From elementary education to collegiate education, teachers and students review a number of subjects and fields individually and separately from each other. This helps students build fundamental understanding of each individual subject for future use in career and life endeavors. While studying subjects separately remains critical to the education process, students need to understand that learning material separately does not necessarily mean the material should be or will be applied separately in real-life situations.
In business and in life, actions have reactions, results, and consequences. When considering different subjects, a decision from one specialty/one department can have an impact on other specialties/departments. For example, the development of new software programs by an IT department can help a sales team improve customer relationship management (CRM), help a medical staff better diagnose medical conditions, help a library staff more easily track the movement of books and DVDs, or help a quality assurance (QA) team evaluate critical performance data and statistics.
Meanwhile, a misprint in a press release or internal communication document by a public relations department can lead to a misunderstood message. A positive or neutral statement suddenly becomes a negative statement. As such, damage can be done to an executive team's credibility, an ambassador's outreach efforts, a human resource department's training and development program, a history department's morale, or a customer service department's rapport with customers.
As has been seen in disasters and scandals over the years, too much focus on an area--such as finance or public relations--can lead to the oversight of possible consequences that actions can have. What may seem harmless on paper or in conversation may actually be crippling to international economics or life-threatening to workers on a mission. Fraudulent accounting, groupthink, and other problems could have been prevented had more people looked at how factors were related to each other rather than addressing isolated subject matter.
As critical thinkers, students should be able to consider how details from different specialties relate to each other. Ultimately, students need to learn to synthesize their education in order to handle the opportunities and challenges they will face over the course of their careers and their lives.
In business and in life, actions have reactions, results, and consequences. When considering different subjects, a decision from one specialty/one department can have an impact on other specialties/departments. For example, the development of new software programs by an IT department can help a sales team improve customer relationship management (CRM), help a medical staff better diagnose medical conditions, help a library staff more easily track the movement of books and DVDs, or help a quality assurance (QA) team evaluate critical performance data and statistics.
Meanwhile, a misprint in a press release or internal communication document by a public relations department can lead to a misunderstood message. A positive or neutral statement suddenly becomes a negative statement. As such, damage can be done to an executive team's credibility, an ambassador's outreach efforts, a human resource department's training and development program, a history department's morale, or a customer service department's rapport with customers.
As has been seen in disasters and scandals over the years, too much focus on an area--such as finance or public relations--can lead to the oversight of possible consequences that actions can have. What may seem harmless on paper or in conversation may actually be crippling to international economics or life-threatening to workers on a mission. Fraudulent accounting, groupthink, and other problems could have been prevented had more people looked at how factors were related to each other rather than addressing isolated subject matter.
As critical thinkers, students should be able to consider how details from different specialties relate to each other. Ultimately, students need to learn to synthesize their education in order to handle the opportunities and challenges they will face over the course of their careers and their lives.