by Brook Manville | 10:45 AM August 24, 2010
by Brook Manville
(Larry Prusak, Brook Manville, and I are at work on a book on judgment and how to cultivate it as an organizational, not just individual, strength. Over the next few months, we’ll each be authoring posts in this blog to test-drive ideas and invite input as the research progresses.)
I’ve been mulling over a column by The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan since it came out last month. Entitled Youth Has Outlived Its Usefulness, it was about good judgment, and who has it. The premise of the piece, ever so gently chiding our current President, was that our nation is in bad need of wise policy, and isn’t likely to get it from youthful politicians.
What is needed, Ms. Noonan suggests, is more “adult supervision,” a phrase she uses jokingly and yet with deep conviction. She worries that the Obama administration lacks for experienced, elder counselors — or, in her words, “old and august … wise and weathered … bruised and battered veterans of life who’ve absorbed its facts and lived to tell the tale.”
The article’s nostalgic yearnings for the likes of a Harold MacMillan (the wizened Prime Minister who guided the young Jack Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis) aren’t limited to the political sphere. Noonan goes on to lament the lack of grey hair in the ranks of hospital administrators, publishing enterprises, and other important public and commercial institutions.
As someone who spends some of his professional time providing executive coaching for younger men and women, I have no interest in denying the value that an old hand can provide to a less experienced leader. And I don’t worry about the concern sometimes expressed that a young leader might become overly reliant on a Rasputin-like elder — too callow or lazy to exercise independent thought. But I wonder if by casting the critical feature of a “trusted advisor” as age, or even long experience, we run the danger of mistaking what truly valuable advisors bring to the table.
Even Noonan acknowledges that older, more experienced men in advisory roles haven’t always resulted in good judgment. In the Vietnam era, the United States was led into one disastrous military and political decision after another by such counselors (as chronicled in the film The Fog of War. Noonan, gracefully backpedalling in mid-argument, notes that while it is wrong to conclude that we should “Never listen to wise men,” we should have learned: “Wise men can be wrong, listen close and weigh all data.”
Yes, exactly. Building good judgment in an organization is not as simple as giving our youngest leaders silver-haired counselors. It’s the result of drawing on a much broader base of learning for all decisions — from people up, down, and sideways in the organization; from people outside the organization, including customers, competitors, rivals, and partners; and from other sources of data. And therefore, it’s a question of developing cultures and processes that enable that kind of multi-dimensional learning and allow collective wisdom to emerge.
Old paired with young is a combination that often yields better judgment because it is at least one form of diversity introduced into a leader’s deliberations. But why stop there? The executive or manager who relies too much on a single or small group of advisors ignores the wider diversity of opinion that can shape a better decision. This is particularly true considering the “echo-chamber effect” we have all seen some leaders fall prey to, where advisors are (however unconsciously) selected and endorsed because they already share the same worldview and are likely to go along with the gut reactions of the man or woman holding the power. If the advice put forward has the additional sheen of elder year experience, it may be all the more possible to believe that the “second opinion” is in fact an authoritative reinforcement of what was already decided.
Beware the wise elder. It’s not that he or she can’t offer good advice. It’s just that such experience can sometimes become a false and dangerous substitute for the breadth and diversity of opinion, combined with analytical rigor and shared problem-solving, that together make for great organizational judgment.
Brook Manville consults to socially-minded enterprises on matters of strategy and organizational development. He is author (with Josiah Ober) of A Company of Citizens: What the World’s First Democracy Teaches Leaders About Creating Great Organizations.
BROOK MANVILLE
Brook Manville is an organizational development consultant and a coauthor of two Harvard Business Review Press books, Judgment Calls and A Company of Citizens. He is working on a book about leaders who can mobilize networks into communities.
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