Chapter II
THE DANGER OF SPECIALIZING TOO EARLY
A great many young men think they have found a quick and easy road to success by concentrating their minds wholly on the jobs they happen to hold.
It is perfectly true that a business man must not underestimate the importance of details.
But it is also true that large success is always built upon a clear understanding of basic principles.
The common fallacy that it is best for a man—especially a young man—to confine his thought and studies to his own specialty has in many instances proved ruinous. It is easily possible to specialize so much as to lose all sense of the importance of a broad, well-balanced business training.
We all know the lawyer who is wrapped up in his quibbles; the accountant who sees nothing in business but a maze of figures; the advertising man who is so fascinated by "cleverness" that he
forgets to try to sell goods; and the technical man who knows nothing about the commercial phases of his engineering problems.
Such men cannot take their places among the higher executives because they know little or nothing of business outside their own specialty, and they cannot know even that thoroughly while their general outlook remains so narrow.