Roger Smith Quotes

We hope this car will be less labor intensive, less material intensive, less everything intensive than anything we have done before.

I don’t expect them to build a big stone monument to me; that’s not my goal in life. I’d like to think that if I did anything extraordinary, it was the work that we did in getting the corporation ready for the 21st century.

# They are trained to see relationships between things that may seem different.

# They are trained to combine familiar elements into new forms.

[Roger B. Smith] identified the following skills and mental processes required of today’s managers as those acquired and sharpened in the study of the liberal arts.

# They learn that the effective management of change comes from the habit of being receptive to new information, to new paths to traditional goals, even to new goals.

Liberal Arts may ultimately prove to be the most relevant learning model. People trained in the Liberal Arts learn to tolerate ambiguity and to bring order out of apparent confusion. 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 looking at literary works, social systems, chemical processes or languages.

# They have learned to uncover truths in many forms, and that an answer need not be final.

# They learn to arrange their thoughts in logical order, to write and speak clearly and economically.

# They have learned sideways thinking, the cross classifying habit of mind that comes from learning many different ways to look at things.

Whether you are carving a statue or reorganizing a corporation, you have a vision of what you want to create, as well as a sense of how to make that vision real by bringing different elements together according to an overall pattern... And just as artists communicate their intent through their works, managers must be able to convey their vision in an inspiring and forceful way - in other words to lead - or else that vision will never be fully realized.

The ultimate impact of the liberal arts on the art of management, then, is a major contribution to the evolution of an ethical and humanistic capitalism -- a system that stimulates innovation, fosters excellence, enriches society, and dignifies work.

# They learn to tolerate ambiguity and to bring order out of confusion.

# They are accustomed to a relatively unstructured and unsupervised research and discovery process and feel comfortable with nonconformity.

# They have learned the importance of intellectual integrity, social responsibility, and ethical commitment.