Dumbing Down

A number of years ago, there was a scandal within the world of academia:  it was said that some professors at some of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning were dumbing down their grading systems.  Apparently, a sizeable number of students, and parents, assumed that if you were smart enough to get into these esteemed academies, you were smart enough to receive nothing lower than a B.  Thus, no matter the true quality of your work, if you took a class with those professors who bought into that thinking, or succumbed to the pressure, you were always at least a B student.  Not bad!

We see a parallel practice in the world of nonprofits.  We allow people who are not doing their jobs, and not trying or caring to try to do their jobs well, remain in their positions, week after week, month after month, year after year.  Frequently, we even go beyond that:  we allow them to think that they are doing well by not pointing out negative behavior in performance reviews, or continuing to award raises despite the underperforming, or making excuses for them.  And just as those students who really work to earn the A or B come to resent the professor and the slackers who get the B, so do other employees come to resent the boss and the slackers who get the same rewards as they.

Why is it so hard to understand that when we allow people to believe they are smarter than they truly are, know more than they really do, are performing better than they really are, we are only hurting ourselves, our organizations, our communities?  I’ve wondered about this from my days in academia—and one who would never dumb down a grade no matter what or who asked—to my current days working to help nonprofits perform at their peak.

I continue to be baffled by this, but I recently had a little “Ah hah!” moment when I read a statement that said so and so was a “knowledge and change management expert.”  Truly, I had to read this twice.  I know that many people have a hard time accepting change and that wide scale change can pose challenges to organizational cultures and the people of that culture.  So, on some intellectual level, I get that people may want some help in moving change forward, adapting to change, etc.  It doesn’t sit well with me, and it is an indication of where we have landed as a dumbed-down society, but I’ll get to that in a second.  But an expert to help us with knowledge management?  Really?  Unless we are talking about managing the sources of the knowledge gained—the books, newspapers, research papers, journals and magazines, conversations, etc.,–just what are we talking about?  Someone is going to help me manage the knowledge in my brain?  Just how dumb have we become?

We have spent and continue to spend inordinate amounts of money on trainings, books and consultants to help us do what we no longer can figure out how to do on our own.  I am sure many readers have their favorite gurus, names I won’t bother to mention as this isn’t about one guru or another, on who you rely to tell you how to think better, lead better, succeed better, do whatever better.  In so doing, what they really have taught you is how to rely less on yourself and to have less faith in yourself.  In so doing, they have dumbed you down.

I wonder how much time and money we as a society have wasted chasing down the key to enlightenment, to being the best we can be? how much energy has been diverted looking to others to teach us how to find this magical piece of information?  how much wisdom we have missed while looking to others to teach us how to find wisdom?   how much good will we have trashed sending people to hear others, in essence, tell them they are stupid for not knowing how to organize their own knowledge? how much have we wasted relying on others instead of ourselves?

In these extremely tough economic times, nonprofits must be especially protective of their resources, financial and human, and spend them wisely.  But that does not mean that price and convenience should be the only factors under consideration.  And yet, again and again, I see price and convenience driving decisions instead of quality and benefit; convenience trumping content; time investment eclipsing return on investment.  In so doing, we have gone over to the dark side:  we have successfully dumbed down our organizations and ourselves.