Judgment

“The word that is too often missing from leadership studies is judgment.  Everybody involved in the business is desperate to appear scientific: academics because they want to get research grants and consultants because they want to prove that they are selling something more than just instinct.  But judgment is what matters most, and it is hard to measure.  It takes judgment to resist getting carried away with one quality (such as decisiveness) or one measure of success (such as the share price).  It takes judgment to know when to modulate your virtues and when to pull out all the stops.”

Schumpeter – The Economist June 8th, 2013

 
We know that even wise and experienced leaders can make appallingly bad choices with catastrophic results.  This is often because their judgment has been clouded by an untempered ego, they have ignored the warning signs, and they have sought and received unreliable feedback.  These problems seem easily remedied but many organizations are ill equipped to help their leaders take such measures.

Contrary

I recently read about Alice Stewart, a pioneering industrial epidemiologist whose work on the dangers of low level radiation was aggressively opposed by the establishment.  Because she was pitted against a powerful lobby group, her work was starved of funding in Britain, and she was frequently shunned by her peers.  Nevertheless she persevered and was finally vindicated when the permitted levels of radiation for the public was reduced by two thirds.

What I found particularly interesting about Alice Stewart’s approach was her partnership with a statistician by the name of George Kneale, whose job it was to prove her wrong.  As the evidence mounted, he became less and less able to disprove her findings, thereby lending more and more weight to her claims.

In our anxiety not to be proven wrong we are tempted to surround ourselves with people who agree with us.  We seek out those who will “like” our Facebook posts, leave supportive comments on our blog, and re-tweet our 140 character views of the world.  Isn’t it more important to find people to critique our work so as to help us find our errors, and in so doing quickly put us back on the right track?

Wisdom

Barry Schwartz, Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action at Swarthmore College, makes the following statements about wise people:

• They know when and how to make exceptions to rules;
• They are good at improvisation, necessary because problems tend to be ambiguous and ill-defined;
• They possess and use moral skills in service of others; and
• They are made and not born.

A propos the last item, he believes that they gain wisdom through experience.  In a work context, they need encouragement to try new things, permission to fail, and opportunities to find wise mentors.  If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you will know that all of these things are close to my heart.

Schwartz says that practical wisdom of this kind is less common in our culture today because of our over-dependence on rules and incentives to protect against error.  Each time something goes wrong, we layer on more rules to ward off disaster and we tweak incentives in the hope that employees do the right thing out of self-interest.  In doing so we reinforce the notion that employees cannot be trusted to do the right thing on their own accord.

Relying on rules and incentives takes discretion out of the hands of employees.  It also gives them fewer opportunities to practise wisdom, and discourages them from acting wisely.  Is it any wonder then that low morale and mediocrity is so pervasive in our institutions and corporations today?

Increments

Little things matter.  Small actions make a difference.  Big changes can come from little increments.  We know this to be true from personal experience.  For instance, the power of compound interest to grow regular savings of small sums to unbelievable amounts.  Or a little bit of daily exercise to make us healthier and feel better.  Or a few minutes of regular practice to help a student master his instrument.

The common denominator is discipline: the act of doing something again and again even if we don’t feel like doing it.  And that’s the reason we fail to accomplish so many goals – it’s very hard to keep on keeping on.  We know what’s possible but we can’t get ourselves to do what it takes.  The spirit is indeed willing, but the body is weak.

As I cruise through middle age a voice inside my head tells me: “It’s too late to start something new.”  My heart tells me I want to do it, but my head conspires with “that voice” to assure me that I can’t, or it’s not worth the effort.

Experience tells me that there’s one thing that can help me get started and persevere, and that’s accountability.  I need to tell my friends what I want to do and that I need their help to reach my goals.  And then I need to set little goals and achieve them one by one.

OK, so the secret’s out.  Let’s get started…