Why don’t they teach this stuff in school?
Every leadership book out there says to hire talent over experience—experience can be learned by talented individuals much more quickly than talent can be developed by experienced ones—yet we are programmed even in school to ignore this reality.
We are taught only how to master functional skills such as research, writing, math, and reading. We don’t learn group dynamics, we don’t study leadership, and we don’t hone our abilities to read other people. A while back, I wrote about an experience I had at Kellogg that set me on my current career path. I was in an upper level finance class, and in the case we were studying, the numbers didn’t tell the whole story. The financial projections suggested one course of action, but success in that course of action required such a difficult, emotional decision that it proved impractical. It stumped the class because nowhere in any of our models was there a discount factor associated with the risk of a key decision maker not being strong enough to overcome a tough emotional struggle! We had been taught to overlook such issues—to treat people as rational decision makers, as opposed to the rationalized decision makers we actually are.
Kellogg may have espoused team building as something students were learning, but there was only one class on team building; the rest of the time, we were left to learn from each other while engaged in team projects. Unfortunately, this method of “teaching” left us more likely to reinforce our own preconceived notions than to get us to open our eyes. And it left us without the tools to assess interpersonal dynamics in critical decisions; we were stuck using functional tools only.
In business, we lament how people allow their shortcomings, emotions, and other personal “baggage” get between them and success, while we simultaneously make strategic decisions presuming that everyone will automatically overcome their shortcomings just at the precise moment when we want them to—that people will suddenly become perfect little people who can and will set aside all their personality quirks and operate with total efficiency. We know people are emotional, yet we refuse to account for that in our decisions. We engage with teammates and think, “If you can’t get out of your own way, at least have the courtesy to recognize that I know what I’m doing.” Then we dismiss others who feel that way toward us, because, “What could they possibly know about what I’m thinking or why?!” Without tools to measure the situation, we are precluded from coming to any other conclusions!
Do you consider yourself objective? Free of petty emotions? Devoid of irrationality? Ask yourself: Are your days perfectly efficient? Are you qualified to assess someone’s courage, passion, or integrity? Can you always put emotion aside to do what needs to be done and execute?
We have a special word for people who act in a completely rational way. It is a label we use to describe people who can look at the world through purely objective eyes, who never let emotion cloud their interactions with other human beings, who treat interactions with other people the same as interactions with inanimate objects. The word is autistic. We try to cure people of it.
I have made it a personal mission to bring the reality of the human condition into strategic decision making. This mission is behind everything I do–my book How to Self-Destruct, my teaching, my consulting approach, even my personal life. Ultimately, I believe the solution lies with how we educate ourselves; we need to train ourselves to ask better questions, and we need to develop a better set of problem-solving tools. And while I would love to see schools at every level do more than pay lip service to subjects such as team building and leadership, I know that will take a long time to accomplish. Professors like Brian Uzzi at Northwestern, Steven Levitt at the University of Chicago, Bob Sutton at Stanford, and Joshua Green at Harvard on the vanguard of uncovering the hard impact of soft skills, but they’re still early in the process. They are also at the college and graduate level; we have quite a ways to go before we start teaching common sense (which is what all of this is, when we get right down to it) in any sort of structured way to elementary school kids.
In the meantime, I have a challenge for you, business leaders. The challenge is this: when it comes to the human element, act on what you know to be true. You know that no two people will do the same job the same way; you know that every decision contains an emotional component. You know that the answer to the question requires knowledge beyond the models taught in b-school. Acknowledge these things. Admit them during your decision making process, rather than lament them on the golf course. Talk about specific, people-related risks. Stop talking about the risk of hiring “unexperienced talent” without also talking about the risk of hiring “untalented experience.” Reframe the way your followers think about strategy. Recognize that there is as much science behind human capital as there is behind financial capital and abide by its rules. Never mind that you don’t know the details… you don’t have to be an financial expert to know that a company funded with debt will have different demands placed on it than one funded with equity; similarly, you do not need to be a psychologist to know that personality plays a role in decision making. You do, however, have to be willing to accept it.
There is a reason you are a leader. Make the most of it! Take the helm and guide us to a more real, more honest, and more sensible place. Embrace the human condition, and take it into account!
