THE NEED OF NEW LEADERS

We still share with the Chinese that stupid
old superstition that youth is a handicap. We
still think that age means wisdom, whereas it
generally means inertia. Old men’s wisdom
consists, usually, of knowing what cannot be
done. They are experts in the knowledge of
impossibilities.
What we need in every large company is a
number of young employees who are being
trained for leadership. What we need, above
all, just now, is enthusiasm and initiative and
courage. We need these even more than
experience, for the reason that our experience
in the past has not made us very successful.
An employer must study the aptitudes of his
keen young men. He must try to fit every one
of them into his Purpose. He must put them
where they fit. Perhaps some of them are
misplaced.
Cleverness means doing what you are fitted to
do, and stupidity often means not being able
to do something that does not suit you.
Darwin and Clive and Edison and Henry
Ford were all regarded as rather stupid by their
schoolteachers. But very often, the worst
scholar in the school becomes the most famous
man of his class.

Perhaps you may have a young man in your

87