If you value theory over experience, you’re headed for problems

My wife found this snippet in Saturday’s New York Times, called “Same Office, Different Planets.” It refers to a survey from the magazine Workspan that asked both HR professionals and the employees themselves what were the most important factors in persuading people to stay with an organization.

You can read all the details via the link above. The bottom line is that what the HR professionals said would motivate employees to stay was 100% wrong, compared with actual responses from the employees themselves.

As the writer says:

Perhaps [the HR people chose the wrong factors] because they believe what is published and said so often . . .

Why this is a wider problem

I think this points to a wider issue, not one restricted to HR professionals. Many of today’[s leaders prefer to believe what they have been told is true over what they can actually see around them. Experience is reinterpreted — or ignored — in terms of internal assumptions, usually the ones endorsed by business schools, supposed experts, and media pundits.

I blame Sigmund Freud for starting this process. His theories — so long accepted — are pretty much based on the belief that human behavior is caused by hidden factors, not the obvious, commonsense reasons that appear on the surface. Instead of looking to current beliefs and assumptions to understand why people behave in self-destructive ways, he turned to hidden, subconscious urges, often derived from supposed childhood experiences — long buried and forgotten.

Despite being widely seen today as plain wrong, such theories have a subtle appeal: they suggest that only those “in the know” can understand the true reasons behind events.

Executives aren’t a “select breed”

We all like to be “in the know.” We all like to possess special knowledge denied to mere ordinary mortals; and no groups desire this more than professionals of every kind. It’s what marks them out from the rest: they possess know-how and access to levels of understanding denied to those outside their profession.

As management has become more “professional,” it has developed its own areas of special knowledge. To become a “professional manager” now demands earning specific qualifications, such as MBAs, from business schools; and such schools can only attract student by claiming to be able to teach them things they could not learn merely through experience and commonsense.

Management and leadership used to be a practical, commonsense processes, requiring people of a certain experience and proven ability. Now anyone can be a leader who has the appropriate piece of paper.

You’ll already see where all this is headed. To prove that you’re a professional, you have to show that what anyone can see, with some commonsense and application, is not the true cause of events. That can only be grasped by those who have studied the relevant theories and been anointed by gaining the required qualification. To prove this means giving a reason for events that would not be suggested by anyone who simply looked at what was in front of them.

Many are misled by preset assumptions and conventional thinking

Is it any wonder that we have situations like the current crisis in sub-prime mortgage finance — or the fiasco at Société Generale — despite all the managers and executives with fancy degrees from even fancier schools?

Instead of concentrating on what is right in front of them, they prefer to act as if their assumptions are reality. They ignore the here and now in favor of theories from the past and ideas they picked up years ago at business school.

Such leaders are the very ones who failed to consider that allowing huge bets on obscurely-complex financial instruments few, if any, understand is inherently foolish, since their expensive training told them it was “modern” and the act of the “cutting edge professional.”

They didn’t consider that relying on computer systems to keep an eye on what junior employees are doing is insufficient; even thought Nick Leeson at Barings, years ago, brought the bank down by making rogue trades while knowing how to feed the systems whatever they needed to see?

Why?

Because they have been taught to believe the computer more than their own observations and experience.

Worst of all, they still don’t grasp that reliance on “the numbers” each quarter as the only means to judge business success is both short-sighted and silly. It’s accepted knowledge amongst “professionals,” isn’t it? Only amateurs would stand back, look at the whole situation,and trust their commonsense, logic, and experience over the spreadsheets produced by all that expensive computer power.

Until we turn this around and accept that true professionals owe their understanding more to taking the time to think, watch, and consider than to any theories, we will remain at the mercy of the highly-qualified manager whose closed mind prevents him or her from seeing what is there in plain view.

That’s my opinion. So what’s yours?

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Photo credit: Michael Maggs