Hillary v. Obama- Judgment vs. Experience?

Two 'management' professors, Warren Bennis and Noel Tichy, wrote an editorial column in last Thursday's Wall Street Journal entitled, "Judgment Trumps Experience."

Citing their own research, they wrote,

"Mr Obama and his handlers are putting their money on his judgment, disdaining the experience card as a stale rerun of earlier campaigns, skewering Mrs. Clinton's twisty judgments about Iraq, and subtly pushing the present over the legacy of the '60s, destiny over dynasty.

After a five-year study of leadership covering virtually all sectors of American life, we came to the inescapable conclusion that judgment regularly trumps experience. Our central finding is that judgment is the core, the nucleus of exemplary leadership. With good judgment, little else matters. Without it, nothing else matters."

There are several aspects of this piece that leave me incredulous.

First, who can point to anything Obama has done that suggests he possesses sound judgment? He hasn't even been in the windbaggy US Senate for a full term yet. Nobody has advanced aspects of his Illinois state political/legislative career to suggest extraordinary judgment on his part.

Are we to believe that simply because Obama possesses no relevant experience for the office of President of the US, he must have judgment, instead?

For that matter, Clinton has little or nor relevant experience, either. We know she lacks values and moral scruples. Why didn't Tichy and Bennis study those qualities?

If I were to cast Hillary v. Obama on qualities, it would be, simply, blind ambition v. naive desire.

But, let's move beyond Bennis' and Tichy's typification of the Democratic front-runners, and focus on the incredible feat they claim to have accomplished.

Just how does one study 'leadership covering virtually all sectors of American life?'

What was their sample size? Their research instrument? How did they test the instrument for content and predictive validity? How does one measure 'judgment,' or 'experience?' How does one measure outcomes of various levels of each quality?

How in the heck do you study qualities like 'judgment,' and believe you know good from bad, for the purposes of projecting the results to America, in its every aspect?

Could there not be some interaction effects? Perhaps some level of judgment, mixed with some level of experience, might be better than either one alone? How would you measure those?

This pieces was, on the whole, completely unconvincing to me. It suggests the sort of 'research' that emanates from the 'management' field in business schools that give the discipline such a bad name. It seems to me that 'management' degrees are to business schools what 'communications' degree is for liberal arts.

And that's not a compliment.

I found this piece to be an embarrassment in terms of calling Tichy's and Bennis' effort 'research.' It would take a far more detailed explanation of this sort of work for me to accept the methodology and conclusions. Qualitative areas such as these invite poor research to be performed and communicated, without readers of the results fully understanding how it was attempted.

If nothing else, though, the article gave me an opportunity to realize how bereft of both experience and judgment the two candidates are. And how difficult it would be to attempt to actually ascribe causality to either quality in the manner apparently done by Tichy and Bennis.