Perspectives & Strategy

We concentrate on improving the knowledge of professionals in our workforce and rightly so because without an educated workforce we fail to deliver value to our businesses. Yet knowledge itself should not be the ultimate goal. Continuing education is vital and formal or not, it pays to have an edge in your decision making. It is possible for a well educated man to act unwisely and irrationally and unfortunately this is not uncommon in business.

According to Immanuel Kant: “Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life“.

It could be seen that wisdom equals knowledge plus a bucket load of experience, yet it should be more than that because the wise person can make the right decision on a matter they have no knowledge or experience of, simply by applying certain rules to the situation.

According to Walt Whitman: “Wisdom is not finally tested in the schools, Wisdom cannot be passed from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof it is its own proof“.

When we lack specific knowledge we can still respond to any given situation intelligently. This comes more from our ‘education on the street’ and having the drive to get something done. A person having no formal education can still have the knowledge and drive to get something done, yet in a way this is still not wisdom as the wise person often has the courage to say ‘technically we can do this, but on this occasion the detrimental affects outweigh the benefits’. That is a type of wisdom that most people only have when looking back on a situation – the origin of the statement that ‘hindsight is 20-20 vision’.

I would like to thank Dave Maskin for the thought he provided when answering my question on LinkedIn “The wise person seeks knowledge to become even wiser“. In this regard knowledge does not only come in books, there are plenty of other sources of knowledge, including personal observation. I would hope that I fit into this category someday. Personally I have always sought both knowledge and wisdom. The flip side to this of course is the educated person who fails to become wise at any time during the course of their life.

Recent thinking about wisdom has come because of a recent encounter. I met a teenager recently, who thinks of himself as a wise man. He spends time explaining to his parents and the adults around him why things happen and it was evident from a quick glance around the room that everyone present already knew the things he was telling them. Now he was clearly knowledgeable – knowing things many people his age would not normally know or care about, but wise he certainly was not. The wise person would have sensed the disinterest in the room (particularly among his elders). There is no limit to the age a person becomes wise but older people can feel a younger person has only limited life experience and therefore lacks something in the wisdom stakes.

Now even a wise person does foolish things from time to time – they would not be human otherwise, but the overall impact of everything they do is for the improvement of those around them.

So how does this apply to a business scenario?

Two of the key aspects of leadership are knowledge and wisdom. Experience is also a contributing factor to provide the business leader with the right tools to steer their business through the rough patches and allows them to take advantage of the right opportunities at the right time in order to drive a successful solution. There is a certain wisdom to the Google approach to new ideas – simply asking the question “how will people use it?” rather than the more obvious business question “how much money can we make from it?”. Both questions are relevant at the appropriate time, yet simply asking the financial question can stifle creativity at the point when ideas should be the premier currency. As we know Google has made a large amount of money offering free services, which could be argued as great corporate wisdom.

Corporate wisdom is more than simply deploying training programs and classes that develop managers and leaders; although that is an essential part. No matter how good a corporation is we must always remember that it is not a real person and it makes decision in a different manner to a human. By choosing certain behaviours and rejecting others can move the corporation in the right direction. It may be argued the consciously and acting from inner wisdom, each of the workplace functions achieve higher integrity and higher performance yet this is a contradiction to Whitman’s proposition that “Wisdom cannot be passed from one having it to another not having it” which implies that wisdom is a personal achievement, and therefore is not attainable by a corporate body. Yet a corporation is built upon the foundation of people. Good organisations work together for the common good.

There is no easy way to define corporate wisdom other than as demonstrated by the joint wisdom of its leadership. To me the start point is having an organisation that believes in continuous improvement. The second part is by having a leadership that listens. Thirdly it depends on people who are prepared to say “No, we should not do this, because…”. Challenging ideas is vital to ensure we do not do the wrong thing.

I would love to hear you views on this as we all know there have been some unwise choices made in the business world over recent years.