CULTIVATES CAPACITY TO DECIDE BUSINESS PROBLEMS

Today the largest group of college men intend to enter business and yet it must be admitted that the college graduate is not at graduation so well fitted to earn an immediate living as is the engineering graduate. Business schools have come into existence because languages, literature, pure science and history have little immediate use in business and therefore for the untrained man the transition from college to business is difficult and discouraging. Schools of theology, medicine and law have been well established for many years. These schools break down the transition from college to the older professions, but until very recently no effective method of training the college men for business has existed.

Best Way to Learn Fundamentals

In the ministry, in the law, and in medicine, experience has proved that the shortest and most effective way to learn the fundamental facts, principles, and standards of the particular profession and to prepare for its practice is in a good school. This is just as true of business. The busy executive has neither time, the specialized training, nor the equipment for teaching beginners. The college man entering a job finds himself doing routine work with a lot of others and has very few chances to see how the executive disposes of his problems or even to know what the problems are. For those reasons rapid training for executive positions is impossible for most beginners except in a competent business school.

The entrance to business will never be as generally based on a professional school training as is the entrance to law or medicine but there is a growing recognition among business men that-executive training difficult to get in a business organization is possible in a business school. I believe it will soon be recognized that adequate business school training offers the shortest and the surest method by which a business enterprise may obtain trained executives.

Keeps Men Out of Narrow Pockets

Our school does not attempt to teach the routine of a particular industry or job. This must be done by the industry itself. Executive responsibility cannot be given to an untried man and a period of personal probation is therefore necessary for every man. The graduate of the Business School should be able to learn the routine of his job during this period of personal probation, and since his object is to get promoted out of routine work into a position of executive or administrative responsibility, we spend our time in the School giving him the breadth of training needed to qualify him for promotion. We aim to equip our men so that they can keep out of narrow business pockets and make themselves broadly useful, but at the same time we seek thoroughness of training by insisting on some field of concentration leading to a business career.

The School also tries to help its graduates adjust themselves to business surroundings. Many of the mistakes of the beginner in business may be prevented if he understands how to study his surroundings and the personality of his associates and how to conduct himself in business. Business men want college men to come to them with a better preparation along this line.

To qualify for an executive position the business man needs the power to apply old principles to new facts, an analytical training in the solution of business problems, experience in handling human relations, and the capacity to make decisions. Everything in business except the routine repetitive work, including even the methods by which this routine work is accomplished, may be reduced to a succession of executive problems requiring discretion for their decision. The business man has to reach correct decisions with reference to these problems often from insufficient premises. The job of the Business School is to give a training which develops this capacity. It is not enough to lay down dogmatically the rules of the game because new facts have an awkward way in business of upsetting the old rules and requiring a fresh analysis.

Many years ago in a course in Finance given at Harvard College, Professor Dunbar remarked that there was in his opinion only one correct rule of finance and that was, and is, to do the best thing you can under the circumstances. This rule is applicable to all business relations, and while it in no way lessens the importance of a proper background of fact and theory, it correctly throws the emphasis on the necessity of deciding each current problem with reference to its own surroundings. The Business School training is therefore directed toward developing this capacity for the decision of new problems. In the solution of such problems in business the facts vary and must be obtained anew for each problem, but the habit and power of analysis and decision must have been acquired through long training. They cannot be improvised on the spur of the moment. This is the task of the Business School.

Personal Conferences Welcome

There is an increasing number of Harvard College graduates entering this School and many undergraduates have come to me to learn what the School is doing and how it can help them to solve their own problems. Such personal conferences are very welcome and either Mr. David, the Assistant Dean of the School, or I will be glad to make appointments with small groups or with individuals, Juniors or Seniors, who wish to know more about the transition to a business life.