Self Help
Any man who understands the principle of organized
effort, as Carnegie understood it, and knows enough about men to be able to
select just those types that are needed in the performance of a given task,
could duplicate all that Carnegie accomplished.
Carnegie was a man of imagination. He first created a definite purpose and then surrounded himself with men who had 'the training and the vision and the capacity necessary for the transformation of that purpose into reality. Carnegie did not always create his own plans for the attainment of his definite purpose. He made it his business to know what he wanted, then found the men who could create plans through which to procure it.
And that was not only imagination, it was genius of the highest order. But it should be made clear that men of Mr. Carnegie's type are not the only ones who can make profitable use of imagination. This great power is as available to the beginner in business as it is to the man who has "arrived." One morning Charles M. Schwab's private car was backed on the side-track at his Bethlehem Steel plant. As he alighted from his car he was met by a young man stenographer who announced that he had come to make sure that any letters or telegrams Mr. Schwab might wish to write would be taken care of promptly.
No one told this young man to be on hand, but he had enough imagination to see that his being there would not hurt his chances of advancement. From that day on, this young man was "marked" for promotion. Mr. Schwab singled him out for promotion because he had done that which any of the dozen or so other stenographers in the employ of the Bethlehem Steel Company might have done, but didn't.
Today this same man is the president of one of the
largest drug concerns in the world and has all of this world's goods and
wares that he wants and much more than he needs. A few years ago I received
a letter from a young man who had just finished Business College, and who
wanted to secure employment in my office.
With his letter he sent a crisp ten-dollar bill that had never been folded. The letter read as follows "I have just finished a commercial course in a first-class business college and I want a position in your office because I realize how much it would be worth to a young man, just starting out on his business career, to have the privilege of working under the direction of a man like you.