Hubris

I've been working on an ethics presentation for a large employer and, in reviewing the reasons why people behave unethically, have been pondering an old subject, hubris.

Hubris, which is usually defined as excessive pride and its byproducts, is pandemic in the executive suites of some organizations, often creating a blindness to ethical and management problems. "We are such bright and capable people" - goes the reasoning of these folks - "that if we decide something is the right course of action, then it is and anyone who thinks otherwise is stupid."

David Halberstam wrote about this problem in his insightful book on the Vietnam War, The Best and the Brightest. Put a bunch of Ivy Leaguers in the same room and dangerous things can happen. They can miss what a savvy cabdriver would spot in two minutes. William F. Buckley Jr. was on to this problem when he noted that he would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2000 members of the Harvard faculty.

I once ran into some hubris in a meeting with a corporate executive whose sole critierion in evaluating the intellectual level of executives was their salary level. As he rambled on, I recalled police sergeants I've known who face far tougher decisions in a single morning than many highly paid pinstripers encounter in a career. A corporate caste system that would dismiss the sergeants' opinions because of a salary level is moon-barking mad.

It should be on a plaque in the headquarters lobby: Some of the worst management decisions in the history of the world were made by people who have marvelous resumes.