Rapid Reading: An essential management skill

A progress report on the present state of the art in rapid reading Of all the personal skills that a manager needs to bring to his work, the one which is most widely neglected and yet which is capable of the most ready and the most dramatic improvement is the skill of rapid and efficient reading. Assuming that a manager can already read with a reasonable degree of fluency—say, that he can read an article such as this at a speed of 250 words per minute or thereabouts with good comprehension—evidence accumulated over the last ninety‐five years would indicate that a short course of training should enable him to increase his speed of reading, without loss of comprehension, by an average of 80 per cent. This percentage improvement will apply whatever the material or the purpose for which it is read, provided like is compared with like (see figure 1). Individual improvements on a course can range from 25 per cent to 250 per cent and more.