Todd Kashdan has a great editorial in the Huffington Post this week (Why We Need Psychologists in the White House) that challenges the model we use to pick the folks who run our government. Kashdan argues that we need experts in human behavior in the White House, not politicians. He says:
We need people that are experts in problem solving, decisionmaking, communication, human behavior, and social relationships to create the conditions for a government to function optimally. This is the province of people trained in psychology -- the science of human mental functioning and behavior.
I agree we need a different approach. Thanks to communications technologies, this is a whole new world--a networked one. Information is no longer a scarce resource, but critical thinking and a broader understanding of how people relate and behave are in short supply. Every public relations and marketing professional will tell you that organizations have to get a whole new approach to how they do business in a connected world. There are enough social media pundits to have man-on-man defense with everyone west of the Mississippi, yet they have a common message: We cannot use the same assumptions and models we used last century. Organizations who ignore the changing environment, do so at their peril.
So if we're in the throws of redefining the way we live and the way we do business, why is government doing business as usual?
Washington is full of linear thinkers. But a networked world demands more. We need people with ability make sense of disparate facts and information, recognize patterns, understand and appreciate human behavior. These are essentially the right-brain skills that Daniel Pink promotes in A Whole New Mind
. This is the thinking necessary to foster innovation, creativity, and understanding necessary to compete in the 21st century. A good psychologist knows that the world is a system, not a straight path from A to B. In any relationship, group or country, change is not a linear process.
In spite of years of research, U.S. education and public policy bear little relationship to what psychologists know about the complexity of human motivation and reinforcing the behaviors that lead to effective leadership, individual responsibility, problem-solving, and innovation.
We don't need more facts. Thanks to technology, facts are just a digit or mouse away. We can get them anytime. Mastery of facts does not lead to critical thinking. Short-term carrots and sticks are not very good at stimulating the intrinsic rewards that motivate people to behave productively over the long haul, especially in this new environment.
Like Kashdan says, we need people in office who understand how humans anticipate, interpret, and behave, how motivation does and doesn't work, how our own biases and perspectives radically change how each of us interprets experience and information. By ignoring the fundamentals of human behavior, short-sighted special interests institutionalize long term economic, political, and behavioral disasters.
So if the world is changing, it's time that government follows suit. The government needs to change as much, if not more, than the rest of us do. While change is scary because it creates uncertainty and risk, we have to recognize the necessity of getting over ourselves. Our resistance to change may come from the biological and emotional need for certainty, along with a certain amount of self-interest, but we're kidding ourselves if we think the current approach will work for very long.
Psychologists bring another very important tool to the table, beyond the benefits that Kasdan lists, They can help shift the focus from fear to possibility. Who better equipped to help the country face the idea of change as "what could be" instead of "what used to be." There's a lot at stake in making this cognitive shift. A government who ignores the changing environment does so at the country's peril.
---
Kashdan, T. (2010). Why We Need Psychologists in Government and the White House. Huffington Post. (March 10). Url: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/todd-kashdan/why-we-need-psychologi...
Pink, D. (2009). Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. New York: Riverhead.
Pink, D. (2005). A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers will Rule the Future. New York: Riverhead.
