, our margins small, the stakes infinite."
It was enough: the enemy, too, had put in his last.
Develop enthusiasm
In the ordinary course of business, doggedness must give
way to enthusiasm if the best results are to be obtained.
There should be nothing passive about business. Associate
it in your mind with motion, energy, going places. Enthusiasm
is a sort of demonstration of dedication to a purpose. It
carries you over the ridge that separates success from failure.
There are even times to be flamboyant. An officer who tucks
his swagger stick under his arm and calmly marches ahead of
his men toward the enemy is not being needlessly showy: he
is doing the inspiring thing.
When the need arises, you must press for action. Some conventional
tools of business waste much time. The business man is not
a lover of conversation for its own sake: he wants to get
something under way. That is why some firms place a time limit
on committee meetings, and why some enlightened parliaments
put a time limit on speeches.
While using the services of many assistants and workers,
a man should be able to shift for himself. Self-confidence
is not conceit, but a feeling of certainty in the outcome
arising from knowledge of planning well done, buttressed by
abounding power within yourself. Shakespeare, in many of his
sonnets, which gave him the only opportunity he had to speak
of himself, declares with confidence that what he writes is
immortal.
You have an obligation to do your best, even if your best
is twice as good as is expected of those around you. While
waiting with Caruso for their cue to go on stage, at Metropolitan
Opera House, Edith Mason noticed that the most idolized of
tenors was trembling. She asked incredulously: "Are you nervous?"
Caruso replied: "Madam, other singers must sing 100 per cent;
Caruso 150 per cent." Napoleon, too, was conscious of his
worth. When he was told that the enemy outnumbered his troops
by three to one, he answered: "I have fifty thousand men.
Add myself, and you get a hundred and fifty thousand."
Discharge obligations
Pushing business through to a successful conclusion is not
everything in life. A man with unusual intellectual capacity,
or with special opportunities, owes something to society.
His honour puts the prominent man under an obligation as binding
as necessity is for other people.
When a business man issues instructions he cannot do so
like a small boy who throws a stone and runs. He is the responsible
person and he must see that his instructions are carried out,
he must stand by the people who are doing the work, and he
is accountable for the results of what they do.
Difficult situations will arise, and the turmoil may be
fierce, but his self-discipline will keep his judgment intact,
his nerves secure, and his mind sound.
Sometimes he may obtain relief by laughing at himself, a
great way to get over tribulation. When you are making a table
in your home workshop and find that one leg is shorter than
the other three; when you add up a column and find that it
is the wrong column; when you assert loudly that someone has
taken the report you want, and find it in your own desk drawer:
what else can you do but laugh at yourself?
You will be on your guard against influences that will tend
to make you self-satisfied. Small examples are: the secretary
who keeps telling you: "You write a beautiful letter"; the
accountant who says: "You are mighty fast with figures"; and
the advertising writer who consults you about an illustration
because "You have such an eye for form". These little flatteries,
harmless in themselves, must be recognized as influences tending
to undermine your objectivity.
Improve performance
Long-term success demands constant improvement. Business
would stagnate if it did not have people with new ideas and
the gumption to try them out.
First of all, you need confidence in your ability to do
a job well, and then seek a better way of doing it. Give yourself
a crisp going-over once in a while to make sure that you are
producing effectively under existing circumstances. What was
good production of business five years ago may no longer be
good enough; what were bright new ideas five years ago may
need polishing up. Measure your performance. Is it up to the
standard that you would set for other people in similar position?
One must keep up. There are people so far in the rear of
the progress of their businesses that they imagine themselves
to be leading from in front. A pliant mind is needed, and
this demands breadth of viewpoint.
Know what you want. Take time to find out whether your course
hitherto has indicated a desire for effective action or the
wish for domination for its own sake. Assess the values and
the possibilities in these traits. Ambition does not mean
competing for leadership on a traffic light change, but desire
to progress through constant growth.
Success in a project is not the paramount thing. We have
not yet landed on the moon, but already we are planning to
reach far more distant lands. Even if you have not at this
moment the technique or means by which to implement fully
your determination, you will at least formulate your goals.
Exercise power wisely
A business man cannot afford to stop learning when he knows
his business practices inside out: there are always human
beings to learn about.
Some highly intelligent and resourceful people, capable
of formulating excellent projects and organizing plant and
office equipment, have no idea how to interest others in their
ideas or induce them to carry out their plans.
You do not have to run a Freudian analysis of the significance
of the hidden, unseen, and unconscious motivations of those
with whom you do business, but you should know what their
purpose is in the transaction that involves you.
It is not enough to be obliging and kind to your friends;
you must also be gentle with those who run counter to your
desires. This does not mean fake intimacy, than which there
is nothing more repulsive. The need is not satisfied by a
firm handshake and a Christmas card. It does imply being tactful.
Tact is a quality essential to successful living in any
environment. It means being aware of the feeling belonging
to certain situations, passions and interests, and being so
gracious in acting as to spare others indignity, hurt and
distress. Consider as an example the dance at which the lights
were turned out during the playing of the new republican anthem
because, as a republican leader said, "This is a social affair
and we don't want to see who won't stand up."
The good business man's authority is clear to all, and it
is not less respected because he scrupulously refrains from
using his power when its use is not necessary. To be important
in business is not to be enthroned in sceptred sovereignty,
exerting a legal tyranny.
The man at the top must know about organization, production,
accounting, selling and financing. He must also know how to
steer. A sailing vessel may lose a race, not because of lack
of wind, but because of weakness in the hand at the rudder.
It was said of Nero that he could tune and touch the harp
well, but in his government he used to wind the pins too high
sometimes, and sometimes to let them down too low.
How important is it that people should recognize your eminence?
Ideally, it is not at all important unless recognition of
your leadership is necessary to your purpose and not just
to your vanity. Those who insist upon recognition and look
upon their dignity as a sacred thing show that they have not
deserved what they demand. Far greater than public homage
is the knowledge of prestige within oneself.
Arrogance is a throw-back to the pre-Copernican age which
believed that all the universe circled around the earth. The
arrogant man assumes that he is at the centre of his business,
professional or social universe. He has a sense of power run
riot. When the prophet Elijah got above himself and boasted
that he was the only prophet left, he was put in his place
by being told that there were several thousand other people
doing the same work as himself and making a great deal less
fuss about it.
Meet adversity bravely
Every man in business needs to know the virtue of patience
in adversity, and he should welcome adversity because it challenges
him to be greater than he knew he could be.
In a crowded cemetery beside the cathedral in Dromore, Northern
Ireland, is a monument to Bishop Jeremy Taylor, author of
Holy Living, one of the great churchmen in history.
He was imprisoned half a dozen times and persecuted often.
He wrote, full of experience, "No man is more miserable than
he that hath no adversity ... Softness is for slaves
and beasts, for minstrels and useless persons."
The philosophies by which men guide their lives and their
work are among their most important possessions. In many cases
the success or failure of a company, or any other human project,
turns upon the character, capability, and philosophical approach
of one man, a man who makes the right responses to the requirements
of his position.
A man in business must not allow the idols of the pyramid
climbers to replace the ideals of what men should be. He will
make sure that the means he adopts to reach his end are appropriate
and adequate and consistent with his character and principles.
He will not do anything in the way of business that will damage
his self-respect.
All achievement is perilously fragile unless it is based
upon enduring principles. Getting ahead in the business world
can be entirely consistent with following the soundest rules
for successful living, observing the fundamental distinction
between right and wrong.
Preserve your integrity
The man of integrity has great influence in society. There
is no substitute for him. He is the sort of man whom others
instinctively trust, because he is the sort of man whose aim
it is to live closely to his understanding of how he should
live.
All the best maxims of present day morality existed in the
Egyptian sacred books several thousand years ago. Here is
part of the prayer of a soul pleading in the day of judgment:
"I have told no lies, committed no frauds, not overtasked
servants, promoted no strife, caused no one to weep, made
no fraudulent gains, seized no lands wrongfully, not tampered
with weights and measures, have given food to the hungry,
drink to the thirsty and clothed the naked."
Such a code as this reminds us that business acts have social
consequences, and the care for the public interest is an undoubted
duty of business men.
Down through the ages, human life has relied upon an instinctive
sense of obligation, on the part of those most widely endowed,
to their associates. In his radio broadcast to his people
at home and overseas following his coronation, King George
VI put this sense into a phrase: "The highest of distinctions
is the service of others."
The business man may, therefore, think greatly of the function
he performs in society. Business is virile and durable, and
its continued existence is vitally important to the fabric
of Canadian life.
There is no great acclaim given business men. Scores of
thousands of business men lie in cemeteries across the land,
men who contributed more to their nation than many of the
conquerors, soldiers and knights who sleep under carved sepulchres.
They were not people who sought pomp. Like the athletes and
actors and statesmen in Greece who treasured the wild-olive
wreath above all the voluptuousness along the Mediterranean
shores, they were satisfied by doing what they felt called
upon to do in the best way they could do it.
Published by RBC Financial Group. All editions from the RBC
Letter collection are available on our web site at www.rbc.com/responsibility/letter.
Our e-mail address is: rbcletter@rbc.com.
Publié aussi en francais.
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