Patterns
Wisdom comes with age, they say. Many of us commit the error of mistaking correlation with causation when we consider this adage. While it is generally true that all who are wise are old, it is not true that all who are old are wise. Oscar Wilde said this better:
Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age comes alone.
There are two senses we can have in mind when we discuss wisdom. One sense is a broad body of knowledge on various subjects. We think wise those well-educated individuals who have spent a lifetime acquiring and applying knowledge. Some of that knowledge is applied to living a virtuous life as they discover the paths that lead to well-being in the most comprehensive sense.
The second way in which to think of wisdom is the practical application of useful skills acquired over that same lifetime. It is the wisdom used to get things done in the most optimal way. It is what we mean when we say that someone has street smarts, but it goes beyond what that phrase conveys.
It is practical wisdom that I wish to consider in this essay.
For a bit more than three years, about half of the work I have done is interim management of cities and villages. These assignments are ideal for me because they provide a level of challenge suited to my knowledge and experience. Said another way, I know what it takes to get things done and I am able to accomplish those tasks with a high degree of skill.
This might sound boastful, but in my defense I offer a quote attributed variously to Will Rogers, Dizzy Dean, and others:
If you done it, it ain't bragging.
What I do is similar to others with comparable experience in local government. Some of them do it better. We possess practical wisdom that we apply to the daily tasks of making local governments work the way they are designed. The longer we do this work, the more capable we are of analyzing the challenges we face and making prudent decisions about how best to address them.
Why is that the case?
More than once during the course of my career, and especially when I was making decisions related to a particularly challenging task, I found myself asking "How do you know how to do this?" Unhelpfully, I never got an answer to this question. I had acquired practical wisdom without realizing I had done so.
There is a simple explanation for how this occurs. The human brain is designed to identify patterns in the information that comes its way. We are wired to get better at applying what we know to analogous situations. We shape our world based on our past experiences.
When I start managing a new community, I am conscious of the steps I take to understand how I can be most effective in this role. Much of my time in the early days is devoted to understanding the flow of information and the rhythm of work. What do the other staff members expect of me? When does the governing body meet? How do officials communicate with one another? I know to seek out answers to these and other questions because I have learned from past experiences that these answers are essential to my meeting expectations for my performance.
Why is it, then, that age comes without practical wisdom for some people? I suspect that some people do not make the effort to think about the patterns that their brains have created. Each of us, and especially those of us who are busiest, need to make time on our schedules for quiet reflection on how well we're doing. We need to be our own harshest critics of our job performance. We should be applying to ourselves the same techniques that we use when critiquing the work of subordinates and coaching them on how to improve.
That requires that we be honest with ourselves. We must admit our mistakes and learn why we made them. Often those mistakes are not due to a lack of knowledge. They result from failing to apply knowledge we already have to a new situation. We did not recognize how that circumstance fit a pattern with which we were already familiar.
I faced a dilemma some years ago after I closed the city's swimming pool following a drowning. I knew an investigation needed to be done before it reopened, but I had no idea how I should go about it. My initial thought was that that this incident did not fit any pattern with which I was familiar. I was wrong. I had been serving on the board of a community hospital and was aware that occasionally people get sick and die in hospitals for reasons unrelated to the condition that brought them there. Surely the hospital has some way in which they go about investigating such circumstances. They did, and the hospital administrator was gracious enough to loan me the staff member trained to lead personnel through a root cause analysis process.
There is a second reason some people fail to demonstrate practical wisdom. They lack the courage to act and to risk failure. They are plagued by indecision. They have not learned how to productively make mistakes and learn from them so they avoid them as much as possible. The patterns are available to guide them but they don't trust themselves.
As I noted in an earlier essay, we acquire courage by acting courageous. We fake it until we make it. Virtues like courage take regular practice. Practical wisdom requires the other wisdom that includes knowing ourselves.
There is a third reason that practical wisdom eludes some people. They are distracted by nonessentials. The world is a noisy, cluttered place with stimuli constantly competing for our attention. That clutter prevents us from seeing the patterns right in front of our eyes if we don't find ways to rid ourselves of it.
I think that explains the large number of personal productivity applications available to install on our desktop computers and smartphones. I am drawn to these applications because I am always looking for ways in which to be more effective in managing tasks and projects. I have come to realize, however, that they are another source of distraction. Installing one more probably won't help me enough to justify the time it will take me to learn how to use it.
The reflection part of each week's Field Notes & Reflections is where I make connections and identify patterns. I hope it helps my readers do the same. If they do, the credit goes to the reader, not to me. If my word contribute to their sense-making, it is because they laid the groundwork through the work they had already done. At most, my thoughts merely amplify what they are already thinking, whether they realize it or not.
If you were intrigued by my article on determinism and free will a couple of weeks ago, you might want to listen to the latest episode of the No Stupid Questions podcast that takes up the same subject.