book review: Business Management Handbook for Land Surveyors

摘要

Although I have never met "This Beardslee Guy" (p. v), I'm sure that I would recognize him if I ran into him. Judging from the back cover of this book, he would be the one animatedly telling fish stories ... about the ones he has caught! He is certainly animated "speaking" in this book about conducting a business, and for good reason. It is, to all appearances, his first love. He has been "an employee, a partner, and an owner of land surveying practices, spanning 31 years" and has written about it in five other books and an untold number of articles. What is striking to me are the parallels in our careers. We both began surveying as summer help. Our formal education is in fields other than surveying, his in business management and mine in math and philosophy. We have both done "post graduate" work in these fields, meaning post-undergraduate work with a course or two in the school of hard knocks thrown in. Early in our careers, we were both influenced by the same authorities on surveying: Ted Madsen, Curtis Brown, Gurdon Wattles, Davis and Foote (specifically, the 5th edition of Surveying Theory and Practice). We both became licensed at the earliest opportunity, though he was licensed two years before I was, at a slightly younger age, I suspect. We both went into business for ourselves not long thereafter, partly out of dissatisfaction with our observed conduct of the firms by which we were employed. We have both felt the urge to teach, by writing and by giving workshops. Finally, to our chagrin, we have both observed the blank, if not hostile, look on the faces of some attendees of our workshops.