本章的key message：亚当·斯密如何改善经济的法宝手段。

职业分工最早是由18世纪的苏格兰哲学家和经济学家亚当·史密斯发现的。

史密斯认识到，社会上不再有一个家庭专门烘烤面包，而另一个家庭建造房屋等等。 现在，个人专注于一项特定任务，并在一个社区中执行。

史密斯曾预测，拥有高度专业化劳动力的国家将非常有效率，并成为世界上最富有的国家，这是对的。 但是他也意识到了其中的危险：许多工人会觉得自己像是机器上的齿轮，而看不到他们个人贡献的意义。

因此，史密斯为管理人员和首席执行官提供了一些明智的建议：确保员工了解情况，并了解他们的个人贡献对企业整体成功的重要性。

Adam Smith shows us some keys to improving the capitalist economy.

If you’re making small talk at a party, there’s a good chance you could end up confounded if you ask someone what their job is. You might scratch your head, wondering, what exactly does a logistics supply manager do?

The reason behind these confusing job titles isn’t some new trend. It’s actually the result of job specialization – an occurrence that was first identified by the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith.

In fact, much of what Smith observed those many years ago is still relevant today, but his insights into the benefits and potential dangers of job specialization are particularly noteworthy.

Smith recognized that societies no longer had one family in the community baking the bread, and another family building the houses and so on. Individuals were now specializing in one specific task, like bricklaying, and performing it for the whole community.

The important part of Smith’s observation, however, was that this new development had both ups and downs.

Smith was right when he predicted that nations with highly specialized workforces would be extremely efficient and become the richest in the world. But he also recognized the danger in this: many workers would feel like they’d become a cog in the machine and lose sight of how their individual contribution is meaningful.

Remarkably, Smith’s centuries-old insight continues to play out today. Modern economies are creating more wealth than ever before, while many find their jobs tedious, if not meaningless. A company could have 100,000 employees spread across several continents, each working on different parts of a project, with no understanding of how their efforts fit into the finished product.

This is why Smith has some sage advice for managers and CEOs: make sure your workers are well-informed and that they understand how their individual contribution is important to the overall success of the enterprise.

Smith was also a champion of capitalism, as long as the profits found their way back into important social programs.

By the eighteenth century, consumer capitalism was already coming under criticism for the amount of money and labor being spent on superficial things like luxury fur coats and high-end snuff boxes. Plenty of people had a problem reconciling these things alongside the poor people who were starving in the streets.

But Smith defended the capitalist system and reminded people that it could work for everyone as long as the surplus wealth was used for programs that offered social support to the most needy members of society. As Smith saw it, mink coats and silver-plated snuff boxes were all a part of how hospitals and schools got funded.

Smith also offered insight into how the system could be improved by emphasizing the benefits of meaningful products and beneficial services that help people, such as psychotherapy. This way, the nation’s prosperity – as well as its citizens’ mental well-being – are cared for.