What Is Practical Wisdom and Why Is It Important?

TL;DR

Practical wisdom, which Aristotle defined as the combination of moral will and moral skill, is the ability to know when to bend a rule and how to improvise for the people in front of you. Barry Schwartz illustrates this with hospital janitors like Mike, Charlene, and Luke, whose job descriptions mention no human interaction yet who show kindness that improves patient care. He warns that relying only on rules and incentives erodes this wisdom. Read on to see why brilliance without wisdom isn't enough.

Transcript

In his inaugural address, Barack Obama appealed to each of us to give our best as we try to extricate ourselves from this current financial crisis. But what did he appeal to? He did not, happily, follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, and tell us to just go shopping. Nor did he tell us, "Trust us. Trust your country. Invest, invest, invest." I... Read More

Key Insights

• 🧠 The janitors' job description does not include tasks that involve interacting with other human beings, but they still go above and beyond to show kindness, care, and empathy towards patients and their families.
• 🏥 Interactions involving kindness, care, and empathy from janitors, technicians, nurses, and doctors improve the quality of patient care and enable hospitals to run well.
• 🔑 Practical wisdom, which combines moral will and moral skill, is necessary to make exceptions to rules and adapt to ambiguous and changing real-world problems.
• 🎵 A wise person is like a jazz musician, using the notes on the page but also improvising and inventing appropriate combinations for the situation and people at hand.
• 🧠 Wisdom is not solely innate, but it depends on experience, time to get to know the people being served, permission to improvise and learn from failures, and mentorship from wise teachers.
• 🖇️ Neither rules nor incentives alone are enough to ensure ethical behavior and optimal performance in organizations.
• 💼 Rigid rules and incentives can chip away at moral skill and will, undermining the opportunity to improvise, learn, and do the right thing.
• 🌍 To promote wisdom and moral behavior, it is important to celebrate and acknowledge moral exemplars, create environments that nurture moral skill and will, and teach character and respect in education.
• 🎙️ More videos with Barry Schwartz:
  • Practical Wisdom | Barry Schwartz | Talks at Google
  • How To Prepare For Google’s Core Web Vitals Update with Barry Schwartz

Questions & Answers

Q: What do the janitors in "Our Loss of Wisdom" reveal about their jobs?

Schwartz notes that a hospital janitor's job description lists tasks like mopping floors, emptying trash, and restocking cabinets, with not a single item involving other human beings. Yet janitors like Mike stopped mopping so a patient could exercise in the hall, and Luke re-washed a comatose man's floor because the father hadn't seen him do it the first time. They treat kindness, care, and empathy as an essential part of the job.

Q: What is practical wisdom according to Barry Schwartz?

Quoting Aristotle, Schwartz defines practical wisdom as the combination of moral will and moral skill. Moral will is the desire to do right by other people, and moral skill is the ability to figure out what "doing right" actually means in an ambiguous situation. A wise person knows when and how to make an exception to a rule.

Q: Why does Schwartz compare a wise person to a jazz musician?

Because real-world problems are often ambiguous and ill-defined, and the context is always changing. Like a jazz musician who uses the notes on the page but dances around them, a wise person improvises and invents combinations appropriate for the situation and the people at hand, rather than rigidly following the rules.

Q: Is wisdom something you are born with?

No. Schwartz argues a wise person is made, not born. Wisdom depends on experience, having time to get to know the people you serve, permission to improvise and occasionally fail and learn from those failures, and being mentored by wise teachers. The janitors said learning to care for people takes lots of experience.

Q: What is the point of the Mike's Hard Lemonade story?

A father unknowingly bought his seven-year-old Mike's Hard Lemonade, which was five percent alcohol, at a Detroit Tigers game. Although the emergency room found no alcohol in the child's blood, the child was placed in a foster home for three days and the father had to move into a motel. Schwartz uses it to show how rigidly following procedure, without wisdom, produces harmful outcomes.

Q: Why does Schwartz say rules and incentives are not enough?

He argues that neither rules nor incentives alone ensure ethical behavior or good performance. As Scott Simon put it on NPR, rules and procedures may be dumb but they spare you from thinking. Over-reliance on them chips away at moral skill and moral will, removing the opportunity to improvise, learn, and do the right thing.

Q: How can we cultivate wisdom and moral behavior?

Schwartz points to celebrating and acknowledging moral exemplars, creating environments that nurture moral skill and will, and teaching character and respect in education. He stresses that you don't need to be brilliant to be wise, but without wisdom, brilliance isn't enough and is as likely to get people into trouble as to help.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• The job description of a hospital janitor may not explicitly include interactions with others, but wise janitors understand that acts of kindness and empathy improve patient care.

• Over-reliance on rules and incentives can undermine moral skill and moral will, leading to a decrease in ethical decision-making.

• Celebrating moral exemplars, creating environments that foster moral skill and will, and teaching character education are ways to cultivate practical wisdom in work and education.