The Cobbler’s Children: Walking The Espoused Talk
“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
“I relish feedback, it’s the food of champions,” many executives proclaim. But do we really enjoy feedback? Often, our egos tell a different story. When your child tells you the meal you spent ages carefully crafting “is horrible”, it doesn’t feel nice. Feedback can be hard to accept, especially when it challenges our authority or expertise.
This phenomenon is not unlike the saying “the builder’s house is never finished”, “the carpenter has a crooked door”, or “the cobbler’s children have no shoes.” We often find people who espouse certain values yet fail to practice them, sometimes they do so unwittingly. This discrepancy becomes particularly stark when we examine the dynamics of authority and obedience.
In our recent episode of The Innovation Show, Howard Gardner shared an event that left an indelible mark on his psyche. He recounted a time when he attended a lecture given by Stanley Milgram, who conducted groundbreaking experiments on obedience and authority. This encounter took an unexpected “cobbler’s shoe-esque” twist, one that Gardner did not expect. Before we share that, let’s first remind ourselves of Milgram’s work.
Milgram’s Experiments: A Closer Look
“It is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act.”― Stanley Milgram
Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted a series of experiments to explore the extent to which individuals would obey authority, even when such obedience harmed others. Participants were instructed to administer increasingly severe electric shocks to a “learner” whenever an incorrect answer was provided. Unbeknownst to the participants, the shocks were fake, and the “learner” was an actor.
The results were (ahem) shocking. In what became known as the “Milgram effect”, typically 60–70% of subjects administered shock to the maximum or dangerous level, despite hearing the learner’s screams of pain and pleas to stop. These experiments were widely interpreted as evidence that most of us when directed by an authoritative figure, would inflict harm on others. The implication was that nearly all of us have the potential to become ‘obedient Nazis.’
Speaking Truth to Power: The Gardner Incident
Howard Gardner, who would later become a renowned psychologist and author, famous for his theory of multiple intelligence and “good work” was a student under Milgram. In the latest episode of The Innovation Show, he shared a cobbler’s shoe incident.
“I was taking the required ‘pro-seminar’ in social psychology, taught by two youngish professors. Tom Pettigrew was an expert in race relations, and Stanley Milgram was a clever experimentalist and a brilliant conceptualiser.
Gardner had nothing against Milgram and nothing against the studies, which he found fascinating. But in class, he assumed he could raise a few questions — perhaps somewhat challenging but not meant to be disrespectful — to Professor Milgram.
What followed was “shocking” in another sense. Milgram lashed out at Gardner, attacking him, belittling him, asserting that he was trying to ‘destroy’ him. It was behaviour or more precisely misbehaviour, that was totally out of place in a graduate seminar filled with brand new students. As surprising as Milgram’s unwarranted attack on Gardner was what did not ensue. Neither his colleague Professor Pettigrew nor any of the twenty or so others in the seminar room rose to his defence or attempted to defuse the attack. Only after the class was over did others, including Professor Pettigrew, come over to console him.
To this day Gardner does not know whether Milgram had simply ‘lost it’ or whether he was conducting some kind of informal experiment to see how he (and perhaps the class) would react. (Nowadays, neither the original Milgram study nor such an ad hoc attack would be permitted by the committee in charge of studies involving human subjects.) But this initially traumatic experience turned out to be instructive: Howard shared that in academia, as in other spheres, you can be attacked without reason and quite viciously, and you cannot count on others to defend you. At the same time, the experience helped him to develop a thicker skin. Subsequent attacks on his scholarly work or him, much milder to be sure, have not bothered him that much.
Milgram and Gardner never discussed the incident again. Instead, they assumed the normal professor-student relation. He even read and commented helpfully on subsequent papers. While Howard has long since forgiven Milgram’s outburst, he remains mystified by the incident.
This incident underscores the very contradiction Milgram’s experiments sought to highlight: the ease with which those in positions of authority can disregard ethical considerations when their authority is questioned.
The Paradox of Preached Values vs. Practiced Actions
The interaction between Gardner and Milgram is a poignant example of how even those who study and understand human behaviour are not immune to the very biases they investigate. Milgram, who exposed the dangers of blind obedience to authority, demonstrated his susceptibility to authoritarian defensiveness when his ethics were called into question.
Ethicist and psychologist Jonathan Haidt has noted, “Our moral intuitions are often at odds with our moral reasoning. We are adept at justifying our actions, even when they contradict our professed beliefs.” This observation further illustrates the complexity of human behaviour and the difficulty of maintaining ethical consistency.
Unfortunately, as organisations scale and mission gives way to profits, accountability can break follow a similar pattern.
