I love old books. When I was given this one it really intrigued me. The date page is gone so it is obviously quite dated. But I wondered as I thumbed through it , how many of those skills are still needed and not taught ? How has business changed since this was written? And what insights can we learn from the past that we could apply to business today?

Summer Book Review

So just for fun this summer, I’d like to do a mini review of this book in the form of a series focusing on how things have changed, how they stay the same, and some things, perhaps, that we may have forgotten, that maybe we shouldn’t have. So let’s get started.

This book was designed to be a textbook and looks as though quite a few students have had their hands on it before me. In the preface it states:

“General Business Training in its first edition pioneered in emphasizing the general non-technical values in junior business education. These values are now commonly recognized as being of greatest importance. The recognition of their worth has been accelerated in recent years through observations of teachers and businessmen, and as a result of several surveys which have been made by those interested in business education.”

Values lost

It seems to me that some of these values have been lost, not that they’re any less important. They are simply not taught, and not understood.

I’ve been involved in several areas of teaching and training. And recently was asked to participate in designing a training program to teach soft skills to new hires. It seems to me there is a gap between expectations of knowledge and what’s being generally taught as important.

Hope you join me over the next few days as we learn together from the past.