"We need to rethink what training is necessary for Generation Y, because what used to be common sense isn't common sense anymore." --Lindsey Pollak
Lindsey's insight to Gen-Y cries out for a response. But first, her language needs to be adapted to corporate America. In business-speak, common sense is called street smarts, as in, "that guy has a lotta street smarts. He really knows how to work the system." Street smarts is a sub-category, a specific kind of smarts--the umbrella term--as in, "that guy has a lotta smarts. He can fix just about any sales problem." At its core, the term smarts refers to different kinds of problem-solving abilities.
Dorothy Leonard, the Harvard Business School prof, has a book on still another form of smarts: Deep Smarts. Deep smarts is profound expertise in a business speciality that makes for exceptional and unique problem-solving abilities, as in, "that guy has deep smarts. He's a genius at strategic thinking, no matter how serious the problem.
These are three different intelligence codes--languages that Gen-Yers need for most organizations. They signal to the other generations that you know what the hell's going on and how to get it done. To summarize, I think of street smarts this way: it's the competency to successfully and effectively navigate the environment so that you can achieve your person and organizational objectives.
Street smarts is not a formal discipline.
As I indicated earlier, street smarts--common sense--is a different kind of intelligence. Street smarts is what the academics call know-how knowledge, rather than know-what knowledge. Most business is all about know-what knowledge. Companies have compiled all kinds of know-what business knowledge: information on marketing, marketing research, manufacturing, finance, even, god forbid, derivatives--those messy instruments that turned the global finance system into a disaster. If you dig deep enough in any of the areas I've listed, you'll find all kinds of codified and collated information.
But if you start digging to find out about your organization's street smarts, you'll get little to nothing. It's not just that street smarts has never been collated like, say, customer buying habits at the local supermarket, but by its very nature street smarts is hard to capture. It resides in the unconscious or the semi-conscious. Inevitably, the person that supposedly has a lot of street smarts know-how can't totally tell you all she knows. Street smarts is weird, fuzzy and messy knowledge when contrasted with other kinds of knowledge. And frustratingly, most people don't know when they don't have street smarts. But what's important about street smarts is that it provides both your company and you, as individuals, a clear competitive advantage.
Why is street smarts so important for Gen-Y?
Most people start out in their career thinking that their business or technical skills are key to their success. That's a half-truth. Your ability to manage the underlying, hidden, social system of the organization is ultimately far more important than your business skills. It's this system that makes it possible for you to access the resources, the technical smarts, the team and management support, and to get buy-in for your own work projects. Indeed, the system of street smarts lets you know what you can and can't do, what you can say and can't say. It will also lay out the "rules" for success and failure in an organization.
Quite a few years ago, I had a number of development projects at a major food company in the Upper Midwest. One client's interview list of people for personal feedback included a recently hired marketing vice-president from New York. In addition to the feedback, my client asked me--with a twinkle in his eyes--to see what I thought about how long the VP would last at this company. I knew what he was asking. Some East Coast staffers don't last long in the Upper Midwest because they lack the necessary antennae to manage the Minnesota system. There is nothing wrong with the New York style--in New York. But, the New York style in Minnesota is a recipe for trouble because of the extreme differences in cultural rules. Your ability to assess those rules and adapt determine your success.
The New York marketing vice-president was terminated in seven months. He never was able to develop the relevant street smarts. And he never knew why he was really terminated . . . because no one knew how to tell him the truth. It's unusually difficult to talk about street smarts and make it a valid rationale for termination.
In coming days, I'll lay out some clues to help you understand your organization's street smarts.