7 Reasons Smart People Do Stupid Things
If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re not.
Don’t be smarter than Socrates who said, “I know that I am intelligent because I know that I know nothing.”
7 reasons smart people do stupid things:
- Success promotes stupidity. You don’t learn if the things you’re doing already work. It’s easier to learn from failure than success.
- Changing other people is easier than changing yourself. Every leader who thinks more about what others should do than what they should do stumbles toward self-justifying disappointment.
- New ideas destabilize established patterns. Instability and uncertainty terrify system builders.
- Unlearning is harder than learning.
- Self-confidence turns to arrogance when defending ideas is more important than pursuing the best ideas.
- Reacting is easier than focusing. Constant reacting makes leaders feel necessary and important, but it means they’ve lost sight of long-term goals.
- Knowing blocks learning. You need enough confidence to believe you know and enough humility to believe you could be wrong.
Even stupid people can do smart things.
7 Smart things any leader can do today:
- Ask, “What are we learning?” Go on a what-are-we-learning walkabout.
- Identify and clarify your role. What is your job, really?
- Try stuff. Run a pilot project and evaluate results.
- Identify and ignore distractions. Use time and energy to achieve mission critical goals.
- Hunger to learn after you succeed. The first step after complacency is stupidity. Intelligence is futile when being right is the goal.
- Do your most important work when you’re at your best. Shuffle papers in the afternoon if you perform best in the morning.
- Realize that learning something often invalidates something old. If you can’t unlearn, you can’t learn.
Tip: Practice humility. My Disappointing Adventure with Humility | Leadership Freak
Learning is easy for humility and impossible for arrogance.
Why do smart leaders do stupid things?
What’s something smart that any leader could do today?
Read: Why Humility Delivers More Results Than Arrogance
(PDF) Why leaders don’t learn from success (researchgate.net)
Thanks! This is so true, and something to consider every day!
”If you think that you are the smartest person in the room, you are either wrong, in the wrong room, or both…”
Thanks Mats. Have a great day.
Why do smart leaders do stupid things?
1. They don’t do a full diagnosis of the current situation or problem. They assume the problem is exactly like the last one that they already solved. So they proceed with the same old approach.
What’s something smart that any leader could do today?
1. Spend more time diagnosing the current situation. Identify what’s new, different, and unique about the current situation. How is it different from previous problems or opportunities.
Thanks Paul. I can’t resist saying, “That seems pretty smart.”
Seriously, rushing to solve the wrong problem seems like a waste of time.
It hammeritis: If your only tool is a hammer, all of your problems look like nails.
Why do smart leaders do stupid things? Hmmm the fact that we are human and can make mistakes. MY old Foreman once would say “Y” is a crooked letter and cannot be straightened, just some enlightenment, on a interesting subject. Perhaps the circumstances is one they have not faced, as Paul mentions “Do a full diagnosis” if that’s feasible for starters. Perhaps seek various viewpoints who may have experienced the situation.
What’s something smart that any leader could do today? At least do something in a sense of correction that makes sense to oneself, if not the smart suggestion is consult someone you have trust in. Ask them if they have experienced the situation before and what they did.
Thanks Tim. Brining the outside in – seeking suggestions – is one of the simplest things we can do. How hard is it to explain a situation ans ask what people think?
Once again I find this advice so true and very timely. Just yesterday I think I did something stupid. I found myself reacting to a situation instead of focusing on what I could learn in the process. Mr. Glass above is absolutely correct, at the end of the day….we are all just human….so why do self-reflective leaders beat themselves up when they make mistakes?
Thanks Susan. Perhaps one of the dumbest things smart people do is beat themselves down when they do something stupid. 🙂
Great Friday article Dan,
Reminds me of the old adage, even a blind squirrel can find a nut once in a while. Stupid people don’ t keep doing smart things, they learn and unlearn.
Great reminder for me when everything is going great!
TMac
Thanks Tom. I appreciate you dropping by today.
The blind squirrel principle gives me hope. 🙂
Thanks Dan – I really appreciated the need to keep the tension between confidence and humility in focus. Reminded me of the dynamic equilibrium axiom in my good old days in biology class 🙂
Thanks L3… Wow… this is the first reference in over 10 years to biology class. 🙂
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