The over-specialization of leadership
David Brooks wonders why trust in our leadership has dropped at the same time the qualifications of those in charge have improved so greatly:
"Fifty years ago, the financial world was dominated by well-connected blue bloods who drank at lunch and played golf in the afternoons. Now financial firms recruit from the cream of the Ivy League. In 2007, 47 percent of Harvard grads went into finance or consulting. Yet would we say that banks are performing more ably than they were a half-century ago?"
Brooks provides several possible reasons. He hints at my diagnosis: We are over-specialized in leadership. As a result, we have fewer organic leaders in government and business. I have no scientific proof of this but the leaders who started out in the "mail room" and moved up are fewer and fewer. We now have degreed specialists who move in with all the answers and then move on when they don't work. More importantly, whether in business or government, these experts are more detached from the man on the street than many of the business leaders of the past ever were.
As an aside, I am reminded of Spengler's description of these "one-trick wonders": The inbred products of the Ivy League puppy mills. Read the article here (which happens to mention another Brooks' column noting how smart these people are)
Update: Ken Thomas, at No Left Turns, has a take on the Brooks' piece worth reading. My favorite line from Thomas's piece:
"The character of elites in fact reflects the perversity of meritocratic education. (See Plato's Gorgias or recall the foul-mouthed Ivy League-educated traders at the beginning of Bonfire of the Vanities.) "
And from the comments at NLT, more:
"While they were good at making money and had developed trendy tastes,they knew little or nothing about the principles and institutions, much less the history and religion, of the western world. They were the very caricatures of 'intellectuals' that Rousseau ridiculed in his First Discourse. They are not stupid, of course; they just know so many things, as Reagan said, that aren't so."
"Fifty years ago, the financial world was dominated by well-connected blue bloods who drank at lunch and played golf in the afternoons. Now financial firms recruit from the cream of the Ivy League. In 2007, 47 percent of Harvard grads went into finance or consulting. Yet would we say that banks are performing more ably than they were a half-century ago?"
Brooks provides several possible reasons. He hints at my diagnosis: We are over-specialized in leadership. As a result, we have fewer organic leaders in government and business. I have no scientific proof of this but the leaders who started out in the "mail room" and moved up are fewer and fewer. We now have degreed specialists who move in with all the answers and then move on when they don't work. More importantly, whether in business or government, these experts are more detached from the man on the street than many of the business leaders of the past ever were.
As an aside, I am reminded of Spengler's description of these "one-trick wonders": The inbred products of the Ivy League puppy mills. Read the article here (which happens to mention another Brooks' column noting how smart these people are)
Update: Ken Thomas, at No Left Turns, has a take on the Brooks' piece worth reading. My favorite line from Thomas's piece:
"The character of elites in fact reflects the perversity of meritocratic education. (See Plato's Gorgias or recall the foul-mouthed Ivy League-educated traders at the beginning of Bonfire of the Vanities.) "
And from the comments at NLT, more:
"While they were good at making money and had developed trendy tastes,they knew little or nothing about the principles and institutions, much less the history and religion, of the western world. They were the very caricatures of 'intellectuals' that Rousseau ridiculed in his First Discourse. They are not stupid, of course; they just know so many things, as Reagan said, that aren't so."
How Brooks manages to hold his own job is a mystery to me. His columns are usually incoherent, like this one, and when he does write something sensible, everyone seems relieved.
Lack of trust in the "elites" isn't the problem; it's that they aren't trustworthy. If the elites aren't worthy of trust, and Brooks seems to admit that they aren't, then it's good that no one trusts them. You'd think that would be obvious, even to Brooks.
He could learn a thing or two from Cultural Offering and Spengler.
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I agree, David. I had forgotten that the launching point for the Spengler article on one-trick wonders was Brooks' editorial. So to close the loop: He is almost embarrassed at how brilliant they are; they didn't get the job done; and he wonders why they aren't trusted?
Nice work if you can get it.
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It's possible to be good at taking tests and nothing else. It's also possible to have an Ivy League degree and be merely glib. Brooks probably knows that, at some level, but prefers to forget it.
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