The drive to learn

We have a no less strong drive to learn, a curiosity to know how things work, to fill in gaps in our understanding, to make sense of the world. Who has not felt the real satisfaction of connecting one event to another – joined up problems need joined–up thinking, the "Aha" moment when the information gap is completed. It has been shown how, the more expert a person is, the greater the urge to complete, and satisfaction in completing, that knowledge.

However we do not always react to gaps in our knowledge in a rational way. In particular, we do not always react logically to observed inconsistencies in our thinking. Instead of probing for truth we may dismiss inconsistencies:

  • As too small to worry about, such as the faulty read-out in the Challenger spacecraft.
  • As too large to be tackle–able (such as dealing with global warming). or, and this may be the most dangerous of all,
  • As too threatening to our own intensely cherished status, or too challenging to our need to be right to be able to be contemplated objectively. We will see later how Field Marshall Haig turned a blind eye to the massive failure of trench warfare. Thus too, organisations and individuals will seek to suppress data that may show them to be wrong. Directors will fear challenging the status of their CEO, (and Prime Ministers and Presidents will turn a blind eye to the lack of sufficient incontrovertible evidence of WOMD).

There are few more hierarchical organisations than the Army. Soldiers are there to kill or be killed – a highly threatening situation. In response the Army organisational discipline needs to be clear, to reinforce an absolute order of command. The command structure is extremely clear, marked by different names of rank, different uniforms, and social arrangements. So it is perhaps inevitable that the hierarchy becomes difficult to challenge. This can enable leaders to turn a blind eye to evidence that is inconvenient, and it makes it hard for subordinates to question their superior officers.

Field Marshall Montgomery has a stronger claim than most to being the greatest general of the 20th Century ( Full Monty by Nigel Hamilton : Penguin Press 2001), and yet Montgomery″s ambition, drive to win, to ensure Britain led the Allies towards the end of the war, to prove his tried and tested skills over the evidently inexperienced Americans and, above all, his competitive animosity towards General Patton, all combined in his refusing to change his plan for Operation Market Garden on September 17, 1944. Obsessively determined to lead the Allies back into Western Europe, Montgomery rejected the evidence of the SS Panzer Division in the planned dropping zone. Total Allied losses that day exceeded 17,000, some 5,000 more than those who became casualties on D–Day, and is explored further elsewhere. The issue centred on a refusal to see the inconsistencies in information, because learning had been overcome by a driven need to win at all costs. And it also centred on the inability of junior officers to challenge their senior officer. The Army hierarchy made such a challenge undiscussable.

We can pervert our learning capacity through our own mental blockages. These can be caused by anxiety and stress, by other drivers, by a range of fears, and by competition. All or some of these can combine in an organisation to make certain challenges "undiscussables".

But learning overall is satisfying and, as we will discuss later, an imaginative and stimulating ingredient to any wholly fulfilling job.

The dark side of learning takes us into a world of fantasy. This is the location of cult beliefs, and of obsessional preoccupation. Above all, this is the area of acquiescing to unreality, of allowing ourselves to hide from confronting truth by turning a blind eye to it. Dr Nick Baylis is the Cambridge University Lecturer in Positive Psychology – the Dr Feelgood of the English Saturday Times magazine – and he bemoans the lack of attention paid to fantasy, to dealing with it by focussing on tough learning and thinking that brings a steady and lasting improvement to our lives. He calls this "reality investing" as opposed to the self–indulgence of quick–fix thinking or evasion. Throughout our lives we all develop habits. In the main these are helpful ways to learn and to shape our actions. They are useful shortcuts to living. But they can become a dangerous block to questioning and real understanding. They can rapidly become self–feeding, to the point where we start to believe our own PR without question. "This is the way we have always done things here" replaces "This is the way we should do things here". For all its merits, the recent debate on corporate governance has side–stepped the important questions of keeping the CEO in a learning mode, of challenging encroaching dogma, and of persistently making it possible to ask the "undiscussables".

Most CEOs, most leaders, just like Montgomery and like the NASA leadership, are driven by their need to succeed, to win. Gradually this drive builds up a momentum of its own. Their inner needs are no longer met by the normal speed or size of win. Unquestioned, unchecked and, in some cases, unloved, they come to believe in the genius of their own judgement and the importance of their success. Quite quickly they need ever–faster, larger successes to feed their own psyche. They brook no argument or criticism. They become the boardroom″s 500lb gorillas. Challenging them, querying their successes, criticising him or her, becomes off–limits. One of my regular first questions for board teams is to ask them to list the "undiscussables" – an instant eye–opener to the underlying bloodstream and health of the operation. Challenging and helping the CEO is the single most valuable and important job for the independent non–executive director.

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