The 2020s are placing extraordinary demands on workers and organizations. Not just on managers and execs, but also on ordinary workers. A wide range of competencies and experiences are necessary for senior execs. But ordinary workers are also facing strategic uncertainty, new models of business and organization as well as new intellectual demands.
So what's the beginning place for ordinary workers? The answer to that is not surprising--deep smarts. That kind of expertise is always built on a distinct set of competencies: the humanities. It is the kind of stuff that more mature clients are after, especially when they face serious decision making or strategic needs. But it's only in the last few years that firms are really recognizing this need. In fact, years ago one highly placed officer told me he'd keep me busy the rest of my life if I could develop deep, strategic thinkers for his staff needs. I knew that given the intellectual decision making of his staff, it was an impossibility. So at the time I rejected his offer. I knew very few of his people were capable of learning the process, but I didn't know why. One thing was clear: he needed more people with a different kind of education and very few of his people had the right kind of education.
But I also recognized that deep smarts is the engine of every organization. You can’t really progress without them. And you’ll manage a lot more effectively if you understand what they are, how they are built and cultivated—and how they can be transferred to others.
Of course, the real issue surrounding the deep-thinking failure is that a terrific number of business people have little to no background in the humanities supporting their business thinking, thinking which is primarily oriented to scientific thinking models—and not deep thinking. In contrast successful business leadership requires both humanities and scientific models of thinking. Since 2015 a number of business journals have picked up on the fact, including several articles in the Harvard Business Review and the MIT Sloan Management Review. By the humanities I refer to all languages and literatures, the arts (including painting, drama and music), history, philosophy and rhetoric, and the sorely abused English major. These are the required in top schools like Dartmouth, University of Chicago and Columbia University—in addition to whatever you majored in, like say math, statistics and engineering. Unlike my daughters, I didn’t go to any of these schools, but I got a big dose of the humanities in my undergrad at a small Kentucky state college. And even more so in my extensive graduate work.
The word “humanities” is one of those terms that often surfaces with a great deal of emotional heat at three different times: when business is making college student recommendations and hiring decisions, when high school students (and their parents) are making college major decisions, and when academic departments are dealing with funding issues. The term has gained much distinction since the publication of the National Science Foundation’s recommendation of STEM education in 2001. As a consequence, the humanities, in contrast to STEM education, are often referred to with immense opprobrium. Although in recent years a number of business leaders and scientists have spoken positively about the humanities, their ideas seem not to have reached many parents or undergrad students and their friends.
The issue seems to have reached its nadir in just a few words in the form of a question: “You majored in what?” When translated otherwise, there’s a slight pause, then comes the question: “What are you going to do with that?” Just a short time ago, at my ripe old age, I got the same question about my graduate work in modern rhetoric and criticism, but with the tense changed: “What did you do with that?” The ostensible questions are classic cases of “begging the question.” The interrogators are assuming the truth of an underlying proposition, without arguing it.
In fact, when I’ve attempted to answer the question of ‘what did you do with that?’ asked of me personally, again and again I found that I was dealing with a very specific intellectual failing. At the heart of their question was. . . stupidity. That’s the only way to define the response. I don’t mean by that mere ‘dumbness.’ These were not people with a brute lack of processing power. Stupidity is a very specific cognitive failing. The people in this category just don’t have the right conceptual tools for the job. And have no awareness that such conceptual tools exist. The result is an inability to make sense of what’s happening. Along with a resulting tendency to force data into crude, distorting pigeonholes. Like, say, STEM classes and ‘technical vocations.’
But done right and undertaken with a lot of enthusiasm, curiosity and passion, a humanities education along with business and technical education makes you smarter. That’s right—it can make you a lot smarter. It hones your natural skills of discernment and intellect to the productive thought and creative application of knowledge. It exposes you to different ways of thinking and the limitations of each. It teaches you how and when to use different kinds of thinking and competencies. It focuses on the differences between fact and opinion and shows you how to use facts to pursue varying agendas and to argue necessary commitments. It enables the intellectual ability to manage highly different facts and situations. Only the humanities have the basic, transferable skills that can be used . . .with the scientific analytical skills in most any context.
Such skills are why just recently I was able to respond to a neighbor who, getting to know me and my family, wondered what my youngest did with a German major in language and literature. I commented that she was asking the wrong question. Her first employer in Manhattan merely glanced at her resume, noted the Columbia University BA, and ignored any question about her major. This retail vice-president at Bergdorf Goodman—the pinnacle of global style and luxury--asked her interest in the position and then hired her on the spot. She knew what kind of smarts she would be getting, given the required humanities work for all majors at Columbia.
Since I had built a terrific business on that rich humanities background, I’ve never talked about or written much about the competency and my proprietary knowledge of the humanities. Why share my secrets to competitors? But It’s very telling that during my twenty-two years of business only one client, a very senior officer at a multi-national organization, understood what I was doing and the tools I was using.
Deep thinking?
In the 2nd edition of the Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences, Keith Sawyer summarizes the differences between “deep learning” and “traditional classroom practices.” His summary was so explicit and so perceptive that I wanted to do a business riff on it: an analysis that applies directly to organizational need. In this table, I’ll compare traditional training and thinking practices to deep thinking—humanities thinking. Sawyer fails to point out that deep thinking is primarily competencies built on the humanities.
Traditional training and development treat new insights as unrelated to what you already know.
Deep thinking requires you to relate new ideas and concepts to previous knowledge and experience—humanities thinking.
Traditional training and development treat new material as disconnected bits of knowledge.
Deep thinking requires you to integrate new knowledge into your thinking systems—humanities thinking.
Traditional T &D emphasizes facts and procedures without a depth understanding of how and why.
Deep thinking requires you to look for underlying patterns and principles—humanities thinking.
Traditional T&D doesn’t deal with new ideas that are different from the class objectives.
Deep thinking requires you to evaluate new ideas and relate them to previous conclusions—humanities thinking.
Traditional T&D treats facts and procedures as static knowledge handed down from an all-knowing authority.
Deep thinking requires you to understand the process of conversation through which knowledge is created, and that you examine the logic of an argument critically—humanities thinking.
Traditional T&D emphasizes memory without reflecting on your own thinking strategies.
Deep thinking requires you to reflect on your own understanding and your own process of learning--humanities thinking.
The focus on deep thinking underlies all the knowledge work in today’s economy. Over the last twenty years scientists have studied expertise and the practices that make for expertise. Deep thinking is merely a reflection of those studies of top professionals and their ways of making organizational contributions—through the humanities.