Bestselling author Michael Lewis discusses expertise on his current season of is podcast Against the Rules. He makes the point that if you need a solution to a problem, you must go down at least six levels in any organization to find the answer.
The people who understand an organization best are not sitting in the ivory tower. They are on the ground, doing the work, gaining skill and expertise everyday.
McDonald’s understood this well. Need a new product? Want to expedite a process? Looking to eliminate waste?
Ask a swing manager. Question the crew people who do the job. Interview the custodian. They have the answers.
This is why I ask my students for a performance review every month. I ask them to tell me what I’m doing well and what I could be doing better. I ask if they have ideas that might make the classroom run more efficiently. I’m constantly asking students if they know of anyone in need of help who I haven’t noticed.
Kids know. They have all the answers. Their feedback has been far more helpful to me than the feedback of any administrator over the course of my career. I am a far better teacher because of the things my students have told me rather than anything any administrator has said.
According to research documented by Michael Lewis (as well as my own personal experience), most organizations don’t operate this way. Most organizations are run by people at or near the top who think they have all the answers. These are leaders whose arrogance, ignorance, or incompetence make them believe that they know best, or they are simply are too afraid to ask for help. Admitting that they can’t solve a problem, need help, don’t know, or are making bad decisions is too threatening to their fragile, useless egos.
If you’re a leader and are not routinely asking people much farther down the ladder for ideas and solutions to improve your organization, you’re making a terrible mistake. You don’t deserve the position that you currently occupy.
As informed, competent, and talented as you may think you are, there is someone farther down the ladder who knows more and could make a real difference in your organization if you were just smart enough or brave enough to find them.
These are school administrators who tell teachers that the curriculum is excellent even though they don’t actually teach it and last worked as a classroom teacher during the Bush administration.
These are CEOs who haven’t spent a day of their lives in marketing or sales explaining why your pitch deck is all wrong.
These are storytelling directors and speaking coaches who have never performed onstage telling performers what is wrong with their stories, speeches, and delivery.
Rather than seeking and relying on the expertise from those who are doing the job on a daily basis and understand better than anyone else, these people somehow think that they know a lot a subject that they have never done or haven’t done in more than a decade.
Sometimes it’s hubris. Other times it’s fear. Still other times it’s simply incompetence.
In all cases, it’s disastrous.
