Narrow vs broad self interest: the common good is uncommonly good
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
Reading time: 5 mins
Summary:
Secondary School and University are typically single player games.
The vast majority of companies are multiplayer games.
To do well in Secondary School normally you just look after your personal interest.
Do do well in a multiplayer game typically you need to look after the the overall best outcome, aka ‘the common good’.
The ‘common good’ may or may not align with what is best from a ‘narrow’ view for your personal self interest.
However IMO once you can see the bigger picture, you normally want to adjust what you think is best for you to do. Ie after considering more than just your circumstances you can often change what you personally want to do.
So:
Broad self interest = common good
Narrow self interest may or may not = common good
I love a good framework (mental model). This is Lawrence Kohlberg’s Moral Development Framework.
Optional:
Who is Lawrence Kohlberg and is he friends with Robert Kegan (another person with developmental frameworks I like)?
Lawrence Kohlberg served as a professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Chicago and at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. He died in 1987 and was a professor at Harvard until his death.
Robert Kegan is an American developmental psychologist and Professor in Adult Learning and Professional Development at Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he taught for forty years until his retirement in 2016.
2016 - 40 = 1976. So it appears that both Kegan and Kohlberg were at Harvard's Education department for 11 years of overlap? I hence deduce they knew each other! I hope they were friends and discussed much. I would love to have been a fly on the wall listening to their conversations!
BTW I love learning about the professors of education departments of big universities, they have done some sweet sweet stuff!
Learning = lovely.
Education = engaging.
Learning about education = engaging loveliness
Company example:
The different parties:
Individual
Your team
Management
The entire company
Narrow self interest = what you believe is best to do considering only your individual perspective
This may or may not be the best overall outcome for all the different parties.
Broad self interest = the best weighted overall outcome taking into account each of ‘individual’, ‘your team’, ‘management’ and ‘the entire company’, AKA the common good.
Often when taking into account the perspectives of all parties one can see that one's view just for themselves (ie individual) may not align with the overall best outcome (ie looking after the common good).
After having looked at all parties one often then adjusts what one thinks is the best course of action.
The common good = good for you
IMO we are not trained in multiplayer games, so we aren’t trained to try and understand the multiple parties and how to see what works for each of them.
As such our narrow self interest doesn’t always align with the common good.
Basically:
At times your narrow self interest = best thing for you to do
At times your narrow self interest = worst thing for you to do (ie the 2nd order consequences for other parties outweigh any 1st order wins for yourself thereby making you less happy / well off)
“The path to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Or… the path to hell is paved with good 1st order intentions and unforeseen 2nd order consequences. Super catchy right?
Or… the path to hell is paved with a narrow self interest that doesn’t align with the common good (aka broad self interest). Super duper catchy!
Good intentions don’t always mean good outcomes.
I believe that it is not ok not to have good intentions.
But I believe that ‘just having good intentions’ is not enough. You need to try and consider what ‘good outcomes’ are for all relevant parties.
In short, you need to try and understand where things are now, and then if your proposed change will mean that the overall outcome (the common good AKA broad self interest) will improve or not.
IMO almost everything has second order outcomes.
If you don’t know what they are they are likely to get you.
IMO it’s almost always worth at minimum a few minutes of trying to see possible second order outcomes.
IMO it is everyone’s job to try and look at the world from all parties, and to try and look after the common good. IMO looking after the common good IS looking after yourself.
Good intentions don’t always mean good outcomes. If I look back at times for ‘avoidable plain’, two areas popup again and again:
1. Miscommunication. Communication is HARD! Eg did I confirm understanding by asking someone to rearticulate?
2. Not considering the full picture AKA common good AKA broad self interest. Eg did I only look at part of the picture?
For years I’ve been trying to consider the outcomes for the relevant parties for each situation. I’ve found that one doesn’t remember to think about what is best for oneself… but one can at times not remember to look through the lenses of all relevant different parties.
So I think we should constantly remind ourselves and others to do so! Together we can help each other be better!
Jingle: if you want work to be a party, don’t forget to consider the relevant parties!
On the first day of my first job post University the big boss said: “it is not good enough to do a good job, you have people know you are doing a good job.”
IMO good leaders need to act for the common good.
IMO good leaders explain why what they are doing is the interest of the common good. Without doing so people can often only see the world from their perspective!
Leader = Coach
“We are all players, we are all coaches.” :)
+++++++++++
Details
Family lens:
The relevant parties:
Me
My siblings
My parents
The family dynamic
Thoughts:
I think if I always did exactly what I wanted my family would have long since ditched me.
However I think that I’m much better off for having my family around.
1. They are here to support me (as am I for them)
2. They tell me when I’ve got my head stuck where the sun don’t shine… which I'll eventually find out about. So the sooner the better. Ie they remove downside.
3. They add upside. They help me find out about things I wouldn’t have (learn), help me laugh, they help me have perspective!
Example 1:
When I was a single digit human mum used to effectively force me to eat my greens. While I didn’t like it I now think she was right.
I wasn’t allowed to play video games or with friends until I had done my homework (mum would check). I didn’t like this but I paid the tax (doing homework).
In short, mum was right, mum knows best... mum is the best! If little Duncan was allowed to do exactly what he wanted whenever he wanted he’d be much worse for it today!
Example 2:
My family live in Melbourne, but I lived out of Melbourne for 5 years (from 25 to 30).
When I got back I wasn’t seeing the family regularly, eg 5-10x times a year.
For a couple of years now I catch up with the family weekly. Sometimes I’m really up for it, others time really not.
~50 catch ups a year vs 5-10 has meant we have much deeper relationships and the amount we can help each other with is wildly more than before. So basically if I selfishly just did what I wanted then I’d catch up much less. But catching up more has increased the amount we can help each other with and meant we want to catch up more. Common good > narrow self interest.
Company lens:
The relevant parties:
Individual
Your team
Management
The entire company
Thoughts:
Narrow self interesting = doing what you think is right just for the individual
Broad self interest = doing what is right overall for the different parties.
Ideally you have each of the 4 constituents having a good outcome. But sometimes you cannot have this, so you have eg 3 of the 4… or even 2 of the 4, or even 1 of the 4 being positive as the best outcome for the ‘common good’.
Without a happy company (eg a dead company or eg a company that has to do downside headcount) then you cannot have happy individuals. So normally you have to look after the company’s best interests so anyone one else can have ‘good outcomes’.
Further analogy: if a country is unhappy (revolution) then no individual can be happy.
If you are in a big company, it is likely that at any given moment there are discontented people for one reason or another. But if you have an unhappy company then normally you’ll have everyone being unhappy!
If the company is unhappy then all people are typically unhappy.
If the company is happy then it allows others to be happy, but doesn’t guarantee so.
… so looking after the common good is… uncommonly good!
Example:
Let’s say that someone wants to spend 3 months coming up with a plan for their project.
However doing so roadblock work for others, meaning that other people in the company do not have work to do which means they eg may not have income for 2 months.
As such while in an ideal world the person would like to spend 3 months planning, they are happy to compromise to 1 month so that the other person doesn’t have no work for 2 months.
Narrow interest = I want to do 3 months of planning
Broad interest = we can still get a lot done with 1 month of planning and I also get to have good outcomes for others so I’m happy to shift!