Bloghound

James March, professor emeritus of sociology at Stanford Univeristy and noted business thinker, explains his “technology of foolishness” concept in an interview in this month’s Harvard Business Review, “Ideas As Art.”

To illustrate the importance of of understanding where preferences come from, he offers this example.

“I used to ask students to explain the factual anomaly that there are more interesting women than interesting men in the world. They were not allowed to question the fact. They key notion was a developmental one: When a woman is born, she’s usually a girl and girls are told that because they are girls they can do things for no good reason. They can be unpredictable, inconsistent, illlogical. But then a girl goes to school, and she’s told she is an educated person. Because she’s an educated person a woman must do things consistently, analytically, and so on.

“So she goes through life doing things for no good reason and then figuring out the reasons, and in the process, she develops a very complicated value system — one that adapts very much to context.

“Men, though, are usually boys at birth. They are taught that, as boys, they are straightforward, consistent and analytic. Then they go to school and are told that they are straightforward, consistent and analytic. So men go through life being straightforward, consistent and analytic — with the goals of a two-year-old.

“And that’s why men are both less interesting and more predictable than women. They do not combine their analysis with foolishness.”

In a recent interview Oprah Winfrey said the secret to her success has been to “follow her bliss,” and bemoaned that fact that her partner, leadership consultant Stedman Graham, keeps telling her that she needs a plan.

Maybe that kind of planning is just foolish.

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