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Once we join an organization, life can become complicated. We face pressures to conform to group norms and expectations. We may face competition from associates for advancement. Outside forces may threaten the organization’s survival, putting pressure on you to fight for the firm’s existence.
These pressures can lead us to take actions that we would never agree to outside the organization. For example, most people would not choose to dump chemical waste in a river, yet organizations do this regularly. People like you and me run those organizations, and those people agreed to do that.
We will discuss the forces that lead good people to make questionable choices at length in this book’s final chapter. For now, the following sections introduce the tools of wisdom that can help us navigate this turbulent sea of organizational life.
It starts by introducing the challenges of organizational life that make wise action difficult and then shifts to discuss how individual wisdom can help you find your way.
Challenges of life in organizations
Organizations are often competitive environments where self-interest can undermine good intentions. Often, achieving personal success in organizations forces individuals to face moral dilemmas.[1] This desire to win (or simply to not lose) can lead us to make choices that negatively affect ourselves and our society.[2][3]
The absence of wisdom leads to five cognitive fallacies:[4]
- The fallacy of egocentrism (the belief one should be the center of attention),
- The fallacy of omnipotence (the belief that one can make others follow your every wish),
- The fallacy of omniscience (the assumption that one knows everything they need to know),
- The fallacy of invulnerability (the belief that no harm will come to you), and
- The fallacy of unrealistic optimism (the idea that everything will work out all right).
When individuals face morally complex situations with these cognitive fallacies, their actions at best are ineffective, but at worst are harmful.
How wisdom helps individuals overcome these challenges
The previous section painted a bleak picture of organizational life. It is not all bad, however. For example, self-interest is not the only value that dominates in organizations. Human nature is complex. There are many instances where desires other than self-interest influence behaviour, such as punishing those who act unfairly, helping those in need, and living by a code of conduct.[5] So, there are elements in any organization that individuals can leverage to face their problems constructively and consistent with their moral code.
Wisdom helps individuals navigate these challenging organizational environments through three dimensions:
- Providing insights into human affairs, which improves individuals’ ability to lead others
- Developing tools to manage relationships, which improves individuals’ ability to deal with others’ emotions
- Strengthening personal self-control, which improves individuals’ abili