Education 2.0 & 3.0

Character is the culmination of personality and experiences. Though character is generally stable, psychologists understand that all of us are susceptible to being "nudged" by our environments.

Listen to any well-respected CEO and she or he will place great emphasis on the company's working environment. A plethora of research shows that the people you work with and the culture you work around will affect your behavior, for better or worse.

In his book Behavioral Ethics in Organizations, Dr. Muel Kaptein gives an astute summation of the scientific literature that evaluates how different surroundings can affect decision making, a topic he first explored in a paper published by the Rotterdam School of Management.

His findings show that the leadership of the company, the values employees share, and the interaction among teams, if handled poorly, can all cause otherwise good people to make bad decisions.

The new guy gets little respect. He’s given the jobs no one else wants, and is clearly the low man on the totem pole. He’s not always valued, after all … what does he know? He’s new.

But new has qualities that experience does not bring, says Roger L. Beahm, professor of marketing at Wake Forest University and executive director of the school’s Center for Retail Innovation: “Experience is like having a larger rear view mirror that lets you look further back in the past,” he says. “We tend to think the past can provide a vision into the future but the past is not a good predictor. In fact, if you want innovation, it’s the dead opposite.”

Instead of defaulting to the most experienced person in a company, leadership should welcome the opinions of the inexperienced. “They’ve earned that right; you’ve screened them or brought them in,” says Beahm. “Don’t reject their offhand ideas without allowing them a chance to express their thinking.”