The fallacy of being the smartest person in the room

There is a well-meaning belief that early specialisation and deliberate practice is the best and only way to become a subject matter expert. After all, it was how Tiger Woods dominated the world of golf. Judit Polgár was the same, and she achieved similar success with chess. She was honoured with the title of Grandmaster at the mere age of 15 years and 4 months, and, at the time, was the youngest to have done so, breaking the record previously held by former World Champion Bobby Fischer. Anecdote quickly became gospel as organic and free-flowing childhoods became more and more mechanistic. Careers were paved in the womb, all in the hopes of being the smartest in the room. Little did we know that the brightest of minds were getting dirty in the playground “with the lazy kids”

Recent research (Moesch, ‎2010) suggests that those that dabble freely in a number of faculties are more likely to be exceptional experts and to have profound insight- unlike those that have had early specialisation. Steve Jobs, for example, dabbled in typography, Leonardo Da Vinci dabbled in anatomy and engineering, and Sherlock Holmes dabbled in understanding as much as he could about the world to help him solve cases (he’s not real though). Researchers believe that those that have the freedom to dabble and play are more likely to put disparate ideas together and come up with unorthodox solutions to complex problems. And some of that unorthodoxy is brilliant. This insight also extends beyond academia. Roger Federer, for example, played a variety of sports. At one stage, even up to the age of thirteen, he loved football and played it competitively. Tennis was just something he played as a hobby sport. Roger Federer went on to become of the greatest tennis players of all time.

Being highly specialised gives you a very big hammer. And everything that you see looks like a nail, even when it may not be. In the US, cardiologists have gotten so used to treating chest pains with stents, that it now extends to cases where research has shown it to be inappropriate. Anecdotally, it was found that chances of survival from chest pain were higher when there was a big cardiology conference. The level of increasing specialisation have put people down very narrow rabbit holes in the search for innovation and efficiency, not knowing that connecting the holes together may be the most commonsense thing to do with the highest level of efficacy. Furthermore, the narrow mindedness of specialisation gets worse over time. The work of Daniel Kahneman shows that so-called experts actually become worse at influencing outcomes over time, but in doing so, become more confident. A sometimes lethal combination.

The ability to dabble illustrates the importance of self-reflexive diversity — diversity in one’s self. This type of diversity becomes even more powerful with people in the room that are cognitively different from each other. This was brilliantly illustrated in a famous study conducted by Richard Nisbett and Takahiko Masuda in 2001. Two groups of people (Japanese and Americans) were shown an underwater video clip. When asked to describe what they had seen, the Americans talked about the fish and the Japanese, the surroundings. To the experimenters, it was as if they were seeing completely different clips. Next, a similar clip was shown. Some parts of the scene and fish were different. When the original fish were placed in a different context, this threw off the Japanese. The Americans, on the other hand, had the opposite problem. They were blind to changes in context. If both the American and the Japanese worked together however, the full image will come into perfect resolution. This experiment shows that even in our most direct interaction with the world — the act of seeing — there are systemic differences shaped by our culture and experience.

This could not be more pronounced with the CIA’s dealings with Al Queda and 9/11. Many asked whether why this attack wasn’t stopped when the CIA had a budget of tens of billions of dollars and more than 10,000 people. The culprits were also on the CIA’s radar but were dismissed.

While many of the inquiries focused on particular judgements in the frenetic build-up to 9/11, few took a step back to examine the internal structure of the CIA itself and, in particular, its hiring policies. At one level, these were state of the art. Potential analysts were put through a battery of psychological, medical and other exams. And there is no doubt they hired exceptional people. But most of these recruits also happened to look very similar — white, male, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant Americans. This is a common phenomenon in recruiting, sometimes called “homophily”: people tend to hire people who think (and often look) like themselves. It is validating to be surrounded by people who share one’s perspectives and beliefs.

The current celebration of diversity pays a lot of attention to demographic variables. But most of that is just skin deep. True diversity exists both intrapersonally and interpersonally. This is cognitively, culturally and personality.

My hope is that we begin to recognise and appreciate diversity beyond the skin and start to solve wicked problems in wicked ways.