Learning to Identify Principles Fred Smith shares his wisdom about the proper use of experience. By Fred Smith Our growth through perseverance brings experience which we can never lose, its important that we store our experience more in principles than in techniques. Techniques vary; principles remain constant. For example, right now young people feel they are worshipping God with praise music. I feel its almost blasphemous because Im still singing The Old Rugged Cross and In The Garden. The worship of God is the principle, the way we do it is the technique. During the Second World War the government tested a large group of enlisted men and found that only seven percent could think in principles and ninety-three percent in techniques. We found this true in supervisory training in industry. We could not use principles without tying techniques into them. Our daughter Brenda studies personality typing. In her lingo, this demonstrates the difference between abstract and concrete thinking. The Governments statistics prove out what the psychological studies find about detail versus concept people in the general population. Experience brought about by perseverance teaches us the value of help as well as the value of friends and advisors. Oftentimes its difficult to borrow money but if were wise we can borrow experience. And oftentimes experience is more valuable than money. It is definitely much more pleasant for we dont have to repay it; we can keep it. I wrote an article for a national magazine on How to ask for help. People in the media said they had never seen an article on the subject. I wrote it because of my experience with so many businessmen in trouble who find it very difficult to ask for help. Some of them would take a year toying with the idea before they would actually get around to asking for help. For example, think of the person who is afraid to have a medical exam for fear that theyll find something wrong. With me, the earlier the better. Our odds are better early on. In taking some serious tests I said to the medical staff, I will be no sicker if you get a bad report than I am right now. The difference is that I will have the knowledge available to do something about it. Experience is a distillation of all the things that have happened to us, therefore it is very important that we objectively distill them without romanticizing or fantasizing, like old men repeating stories of their athletic prowess. Some people unfortunately become less than objective about their experience and try to repeat successes based on technique and not on principle. I was asked to advise in one of the national strikes and found that the executive in charge was trying to repeat a success that he had had years before in a different situation with different individuals. He had not assessed the principle but the technique and the changing times and personnel kept it from working. Techniques can change, but principles dont. So it is critical that we distill and understand accurately. When I speak of operating from the current reality it is another way of saying, understand the principles and then choose the techniques that will work now….. Experience is valuable basically because it helps us to make the right decision and to avoid the wrong one. Experience lets us know what works. One of the good things about experience, it lets us know how differently we perform under pressure than without pressure. A friend who is quite a good golfer has turned the age to become a senior golfer and I asked him when he was going on the tour. He said, Its one thing to shoot a 65 on Saturday morning with friends and to go out and do it on the tour. He played a short time on the tour and said under the pressure there were times when you reach up to undo your collar and found you were wearing a t-shirt. The commentators on the television coverage of the tour will constantly remark that mistakes are the price of experience. I know it is an old saw but worth repeating: a young man asked a successful older man, what is the basis of your success? He replied, good judgment. The younger said, where did the good judgment come from? The older one said, experience. The younger said, where did the experience come from? The older said, poor judgment. Proper experience turns poor judgment into experience, and experience into good judgment.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Nov 2014 14:51:10 +0000