Speaking Franklin

Each semester I share with my students the simple but depressing message that much of their skill base will be obsolete by the time they graduate from college. Much of the content in traditional college business textbooks is at best one to two years behind market knowledge. How, then, can students close the gap between old knowledge and current knowledge? Here's the good news: I tell them that if we've done our job right as professors, then most of the self-education skills necessary to close the knowledge gap have already been instilled in them. Overcoming obsolescence is simply a matter of developing active learning habits in your professional life. This leads us to one of Franklin's managerial principles: All education is self-education.

Many influential business managers are avid readers, a surprisingly common characteristic among such Digital Age luminaries as Ted Turner and Bill Gates. Even in our "paperless society," which boasts such varied educational media as video-based learning, experience-based learning and Web-based learning, Gates still carves out two weeks every year for a private reading retreat in which he spends his days reading all the books he has set aside in the past year. In addition to this routine, Gates has acknowledged in interviews that he still tries to read books and magazines for an hour or so each day whenever possible.

Profiles of Genius (Prometheus Books) by Gene N. Landrum features 13 business leaders who have made their mark since 1950 in America and abroad. Signs of self-education appear in almost all cases. Only six finished college, and some never even finished high school. Almost all 13 business leaders profiled by Landrum exhibited an intense love of reading and reliance on reading as a self-education tool.

Benjamin Franklin's own success is attributed in part to his habit of reading, even though by today's standards, he may not have read many books. However, he began reading very early in his life, and his childhood home seemed to be an environment that encouraged reading and information-gathering.

This article was originally published in the May 2000 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Speaking Franklin.