This past Spring’s issue of the MIT Sloan Review (2017) had an intriguing article with the above title, minus the question marks. “This sounds interesting,” I thought. “Wonder what they’ll say?” At the conclusion of the third paragraph the authors wrote, “We’ve come to believe that problem formulation is the single most underrated skill in all of management practice.”
Good shot guys, but not quite. After thoughtfully re-reading the entire ten-page article, I concluded, that the article was exceptionally insightful from a process standpoint. But as far as being the “most underrated” skill, it’s nonsense. Uniquely, it offers me the opportunity to challenge common business priorities that need serious rethinking. But, reflecting for just a few moments more, I was reminded of a brilliant and thought-provoking set of articles edited by the eminent psychologist, Robert Sternberg, entitled “Why smart people can be so stupid.”
The authors of “Smart people. . .” come up with a number of reasons for their conclusion. In spite of the MIT quoted research, one of the most apropos reasons for stupidity is what can be termed the mindless assimilation of social (business) biases. With their impeccable MIT Harvard reputation, these patently smart people demonstrate a bias that is clearly that of the academy. If you read widely and analytically in business, it’s obvious that thinking about people competencies is controlled by organizational behaviorists with a solely psychological background. They look solely at thinking, but not at conversing. It explains too clearly what’s going on in the MIT article.
It’s an innocent limitation, but limiting conclusions to a single discipline, like psychology or organizational behavior, inevitably limits formulation and potentially creative solutions. Extensive research reveals that...
Though well-trained in rhetoric, communication and social-psychology, I’ve learned that when looking at a problem you need always to ask what discipline or disciplines can best explain the problem to get beyond Johnny One-Note. In short, the MIT research is indicative of the weakness of American specialization and its lack of interdisciplinary background. So, I’m arguing that when describing management, you need to think through the disciplines of management, psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics, linguistics, politics and certainly communication and rhetoric. Though I wouldn’t expect that from a business manager, I certainly don’t believe it’s too much to ask from a highly educated academic from top schools. Evidently, I’m wrong.
The inarticulate
One of the delights of consulting in nearly all business disciplines, many Fortune 100 and 500 companies, and working primarily with senior execs, but interacting with mid-level employees for more than 30 years, is that you begin to notice what’s typically and uniquely true and prevalent in all companies. Certain business disciplines consistently show up as strengths in American companies and other disciplines as consistently weak. For example, American companies know more about sales, marketing, managing and technical innovation than the rest of the world. These are our strengths. You have to have your head in the sand not to know that Asians, and especially the Chinese, know a lot about manufacturing. But not about manufacturing innovation. That’s still American, even though being challenged today by the Chinese.
But when it comes to very significant conversational competencies, Americans are almost uniformly inarticulate. Of course, a big reason for the huge lack of conversational skills is that more than 100 years of traditional business simply didn’t require them. Assembly line managing is essentially authoritarian, sometimes fascistic. Having worked on an assembly line in Detroit in 1953-54, I can tell you that the assembly line was all about control, command and top-down managing, requiring little to no conversation. If I got a new job on that assembly line, the full extent of a conversation with management looked like this. “Now here’s how to finish that bushing. (Leader demonstration.) Got it?” “Yeah, I think so.” “I’ll come back in a couple hours to check on you.” “OK.” Two hours later he comes back to check and one of two responses takes place: “That looks good,” or “No, you’re doing that wrong. (Leader recycles first demonstration and commands.) Got it now?” That's not a conversation!!
When I write that the MIT article is “almost, but not quite,” what I’m referring to is their use of the term ‘formulation.’ Their psychological dependence showed up in that they used the term only in terms of thinking competency, leaving out the most obvious, the conversational development of the formulation. The final form of big ideas or behaviors always comes about as a result of conversation. The notion of the single genius has been firmly disposed of by research. Formulation, genius, strategy is always the result, not of individuals, but of articulate, business conversations.
In short: the most underrated skill in American business is conversation—not problem formulation.
A big reason that problem formulation (and problem resolution) is so weak is the profound lack of conversational expertise. Effective business conversation is highly demanding. Essential to success, far beyond the given technical/digital language, is a command of several language competencies, along with the ability to take the perspective of the other person (s) and an expert understanding of how one’s own language impacts others. That’s a lot more than the ability to use words. Research has shown that what’s critical to success is the ability to act effectively in the structured business environment—the ability to cooperate through verbal interactions, rather than mere intelligence or pure verbal agility.
Some years ago, I worked with a very bright Stanford MBA who was verbally agile to the -enth degree. But she showed no awareness of how her language, including tone, sophisticated vocabulary and nonverbals, impacted others. She lacked the ability to take a visual perspective of another person, recognize the causal links in social events, and understand other people’s inner feelings. Of course, research reveals that most of us, most of the time, are largely incapable of identifying the true causes of our failures. But she was clearly an empathetically absent female, who never gave serious thought to the conversational nature of her failures.
Research reveals a number of highly important issues tying to that Stanford manager’s failures. For example, there is no significant linkage between self-awareness and other awareness. You can be very aware of your own feelings and abilities, but incapable of understanding others’—and vice-versa. These kinds of skills require a speech community, often originating in the family and built upon by one’s chosen colleagues and education. Furthermore, she had little skill in emotional regulation or ability to identify emotion in others—her tools were essentially instrumental. She also consistently failed to build teams and collaborate with others. She viewed herself as the smartest person on the block, and was not shy about letting others know. Most significantly, I never observed her in an interaction mode. She was always command and control. I consulted in that firm for five or six years, but she was never promoted to the vice-presidency she aspired to. She was not coachable, but because of her education, she eventually got a directorship. She ended that directorship in failures of collaboration, and was quietly let go.
Happily, I can point to numerous clients who picked up on their conversational needs and developed a significant communication awareness of others, leading to a high level of performance—and reward.