The Exception to Every Rule

[TED, invest 20:45 with Barry Schwartz] My advice in listening, if you have time, is to do it with soft ears - filter, and do not take it all so literally. That will make it an enjoyable and personal experience.

These are almost verbatim the part that most impressed me about the talk. Do you know when and how to make the exception to every rule? Brilliance isn't enough - you need wisdom. A wise person knows when to improvise.

When things go wrong we reach for two things - (1) rules, more rules, and (2) incentives. The truth is that neither rules not incentives do the job. They may make things better in the short run and destroy our desire to do the right thing in the long run. By employing rules and incentives, we give up wisdom.

We know why rules are there, we don't trust people on their own. Scripted rules are insurance policies against disaster. And they prevent disaster. What they assure in its place is mediocrity. We need rules, but too many of them and we stop doing altogether.

Instead of asking what is my responsibility, incentives make us ask what serves my interest. The answer to this dilemma is not devising smarter incentives. Incentives demoralize professional activity in two ways - they cause people engaged in that activity to lose morale; and they cause the activity itself to lose morality.

Are you asking, "is this the right thing to do?" How can we remoralize work?

1. celebrate moral exemplars - people are inspired by moral heroes, acknowledge them
2. know the people in your community - you have one, even when you've not built it yourself
3. remember that you are always teaching - someone is always watching, the camera is always on

Schwartz concludes that what we need today is practical wisdom.

Some people in the comments to the talk lament the lack of practical motivation towards what should be done. My take is that this is personal and by example. Creating more rules and incentives would be missing the point entirely.

Thoughts of change and choice are seldom welcome - they miss the excuse of certainty and may instill the certitude of fear and doubt that freedom often brings. More than rules, perhaps we need guidance, that of our own moral compass. That can be outright uncomfortable and unpopular.

Comments

[Dyana Valentine]

Valeria, you made my morning! I am taking this straight to the classroom tomorrow. The striking quote: "a wise person is made not born."

Thank you for this gift.

[Carolyn Ann]

Thank you for sharing that with us, Valeria! It was truly an inspiring bit of work. :-)

(Can someone send it to the Congressional Republicans? They're in desperate need of "character" and "moral judgment".)

Thanks, again, Valeria!
Carolyn Ann

[Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach]

That reminds me of one of my favorite sayings - Wisdom is the art of realizing you're always learning.

Data points, Barbara

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Dyana - so glad this was a good start to your day. It was a good end to mine the night prior to the post.

@Carolyn Ann - I think there is a desperate need for this kind of message overall. This post builds on my prior about making the pie bigger. We need to think more expansively and resist the urge to get smaller in our views. Wisdom is learned.

@Barbara - that is a good saying. I would add and to know that everyone is a teacher.

[peter]

Soft ears - a lovely expression so hard to practice when not at peace.

Wisdom also calls for us to mediate our love affair with knowledge and our relentless desire to accumulate content - Unpopular and uncomfortable as this may sound, I suspect there is a correlation between the rise of social media and and what we perceive as a lack of moral compass.

But to your point - its hard to learn wisdom on a full mind.

Curiously, I doubt the wise persons asks "is this the right thing to do". I'm probably wrong but, for the wise person there are no options - there is presence and spontaneity (something the rest of us may never come to understand). From that comes direction.

[Carolyn Ann]

Of course the "wise" person must ask "is this the right thing to do", Peter! Some questions are just so ambiguous that the question has to be asked.

May I be so bold as to provide an example? Corporate email monitoring. I was asked to implement this; was I right in delaying, forgetting, not getting to and so on? Or was the right thing simply to abide by my boss's wishes, and implement a system I knew would be unpopular? And violate every tenet about free expression and corporate management I hold dear?

Being wise often means being foolish. I was told that by a man I consider wise. I wish I could be so wise that I could be so foolish.

Carolyn Ann

[Peter]

Hi Carolyn Ann,

You may be right about foolishness and wisdom. I find with time the two conditions can be quite interchangable.

I don't know whether you were right in doing what you did. But, and this is a mark of respect, I do think you could do no other than what you did. The mind is no match for an examined life.

Peter