Hammer and Nails
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“We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and then our tools shape us.” -Marshall McLuhan
“Oh no…my boss read another book!!!”
Before anyone freaks out, I am pro-book-reading and pro-professional development. But tell me if this situation sounds familiar:
Someone you work with attends a conference, hears a guest speaker, reads a new book, or completes a fellowship. All of a sudden, they want everyone and everything in your organization to reshape itself around the brilliant new idea they “discovered” that “transformed” his/her/their thinking.
(I can see you nodding glumly.)
The above situation reveals a complicated tension.
On the one hand, if we do not regularly learn new ideas and concepts, eventually, our work becomes stale, as many of us know the feeling of working with someone whose last cutting-edge idea came decades ago. However, just because finding new ideas is good does not mean that every new idea we discover is good.
So let’s be careful together, and dive into this week’s heuristic.
The Law of the Instrument
“To a man who only has a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail.”
You’ve probably (1) heard this quote before and (2) wondered who first said it. Since Moneyball Judaism is not a quote investigator, I am not going to dive into whether or not this was first said by Mark Twain, Abraham Maslow, or a British periodical called Once a Week (all possibilities). But no matter who first said it, the quote is important because it relates to a concept known as the law of the instrument.
While others can debate who was the first person to use the hammer and nail quote, Abraham Kaplan specifically discusses the law of the instrument as it pertains to research in The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology for Behavioural Science. Here is the original passage:
“I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding. It comes as no particular surprise to discover that a scientist formulates problems in a way which requires for their solution just those techniques in which he himself is especially skilled.”1
When we learn an appealing new approach or spend years developing expertise in a particular approach, we tend to see uses for that approach everywhere, even when it’s not the best option.
For Kaplan, the law of the instrument is a reminder to readers that “the pressure of fad and fashion are as great in science, for all its logic, as in other areas of culture.”2 While Kaplan notes that the law of the instrument is not necessarily bad under all circumstances, the danger arises when one technique “becomes so mechanically applied that it undermines the spirit of scientific inquiry.”3 While the end result of a scientific inquiry should resemble evidence-based truth, a person still has to pick the tools they will use for the inquiry, interjecting flawed human judgment into the process.
The law of instrument closely relates to the Einstellung effect:4 If someone invests time and energy learning a new concept or spends learning a particular approach, then it is in their self-interest to argue that their approach to solving problems is the best one. And if we extrapolate Kaplan’s law to our work in the Jewish community, one might notice two additional dangers:
First, some organizations fall victim to top leaders gravitating to the fancy concept they learned about in a book, conference, or training. Of course, there are plenty of cases when what we learn outside the office is exactly what the organization needs. But it’s fair to say that we could do a better job of testing a concept’s utility before we force everyone to read the book, adopt the system, and change everything.
Second, various issues facing the Jewish community are much more a matter of belief than empirical fact, including Jewish law (halakhah), Israeli politics, and Jewish engagement. In general, people want to work in a context that will further strengthen their existing worldview about that issue. However, hard as it is to believe, there are few, if any, views about Judaism that are the best for all people in all situations. If we are not careful, we may forget that and disregard valuable ideas if they do not comport with our worldview.
While I’m no better at monitoring this tendency than anyone else, I think of the ideas I learn as going into a mental toolbox, rather than searching for a single, magical tool. As I get more experienced, I learn where to pull out which tool in which situation, as many, if not most of them, are valuable for someone at some point.
So before you freak out the next time your boss learns a magical idea, or before you impose that magical idea on everyone in your workplace, ask yourself, “In what situations will this tool really provide value?”
Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance
Been a while, so it’s time to show Atul Gawande some love again.5
In many cases, the tools described by Kaplan when explaining the law of the instrument are not life-threatening when used incorrectly or indiscriminately. At worst, they are a waste of time and money.
But there are professions where misapplication of the law of the instrument could be life-threatening or life-saving; to explore that in greater depth, read Atul Gawande’s Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance.
Better focuses on issues related to surgical practice, most of which I don’t understand as I don’t do surgery in my spare time.6 But Gawande tells a particularly powerful story about his experience traveling as a visiting surgeon in India that caught my attention.
During his travels, Gawande sees how the surgeons he shadows lack the “essential resources”7 necessary to do their jobs. My assumption upon first reading this line was that these doctors lacked the most sophisticated medical tools available to Gawande in America, but I was wrong: Gawande writes that these doctors lacked basic tools like “drugs, tubes, tests, mesh…staplers, [and] suture material,” and Gawande recounts how “shortages of supplies are so common that around any hospital in India you will find rows of ramshackle stands with vendors selling everything from medications to pacemakers.”8
In fact, many doctors told Gawande that “it was easier to get a new MRI machine than to maintain basic supplies and hygiene.” In other words, the shiny new tool in the form of an MRI machine is only useful if medical professionals can understand and implement “the ordinary, mundane details that must go right for each particular problem.”9
Gawande’s analysis raises another important challenge for the law of the instrument in many Jewish organizations. Yes, it is valuable to be aware of the most cutting-edge ideas so that thinking always remains fresh. But can most of us state with a high degree of certainty that our organizations have the equivalent of basic test tubes and medicine to ensure that the foundation is solid to make those great ideas possible?
When I speak to colleagues about the biggest issues in their organizations, those issues are seldom about cutting-edge tools but primarily about basic tools. And so, before we focus too much on getting the shiny new machine, we should probably ask if we pay decent salaries and benefits, employ an adequate number of administrative staff, etc., because if we fail to get the basic things right, the best tools in the world will be of little use.
The consequences are not life-threatening, but significant, nonetheless.
Armchair Expert
I could listen to Gawande all day long.
3 a.m. Friday
Time at which a drone struck Tel Aviv, killing at least 1 and injuring 10.
What I Read This Week
Psychological Safety Erodes Quickly: A powerful but disturbing article on how fast people can feel uncomfortable in a workplace. You will have to read it for the bright side.
What Being a Runner-Up Can Teach You About Winning: I once made a list of all the times I came in second place. While I will only bore you with details in the footnote, read this article in the meantime.
NDAs as the Defining Legal Document of Our Time: Perhaps you’ve never filled out a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). I’m not sure if that’s good or not, but this article gave me pause.
How Older Adults Viewing Healthy Aging: I suppose why I read this article goes without saying. But since I don’t reference politics here, it’s never a bad time to think about this question.
The World’s Cutest Monpology: Two words- Koala Kare.10
Ibid.
Ibid.
I know that Dr. Gawande, best-selling author and MacArthur Genius Grant winner, was really offended that someone he’s never heard of only cited one of his books.
I know you were curious.
Ibid., 193.
Ibid., 194.
Now the picture makes sense.