Have Faith in Your Products.
What has been said regarding the optimist, the pessimist, and the vacillating man, from the designing and manufacturing point of view of a machine business, applies with equal force to the business organization.
The business is pushed forward by men who have confidence in the project and in the product. If these men lose their faith in their own business, they not only lose their usefulness as pushers and managers, but they become drags on the industry, and remain so until restored to normality. The hazard of investment is greatly increased by such conditions.
Instances without number have been observed in which men who have been successful have become unsuccessful through loss of confidence due to acquiring the "dangerous half-knowledge."
The man who has acquired the dangerous half-knowledge should take a post graduate course in some institution where men are treated by all the most powerful agencies known to science. There may be no institutions of this kind in existence, but the great need will doubtless bring the establishment of many.
The men who have lost faith in their own machinery should be told that no company can survive the effects of weak-kneed advocates. Any company is better for a certain amount of aggressive competition. Any company can stand more or less opposition from its friends the enemy, but no company can continue to exist under the blighting effects of the men who have lost this confidence in them or their product.
The post graduate course for restoration of the near-wise man should include educational means of all kinds. The means should be especially adapted to the need of each student or patient.
There might be a phonograph in each room, which should work all night and all day. This machine should repeat over and over a few short sentences like the following:
"The only perfect machine is the one you do not know."
"Study the machines offered by your competitors, just to get the same degree of knowledge of the 'other' machines—not for the purpose of slandering or even mentioning—but just to restore your confidence in the relative value of your own machine."
"Don't try to get back your belief that your own machine is perfect—that has gone forever—only look at the other machines and learn that your own is the best."
This kind of confidence will not be exuberant, but it will have marked efficiency in the cold gray world in which you are to again try your strength.