Nothing worth knowing can be taught

The Sutton Trust shared the findings of its latest report last week. It makes familiar but depressing reading. If you have a private education, your chances of making it to ‘the top’ are considerably higher. Here are some of the findings: 72% of the military brass, 74% of senior judges and 50% of the current Conservative cabinet received a private education.

Only 7% of the population go to private schools.

The trend seems to hold for most areas of British life. Interestingly, where the percentages are relatively lower — but still massively over-represented — is in business. The proportion of FTSE chief executives who went to private school stands at around 34% — down from 70% in the late 1980s. The freer movement of people and global telecommunications may mean that companies have a bigger resource pool to choose from.

So why do we in Britain, in many areas of our public life, limit ourselves to such a small talent pool? Is a good education proof of intelligence? I went to a private school and had a great time, for the most part. I made a group of friends that I still have today. I got to play sports I enjoyed every week. I learnt how to pass my exams. And I picked up on those middle class cultural cues I would later hone at my Russell group university and in the management consultancy jobs I would take. Those embarrassing vowels that Tony Blair perfected would begin to creep into my delivery.

In my experience, if you are smart (but not too smart) and you look and, more importantly, sound the part, you’ll do ok at some of these so called top firms.

And there’s something of that in David Cameron’s jibe at last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions about Jeremy Corbyn’s clothes. It reeked of entitlement. And ‘FIFO’ — fit in or f*ck off, as it was once put to me early in my consulting career.

Last year, probably in response to a similar piece of research, I tweeted: ‘have 2 b posh 2 work @ top firm? Probably. Best brains going 2 top firms? Who knows? Do ‘top’ firms do most innovative work? No. #innovation’

Those big firms and big jobs in law, politics and business all serve the current status quo. In the main, they look to make the current system more efficient, to make it work faster — regardless of whether it’s the right system.

But the world is and always has been changed by innovators. The big firms are always behind the curve. They are set up not to be innovative. They need their all their people to think in the same way — logical, reductive and… predictable. It’s a control thing.

It’s not where you find game changing ideas, ideas that change systems rather than just buttress the status quo. According to Steve Johnson, in ‘Where Good Ideas Come From’, history shows that: ‘all the patterns of innovation we have observed… liquid networks, slow hunches, serendipity, noise, exapation, emergent platforms — do best in environments where ideas flow in unregulated channels. In more controlled environments, where the natural movement of ideas is tightly restrained, they suffocate. A slow hunch can’t readily find its way to another hunch that might complete it if there’s a tariff to be paid every time it tries to make a new serendipitous connection; exapations can’t readily occur over disciplinary lines if there are sentries guarding those borders.’

So if you’ve got an idea, know it back to front. Put yourself in a place where it’s going to be tested. Contribute to the networks that can support you. Find and hold on to good people. Stock up on self-belief. Be open-minded and hearted.

You don’t need a private education for any of that.