Yesterday I finished Vaclav Smil’s “How the World Really Works“.
If you want to understand an issue, and Smil has written about it, read it, and your understanding will be the better for it.
You should not read it if you believe in wishful thinking, cherry-picking data, or some of the many deceits that are rife in public policy.
At the start of the book (page 2-4) he raises the point about how “the atomisation of knowledge has not made any public decision-making easier” (p.2).
Why Most Experts Can’t Help You
A lot of lobbyists and their client think that people understand their issue. And, if people don’t, they think that decision makers and influencers (officials and politicians) do understand, and are specialists and experts.
If you think this, you are likely wrong. As Smill explains, the degree of expertise has become more atomonised. The extent and specialisation of our knowledge has been growthing at a fast pace since the 18th century. Today, there is so much knowledge out there that requires so much expertise it is “impossible to sum our understanding even within narrowly circumscribed specialities” (p.2).
It takes a long time to become a real expert. As Smill notes “Highly specialised branches of modern science have become so arcance that many people employed in them are forced to train until their early or mid-thirties in order to join the new priesthood”.
Few experts, after that long apprenticeship, give it all up, and embark on a new and equally long apprenticeship for electoral office, or become a civil servant. Experts may be consulted for their expertise, or seconded in for a short time, but they work in the interface, and are not at the core of policy or decision making.
And, even experts find it hard to agree amongst themselves. I’ve sat in too many workshops where some of the best experts in the field could not agree on the right course of action, or the likely cause of a problem.
What is common for these Priesthoods of experts is that they cannot, or find it hard to communicate with anyone outside their cloistered Priesthood. They have become so immersed in the veruncular of their specialialitty, they find it had to stop speaking their version of Latin to others.
It is common that politicians and officials just don’t understand what your expert is saying. Your expert, and maybe you, are speaking a language that only a select few understand, and the people you are looking to persuade have a vague, or no, idea what you are saying.
Added to this, is few people, let alone decision makers or influencers, interact with you and your sector. Whatever your sector, most people have no or only a vague idea about it. In Europe, less than 4% work in agriucture, with many at no more than 1%. Smill notes:
“China is the world’s largest producer of steel … but all of that is done by less than 0.25 percent of China’s 1.4 billion people. Only a tiny percentage of the Chinesse population will ever stand close to a blast furnace, or see the continuous casting with its red ribbons of hot, moving steel. And this donnocent is the case across the world” (p.4).
I ask students if they have worked in a factory and to my surprise most have not. The analogy of the factory process falls flat.
Most officials and politicians will have at best a vague idea on what you think is the important issue.
And, it does not matter if they use your product or service. As Smil observe we work in a world “people are constantly interacting with little black boxes, whose relatively simple outputs and require little or no comprehsnion of what is taking place inside the box” (page 3).
The vast majority of people don’t know how the modern world works.
This poses a challenge for many organisations – both NGOs and commercials – in that they usually leave experts to make the decisions about dealing with officials and politicians. Most politicians and civil servants are not experts in your given field, and members of your exclusive Priesthood. They’ll be part of an elite that required a long apprenticeship, a Priesthood focused on policy and law making. It is likely you are not a member of that select group.
The language you use with officials and politicians confuses them. They politely thank you for your time, end the meeting early, and wipe the meeting from their memory.
How can you deal with this
A few people can cross between the two worlds. If you have them on staff, treasure them. I know a few people who can seemingly effortlessly move between the worlds. One has a PhD from Imperial College, worked in industry, and can speak the same language of scientific experts, business leaders, senior officials, and politicians. When he speaks , the right people listen because they understand him and trust him. It is a pleasure to see him at work. It is a rare creature. I think over my 25 years I’ve met no more than 5 such people in industry and NGOs. And, for reasons unknown to me, many in industry and NGOs don’t recognise the value of such people.
You need to recognise where you are. You need to understand that the chances that people you are dealing with are fellow experts in your area is at best low. You need to recognise that most people have a vague , or no understanding, about your product, service or issue, even if they use it.
The most effective way to garner their understanding is to communicate clearly to a layperson. If you want to do that, just read Vacalv Smi’s books and mimic that writing.
And, easiest of all, don’t allow your experts out the door to deal with officials and politicians unless they have been coached. They’ll likely do you more harm than good. The officials and politicians won’t understand them, and think the meeting was a ruse.