Our loss of wisdom Barry Schwartz
[Music]
[Music]
in his inaugural address Barack Obama
appealed to each of us to give our best
as we try to extricate ourselves from
this current financial crisis but what
did he appeal to he did not happily
follow in the footsteps of his
predecessor and tell us to just go
shopping nor did he tell us trust us
trust your country invest invest invest
instead what he told us was to put aside
childish things and he appealed to
virtue virtue is an old-fashioned word
it seems a little out of place in a
cutting-edge environment like this one
and besides some of you might be
wondering what the hell does it mean let
me begin with an example these are this
is the job description of a hospital
janitor that is scrolling up on the
screen and all of the items on it are
unremarkable they’re the things you
would expect mop the floors sweep them
empty the trash restock the cabinets it
may be a little surprising how many
things there are but it’s not surprising
what they are but the one thing I want
you to notice about them is this even
though this is a very long list there
isn’t a single thing on it that involves
other human beings not one the janitors
job could just as well be done in a
mortuary as in a hospital and yet when
some psychologists interviewed hospital
janitors to get a sense of what they
thought their jobs were like they
encountered Mike who told them about how
he stopped mopping the floor because mr.
Jones was out of his bed getting a
little exercise trying to build up his
strength walking slowly up and down the
hall and Charlene told them about how
she ignored her supervisors admonition
didn’t vacuum the visitors lounge
because there were some family members
who were there all day every day who at
this moment happened to be taking a nap
and then there was Luke who washed the
floor in a comatose young man’s room
twice because the man’s father who had
been keeping a vigil for six months
didn’t see Luke do it the first time and
his father was angry and behavior like
this from janitors from technicians from
nurses and if we’re lucky every now and
then from doctors doesn’t just make
people feel a little better it actually
improves the quality of patient care and
enables hospitals to run well now not
all janitors are like this of course but
the ones who are think that these sorts
of human interactions involving kindness
care and empathy are an essential part
of the job and yet their job description
contains not one word about other human
beings these janitors have the moral
will to do right by other people and
beyond this they have the moral skill to
figure out what doing right means
practical wisdom Aristotle told us is
the combination of moral will and moral
skill a wise person knows when and how
to make the exception to every rule as
the janitors knew when to ignore their
job duties in the service of other
objectives a wise person knows how to
improvise as Luke did when he rewashed
the floor real-world problems are often
ambiguous and ill-defined and the
context is always changing a wise person
is like a jazz musician using the notes
on the page but dancing around them
inventing combinations that are
appropriate for the situation and the
people at hand
a wise person knows how to use these
moral skills in the service of the right
aims to serve other people not to
manipulate other people and finally
perhaps most
important a wise person is made not born
wisdom depends on experience and not
just any experience you need the time to
get to know the people that you’re
serving you need permission to be
allowed to improvise to try new things
occasionally to fail and to learn from
your failures and you need to be
mentored by wise teachers when you ask
the janitors who behave like the ones I
described how hard it is to learn to do
their jobs they tell you that it takes
lots of experience and they don’t mean
it takes lots of experience to learn how
to mop floors and empty trash cans it
takes lots of experience to learn how to
care for people at Ted brilliance is
rampant it’s scary the good news is that
you don’t need to be brilliant to be
wise the bad news is that without wisdom
brilliance isn’t enough it’s as likely
to get you into trouble and other people
into trouble as anything else now I hope
that we all know this there’s a sense in
which it’s obvious and yet let me tell
you a little story it’s a story about
lemonade a dad and his 11 year old son
were watching a Detroit Tigers game at
the ballpark
his son asked him for some lemonade and
dad went to the concession stand to buy
it all they had was Mike’s Hard Lemonade
which was 5% alcohol dad being an
academic had no idea that Mike’s Hard
Lemonade was it contained out at all so
we brought it back and the kid was
drinking it and a security guard spotted
it and called the police who called an
ambulance
they rushed to the ballpark whisked the
kid to the hospital the emergency room
to ascertain that the kid had no alcohol
in his blood and they were ready to let
the kid go but not so fast the Wayne
County Child Welfare protective agency
said
oh and the child was sent to a foster
home for three days at that point can
the child go home well a judge said yes
but only if the dad leaves the house and
checks into a motel
after two weeks I’m happy to report the
family was reunited but the welfare
workers and the ambulance people and the
