THE EFFICIENT BUSINESS MAN 1. Certain essential qualities.—In the preceding chapters I have called attention here and there to various qualities which the successful business man must possess. I have endeavored to show, for exam ple, that lie must possess a sane, sound, clear intellect, a healthy body and a strong will. In this chapter, we will group together the qualities that are essential to success and try to demonstrate and illustrate their importance.
We shall discover that each quality or characteristic depends for its strength upon a man's possession of certain other qualities, all working together to pro duce -a strong man. If a man lacks any one of them he is liable to be a failure, or at least to achieve only mediocre success. These qualities, it might be said, are the links in the chain of a business man's character, which cannot be stronger than the weakest link.
Successful business men possess these qualities in different deg,rees, one man being specially distin g-uished by his power of decision, another by his great executive ability, another by his wonderful vision or imagination. In no successful business man will any one of these qualities be lacking.
2. Decision.—The most important quality is the power of decision. In business a man who hesitates is lost. When a man wobbles, rubs his chin and can not decide which of two policies is the better, he is a man of weak will, irresolute and wavering. At the last moment, when there must be action and no more deliberation or hesitation, his decision is liable to be in fluenced unduly by the pressure brought to bear on him by others ; and if no such pressure is brought to bear on him, there is danger that he will postpone de cision until too late.
Indecision does not necessarily indicate weakness of will. It seems rather to be born of a timid intel lect, one distrustful of its own judgments. The man who does not decide promptly and positively usually justifies himself on the ground that he wishes to be sure that he is right, that he wants to study the matter in all its phases, that it is so important that he must consider it from all points of view and eliminate all possibility of mistake. Indecision appears to be a
mental weakness in which the intellect is involved quite as much as the will.
. Thinking is not a slow process; nothing can be swifter than thought. It takes time, indeed, to gather the data upon which a judgment is based, but once having the facts in hand the alert mind instantly forms its judgment.
A business man should be so thoroly saturated with information about his business, should know so much about his costs, his market, his organization, the ca pacity of his plant, his credit standing, that when a new problem is presented his mind will have before it all the knowledge necessary for a wise decision; and be should decide promptly. If he postpones decision un til tomorrow or next week he will lose, for some of his competitors will make instant decision and get the ad vantage of him.
One of om. greatest bankers once said to me: "I do not want a young inan in this bank who always asks advice when he runs up against something new. I like the young man who is not afraid to do things on his own hook. Sometimes Ile makes mistakes, but he is worth much more to us than the fellow who dares not do any-thing until he has been told the right way." Another successful man once told me: "Decision is the biggest of all business qualities. All day long I do nothing but decide. It is the hardest kind of work, altho it may look easy to a subordinate who is doing cfrudgery. A chauffeur knows no more about machinery than an ordinary mechanic, but his wages are twice as high. The reason is that the chauffeur is able to make decisions, while the mechanic is merely a routine worker." 3. Expert knowledge.—I have said that the busi ness man should be saturated with information about his business. He should have what we call "expert" knowiedge. To begin with, he should be familiar with every kind of activity that his business calls for, and he must know how hard the work is and how much he has a right to expect from an employe each day; otherwise he will be at the mercy of his subordinates.