Why do we need a new common sense?

By Dan Suwyn

I went to high school in Kennett Square, PA, a community originally founded by Quakers that eventually became the home of a tight-knit, passionate Italian community. Most of my friends and girlfriends were Italian and they communicated in what was to me a very passionate and demonstrative way. Everyone spoke loudly and definitively. When a husband said “I love you” to his wife, it often was an invitation to an argument as much as an affirmation.

It was simple common sense that if you were going to be heard in these families or in this community, you had to raise your voice and meet the emotional level of your neighbors.

I had, however, spent my junior high school years in the South, where open conflict is heavily frowned upon. For proper Southerners conflict was something handled behind closed doors and backs. It was simple common sense that if you wanted to accomplish anything, details needed to be worked out behind the scenes.

So, later in life when I went to work for a company that owned sites in Philadelphia and the Deep South, it occurred to me – which common sense is at play here?

This may seem a fairly trivial question, but companies live and die around it. Jim Batten, the CEO of that company, was a man of the South and he came from the Knight side of the newly formed Knight-Ridder company. His rival, Tony Ridder, was neither Southern nor, obviously, a Knight. Instead of having a conversation about what constituted “shared understandings” in the new company, it was left to be determined, day-by-day, decision-by-decision, insult-by-insult, until tragedy struck. Mr. Batten died of a brain hemorrhage and Mr. Ridder took over, as did a new definition of common sense. This had shattering ramifications for people's careers.

What are the “shared understandings” we need to have to navigate in this new, interconnected world?

Common sense, roughly speaking, is what people in common circumstances would agree upon: that which they "sense" in common as their shared natural understanding.
Einstein described common sense as the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen. Hasn't your company learned a few things since its members were 18?

Remember, what may be common sense in Duluth may not be common sense in Dublin; what's common sense in Nova Scotia may not carry water in North Carolina. As companies have become more global and integrated, I suspect we haven't taken the time to ask ourselves, "what is our common sense?" As a result we discover it 'hit and miss,' through trial and error - and sometimes through costly errors.

As we begin our way out of this recession, it may be time to look around at what remains and share that common sense with each other.

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