judge all said the same thing we hate to
do it but we have to follow procedure
how do things like this happen Scott
Simon who told this story on NPR said
rules and procedures may be dumb but
they spare you from thinking and to be
fair and to be fair rules are often
imposed because previous officials have
been lacks and they let a child go back
to an abusive household fair enough when
things go wrong as of course they do
we reach for two tools to try to fix
them one tool we reach for is rules
better ones more of them the second tool
we reach for is incentives better ones
more of them what else after all is
there we can certainly see this in
response to the current financial crisis
regulate regulate regulate fix the
incentives fix the incentives fix the
incentives the truth is that neither
rules nor incentives are enough to do
the job how could you even write a rule
that got the janitors to do what they
did and would you pay them a bonus for
being empathic it’s preposterous
on its face and what happens is that as
we turn increasingly to rules rules and
incentives may make things better in the
short run but they create a downward
spiral that makes them worse in the long
run moral skill is chipped away by an
over reliance on rules that deprives us
of the opportunity to improvise and
learn from our improvisation and moral
will is on
mind by an incessant appeal to
incentives that destroy our desire to do
the right thing and without intending it
by appealing to rules and incentives we
are engaging in a war on wisdom let me
just give you a few example first of
rules and the war on moral skill the
lemonade story is one second no doubt
more familiar to you is the nature of
modern American education scripted
lockstep curriculum here’s an example
from Chicago kindergarten reading and
enjoying literature and words that begin
with B the baths assemble students on a
rug give students a warning about the
dangers of hot water say 75 items in
this script to teach a 25 page picture
book all over Chicago and every
kindergarten class in the city every
teacher is saying the same words in the
same way on the same day we know why
these scripts are there we don’t trust
the judgment of teachers enough to let
them loose on their own scripts like
these are insurance policies against
disaster and they prevent disaster but
what they assure in its place is
mediocrity
don’t get me wrong we need rules jazz
musicians need some notes most of them
need some notes on the page we need more
rules for the bankers god knows but too
many rules prevent accomplished jazz
musicians from improvising and as a
result they lose their gifts or worse
they stop playing all together now
how about incentives they seem clever if
you have one reason for doing something
and I give you a second reason for doing
the same thing it seems only logical
that two reasons are better than one and
you’re more likely to do it right well
not always sometimes two reasons to do
the same thing seem to compete with one
another instead of complementing and
they make people less likely to do it
I’ll just give you one example because
time is racing in Switzerland back in
about 15 years ago they were trying to
decide where to cite nuclear waste dumps
there was going to be a national
referendum and some psychologists went
around and polled citizens who were very
well informed and they said would you be
willing to have a nuclear waste dump in
your community astonishingly 50% of the
citizens said yes they knew it or
thought it was dangerous they thought it
would reduce their property values but
it had to go somewhere and they had
responsibilities as citizens the
psychologists asked other people a
slightly different question they said if
we paid you six weeks salary every year
would you be willing to have a nuclear
waste dump in your community two reasons
it’s my responsibility and I’m getting
paid instead of 50% saying yes
25% said yes what happens is that the
second this introduction of the
incentive gets us so that instead of
asking what are my responsibilities all
we ask is what serves my interests when
incentives don’t work when CEOs ignore
the long-term health of their companies
in pursuit of short-term gains that will
lead to massive bonuses the response is
always the same get smarter incentives
the truth is that there are no
incentives you can devise that are ever
going to be smart enough any incentive
system can be subverted by bad will we
need incentives people have to make a
living but excessive reliance on
incentives demoralizes professional
activity in two senses of that word it
causes people who engage in that
activity to lose morale and it causes
the activity itself to lose morality
Barack Obama said before he was
inaugurated we must ask not just as it
profitable but is it right and when
professions are demoralized everyone in
them becomes dependent on addicted to
incentives and they stop asking is it
right we see this in medicine and we
certainly see it in the world of
business
it is obvious that this is not the way
people want to do their work so what can
we do a few sources of hope we ought to
try to Reem oral eyes work one way not
to do it teach more ethics courses there
is no better way to show people that
you’re not serious than to tie up
everything you have to say about ethics
into a little package with a bow and
consign it to the margins as an ethics
course what to do instead one celebrate
