If ignorance is bliss, Father said,
Shouldn’t you be looking blissful?
You should check to see if you have
the right kind of ignorance. If you’re
not getting the benefits that most people
get from acting stupid, then you should
go back to what you always were—
being too smart for your own good.
– “The Benefits of Ignorance,” Hal Sirowitz
For students, the summer is practically over. Schools throughout the northern hemisphere are gearing up for the fall term. First-year MBA students are moving in, settling down, finding their way around, and getting ready for a transformational experience. Second-year MBA students have a rather different perspective—every summer I’ve written to them with advice about getting the most out of their summer jobs (see, for instance, this and this). This year, I want to offer advice about one’s learning perspective, which is no less relevant to gaining ultimate employment.
The job market for Darden’s MBA students is hot. The final numbers on the Class of 2015 are just coming in, so I’ll decline to get specific, but the mounting evidence is that students in that class gained virtually full employment. Kudos to them: the results aren’t due only to hot demand, but also to the quality of supply.
No doubt, the hot job market is not lost on rising second-year MBA students. It’s great to be a seller in a seller’s market. I wish the Class of 2016 results similar to 2015. And I would caution students that what burns hot in the first year can turn cold suddenly, as students in the classes of 2009 and 2000 found. Yet I resist dampening your outlook.
This year, my advice to rising second-years has less to do with getting the max out of your summer jobs and more to do with the mindset with which you engage your remaining time at Darden. This is motivated in part by today’s buoyant job market, and more generally by students’ self-confidence engendered by a successful first year and summer experience. You know the system; you passed the fearsome exams; you already toiled through maybe 300 case studies; you partied hard; you got a good summer job; and in most cases you got a full-time offer. In short, you not only survived, you prospered. Been there, done that.
Many years ago, a rising second-year student asked me, “Why should I come back?” He argued that the first year taught him the basics of business—the second year is just commentary, elaboration, and job-hunting. He said that the second year was “just doing time.” I responded that whereas the first year was about imparting insights that he knew he didn’t know, the second year was about deeper insights: “You still don’t know what you don’t know,” I said; “There is much more to learn.” Whereas the first year was totally structured around a common core of knowledge, the second year would be tailored—by him—to deepen capabilities that matter to him. By May of the second year, students rave to me about their experiences that year.
What that story suggests is the universal challenge for students: disbelief that what is to be taught is worth learning. But efforts by teachers to motivate students go only so far. The student must bring to the party at least a willingness (if not a zeal) to learn—call it a learning mindset. Such a mindset is a rare commodity. It begins with suspending disbelief.
In her very valuable book, Mindset, Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck argues that the fulfillment of one’s potential depends on adopting a “growth mindset.” She says that, a growth mindset is a belief that intelligence can be developed. This “leads to a desire to learn and therefore a tendency to embrace challenges, persist in the face of setbacks, see effort as the path to mastery, learn from criticism, and find lessons and inspiration in the success of others. As a result, they reach ever higher levels of achievement.” The alternative is a “fixed mindset” that sees intelligence as static. This “leads to a desire to look smart and therefore a tendency to avoid challenges, get defensive or give up easily, see effort as fruitless or worse, ignore useful negative feedback, and feel threatened by the success of others. As a result, they may plateau early and achieve less than their full potential.” ((Both quotations from Dweck, page 245.)) Dweck marshals an impressive volume of research in support of the framework. And the framework appeals intuitively; one easily recalls people who displayed one or the other mindset.
The value of learning and a growth mindset has been affirmed by colleagues at Darden. Jeanne Liedtka co-authored The Catalyst, a study of “growth leaders,” people who led businesses through an astonishing trajectory of advancement over a long period. She concluded that they stand apart from others in terms of their appetite to: learn, embrace challenges, persist, gain criticism, and draw from the examples of others. And another book, The Physics of Business Growth: Mindsets, System, and Processes, by Ed Hess and Jeanne Liedtka, extends the importance of organizational mindsets as a foundation for enabling growth. In short, a learning mindset is very important to high performance in business.
The poem by Hal Sirowitz is cheeky. It is easy to imagine it as the conclusion of a conversation between a wise-guy father and an uppity teenager. But the poem raises a tantalizing question for 2nd year MBA students: what is “the right kind of ignorance”? Surely, it is to acknowledge that one always has more to learn. We don’t know what we don’t know and therefore should bring to the effort a good measure of humility. Otherwise, it is too easy to be “too smart for your own good” and to be stuck in a fixed mindset. And just as surely, it is to acknowledge that some of what we know may need changing. The American humorist, Josh Billings, once said that ignorance is not what one does not know, but rather is what one knows with certainty but isn’t true. Think of alchemy, astrology, racism and sexism—world history is littered with ideas that good people once embraced as good thinking. The right kind of ignorance is an acceptance of your own limitations in figuring everything out.
I wish the Class of 2016 great success as learners. Pursue this year with a passion. Cultivate your learning mindset in the year ahead. Graduation will be here before you know it.