hours and intense effort that achievement requires. And
they’re the ones who will find the sense of purpose that under-
lies most human happiness.”
Roger Smith, former chairman and CEO of General Motors,
agrees. Smith wrote in the book Educating Managers,
The art of management begins with vision, a quality that has
never been so crucial as it is today.... Competitiveness—and,
for some companies, survival itself—depends on the manager’s
ability to envision new things (as well as new ways of doing old
things), to extrapolate on the basis of what worked in the past,
to organize and reorganize operations... and to imagine how,
and by what kind of intervention, the course of events might
be changed.... When students are trained to recognize recur-
ring elements and common themes in art, literature, physics
and history, they are... learning about the kind of creativity
that leads to visionary solutions to business problems.... Peo-
ple trained in the liberal arts would be able to understand,
function in and contribute to the loose-tight, entrepreneurial
organization that so many other businesses are striving to be-
come.... They learn to tolerate ambiguity and to bring order
out of apparent confusion. Intellectual integrity is paramount,
and reasoning processes are just as important as the conclu-
sions to which they lead.... [They have] the kind of sideways
thinking and cross-classifying habit of mind that comes from
learning, among other things, the many different ways of look-
ing at literary works, social systems, chemical processes, or
languages.... [T]he attributes of excellence... all depend on
communication skills and sensitivity to people.... Everything
we do depends on the successful transfer of meaning from one
group to another.Knowing the World