moral exemplars acknowledge when you go
to law school that a little voice is
whispering in your ear about Atticus
Finch no ten-year-old goes to law school
to do mergers and acquisitions people
are inspired by moral heroes but we
learn that with sophistication comes the
understanding that you can’t acknowledge
that you have moral heroes well
acknowledge them be proud that you have
them celebrate them and demand that the
people who teach you acknowledge and
celebrate them too that’s one thing we
can do I don’t know how many of you
remember this another moral hero 15
years ago Aaron Feuerstein who was the
head of Malden Mills in Massachusetts
they made Polartec the factory burned
down 3,000 employees he kept every one
of them on the payroll why because it
would have been a disaster for them and
for the community if he had let them go
maybe on paper our company’s worthless
to Wall Street but I can tell you it’s
worth more we are doing fine just that
this Ted we heard talks from several
moral heroes to particularly inspiring
to me one was Ray Anderson who turned
you know turned you know a part of the
evil empire into a zero footprint or
almost a zero footprint business why
because it was the right thing
to do and a bonus he’s discovering is
he’s actually gonna make even more money
his employees are inspired by the effort
why because they’re happy to be doing
something that’s the right thing to do
yesterday we heard willie smith’s
talk about reforesting in indonesia and
in many ways this is the perfect example
because it took the will to do the right
thing and god knows it took a huge
amount of technical skill I bottle that
how much he needed to know in order and
his associates in order to plot this out
but most important to make it work and
he emphasized this is that it took
knowing the people in the communities
unless the people you’re working with
our support are behind you this will
fail and there isn’t a formula to tell
you how to get the people behind you
because different people in different
communities organize their lives in
different ways so there’s a lot here at
Ed and at other places to celebrate and
you don’t have to be a mega hero there
are ordinary heroes ordinary heroes like
the janitors who are worth celebrating
too as practitioners each and every one
of us should strive to be ordinary if
not extraordinary heroes as heads of
organizations we should strive to create
environments that encourage and nurture
both moral skill and moral will even the
wisest and most well-meaning people will
give up if they have to swim against the
current in the organizations in which
they work if you run an organization you
should be sure that none of the jobs
none of the jobs have job descriptions
like the job description of the janitors
because the truth is that any work you
do that involves interaction with other
people is moral work and any moral work
depends upon practical wisdom and
perhaps most important as teachers we
should strive to be the ordinary heroes
the moral exemplars to the people we
mentor and there are a few things that
we have to remember as teachers one is
that we are always
teaching someone is always watching the
camera is always on Bill Gates talked
about the importance of education and in
particular the model that Kipp was
providing knowledge is power and he
talked about a lot of the wonderful
things that Kipp is doing to take
inner-city kids
and turn them in the direction of
college I want to focus on one
particular thing Kipp is doing that bill
didn’t mention and that is they have
come to the realization that the single
most important thing kids need to learn
is character they need to learn to
respect themselves they need to learn to
respect their schoolmates they need to
learn to respect their teachers and most
important they need to learn to respect
learning that’s the principal objective
if you do that the rest is just pretty
much a Coast downhill and the teachers
the way you teach these things to kids
is by having the teachers and all the
other staff embody it every minute of
every day Obama appealed to virtue and I
think he was right and the virtue that
we need above all others I think is
practical wisdom because it’s what
allows other virtues honesty kindness
courage and so on to be displayed at the
right time and in the right way he also
appealed to hope right again I think
there is reason for hope I think people
want to be allowed to be virtuous in
many ways it’s what Ted is all about
wanting to do the right thing in the
white right way for the right reasons
this kind of wisdom is within the grasp
of each and every one of us if only we
start paying attention paying attention
to what we do to how we do it and
perhaps most importantly to the
structure of the organizations within
which we work so as to make sure that it
enables us and other people to develop
wisdom rather than rather than having it
suppressed thank you very much
thank you
if you have to go east on that side
thank you very much
what does a machine know about itself
can it know when it needs to be repaired
and when it doesn’t in industries like
manufacturing and energy they’re using
predictive analytics to detect signs of
trouble helping some companies save
millions on maintenance because machines
seek help before they’re broken and
don’t when they’re not that’s what I’m
working on I’m an IBMer let’s build a
smarter planet