Take Wells Fargo, for example, whose original mission statement included the promise to do what’s right for customers. “ But that idea was publicly called into question when a whistleblower forced the organisation to admit that thousands of Wells Fargo employees had charged millions of customers fraudulent fees for bank accounts those customers had not authorised to meet unrealistic sales goals set forth by management. And if the actions themselves were not damaging enough, the fallout was amplified because the offence went against the organisation’s publicly stated core values.
Probably the most telling example is Enron. The key values of the company were respect, integrity, communication, and excellence. Enron also had an extensive code of ethics. As we now know, these values and policies had little impact on how they did business. Despite these failures, some positive exemplars exist.
A Leader’s Transformation: Ben Verwaayen at BT
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” — Leo Tolstoy
A reason culture change is difficult is that it often requires senior leaders to change how they behave. This can require not just awareness but actual personal renewal, and this is more easily said than done. Being able to describe the needed culture is not the same thing as implementing it. By the time a person has achieved the position of a senior leader, they have had a career behaving in ways that made them successful.
These behaviours often include decisiveness and self-confidence rather than being reflective and open to change. If a leader and a senior team espouse or endorse a culture characterised by certain behaviours (e.g., collaboration, openness, and risk-taking) but then under pressure fail to consistently model these behaviours, the signals sent to the organisation are very clear: do as I do not as I say. The culture change effort is a joke and not to be taken seriously. Keep your head down and this too will pass.
Do You Really Want Empowered People?
Many leaders advocate for the empowerment of their employees, recognising that empowered individuals perform better, innovate new methods, help the organisation adapt to changing environments, and inspire change in others. However, these same leaders often resist true empowerment. They resemble parents who want their children to make independent decisions but only if those decisions align with what the parent would have chosen. This contradictory approach can be more detrimental than offering no empowerment at all, as it fosters mutual distrust and cynicism. As Leo Tolstoy aptly put it, “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” Leaders must first be willing to change themselves to truly empower their teams.
A contemporary example of a leader “walking the talk” is Ben Verwaayen during his tenure at BT, a story shared by my friend and Innovation Show guest Michael Tushman. Recognising that for BT to effectively navigate its existing lines of business while also exploring broadband opportunities, Verwaayen realised he needed to change himself first to facilitate organisational change.
To help execute BT’s ability to exploit its existing lines of business as well as to explore broadband, Verwaayen and his team created a series of cross-BT strategic steering and working groups. To build capabilities in cross-unit collaboration and execution skills, they initiated strategic action workshops in which working teams learned about organisational problem-solving, culture, leadership, and execution.
Verwaayen went even further by completely remaking and renaming his senior team so that it could collectively deal with the tensions between business unit requirements and the burgeoning broadband sector. He personally ensured that each member of his senior team was equipped with the right “shoes” to navigate the new challenges. This meant not only restructuring roles but also focusing on their professional development and collaboration skills, metaphorically cobbling shoes to fit the specific needs of each executive.
He also tied the top team’s compensation to broadband performance and their ability to work together as a cohesive unit. This strategic shift ensured that the leadership team not only espoused the values of collaboration and innovation but also practised them in their daily operations. (More on aligning rewards to desired goals on a future episode with Steve Kerr.)
In this team-centred model, senior teams learn how to make decisions and allocate resources collectively, balancing the trade-offs between the present and the future. This approach fosters higher degrees of collaboration and a more participative leadership style. Team members shared an obligation to dissent over critical issues, with leaders identifying problems and calling them out in a brutally honest manner. Business unit leaders are compensated based on total company performance, not individual P&Ls, with a clear focus on the long-term drivers of growth. The impact of this approach is that any issue is open for discussion, ensuring that the “shoes” fit well for everyone, covering new ground effectively.
Conclusion
“The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold. The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbour creates a war betwixt princes.” — Michel de Montaigne
The stories above remind us that it is not enough to espouse certain principles; we must also live by them, even under pressure.
Milgram’s experiments and his interaction with Gardner highlight how authority can intoxicate even the very person who is illuminating the impact of authority bias. Meanwhile, Verwaayen’s leadership transformation at BT demonstrates the power of leaders who are willing to change themselves to truly empower others. This kind of leadership fosters an environment where speaking truth to power is both encouraged and respected.
Just as the builder’s house is never finished, and the cobbler’s children have no shoes, our values must be more than words. They need to be actively practised, especially when confronted with the challenges of authority and conformity. As the saying goes, “Any turkey can fly in a storm,” suggesting that it is easy to appear capable under favourable conditions. True integrity and leadership are shown when we practise our values consistently, even when it is difficult. Only then can we bridge the gap between what we profess and what we practise, creating a more authentic and ethical world?
Thanks for Reading
That episode with the great Howard Gardner:
Other episodes on Speaking up
Jim Detert:
Amy Edmondson:
Mike Beer:
“The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety” with Timothy R. Clark:
The Ben Verwaayen Story via Michael Tushman:
