We know leadership demands common sense. Leaders must bring a practical eye to problem solving while resisting the urge to jump to overly complex solutions or explanations. Yet, we can be blind to its limits and ignore the value derived from everyday behaviors and routines.
Maybe you’ve heard it before or even said it yourself, “this leadership stuff just sounds like common sense”? Like me, maybe you’ve seen variations on the common sense theme. There’s the air of arrogance theme: “Come on, that’s common sense! Everyone knows that.” And more frequently the defensive theme, the subtexts of which say things like: I already know this so, I don’t really need to do anything with it. Or, this seems so obvious now that I see it, I don’t want anyone to know I didn’t think of it myself.
The common sense refrain, spoken or not, rings clear in many leader development programs and it begs as many questions: If leadership is common sense, why does great leadership seem more and more uncommon? If leadership is common sense, why is leadership development a $366 billion global industry? (Westfall, 2019) If great leadership is just common sense, then why aren’t we all doing it?
Merriam-Webster defines common sense as sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts. This is all well and good, and seemingly useful enough, but we must acknowledge that it is built on a series of presumptions. It presumes that we agree on what a simple perception is – not as simple as it sounds. It presumes agreement on the situation, not to mention the facts – we can’t even agree on what real news is. Most importantly, it assumes few, if any, personal blind spots – and if you are thinking you don’t have a blind spot, that would be it.
This all reminds me of David Foster Wallace’s now famous fish story, used in his 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College. “There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?” Of course, Wallace goes on to explain, “The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”
We may see when it’s put in focus, and we certainly talk endlessly about leadership, but what about the doing? We enjoy discussing models and frameworks yet struggle to translate them into consistent action. We’re excellent at identifying critical values, like integrity or inclusiveness, yet struggle to translate those values into everyday behaviors. We know values mean nothing if they are not lived yet resist committing to the behaviors that make them real.
What seems obvious but is much less common is treating leadership as something you do, with consistency. Charlie Munger had it right when he said, “I believe in the discipline of mastering the best of what other people have figured out.” That sounds like common sense!
Charlie reminds us success, in any domain, doesn’t happen without discipline and knowledge. We must bring good sense and sound judgement to the task of leadership, but recognize we are never truly tested in practical matters. Common sense takes us only so far. We must remain in the hunt for the best of what others are doing while committing to the discipline of mastery that enables us to build common sense into common practice.
– JC