Opinions vs. Experience

True words aren’t beautiful, beautiful words aren’t true. Those who argue don’t know, those who know don’t argue. - Laozi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkxlxXBIgSo

There is an old Chinese belief that a fool is one who believes he is wise, much like a frog living at the bottom of the well sees the vast expanse of the sky but doesn’t realize how small his view of reality is.

“If anyone believes that their opinions are just as valid as another person’s experience and those opinions trump experience, I’d like to see them try to fly an airplane with their opinions”, says Glenn Hairston, a martial arts instructor in Tai Chi in the video linked above.

Opinions: just like armpits, everyone has them and believes that their own don’t stink. Whether those opinions are well-informed or completely uninformed, the question is why all opinions are treated as valid, regardless of expertise.

Uninformed opinions are not without their uses, believe it or not: they valid as insights into the individual voicing them more than they are on the subject they’re discussing.

Let’s look at this example in the field of development, social enterprise, and NGOs to help illustrate the importance of experience that leads to better insights and understanding.

When I worked in Cambodia, there were a few tech entrepreneurs who spent a week traveling around Angkor Wat and then came back with a lot of photos on their social media and ideas they were pitching to investors for “saving” Cambodians.

One such idea was giving every kid a tablet in a particular village as a learning tool to circumvent the limitations of resources in the country in the year 2013. In spite of many NGOs advising them that it was a bad idea, the techies believed that they were futurists and disruptors who could innovate and fill in the gaps where the NGOs had “failed” before. Those tablets would be learning tools to connect them to the world, and save on paper and pencils.

What the techies didn’t realize was that many families didn’t even have electricity at home, let alone wi-fi everywhere, and that most families, if they didn’t have their tablets stolen (often by other family members), would be more inclined to sell them and use the money for food and to get out of existing debts. In addition, having a tablet would be a sign of wealth and cause more social division between people.

As noble as the intentions of those techies were, their opinions revealed that what they take as universal certainties in Silicon Valley for them are not actually universal elsewhere, and that the educational problems Cambodian children face are contextually much different than public school students in the United States.

What would have been better instead of trying to create a new program and organization would have been to consult with and collaborate with current organizations in Cambodia to brainstorm together possible ideas that could better serve the stakeholders and communities rather than taking a savior approach that in some academic circles is treated as being not that different from a colonist’s mindset.

The inexperience of the techies and the insistence on their opinions as being valid (and in this case, also believing themselves superior) becomes more significant when you realize that it doesn’t even need to be Cambodia, it can be anywhere that treating all opinions as valid can be dangerous, especially to stakeholders.

At the same time, ignoring those opinions is dangerous because if everybody isn’t on the same page and understands everything clearly, then you won’t have an effective exchange of ideas that can evolve from those initial passions and free flow of ideas, especially when instead of clarifying or elaborating and synthesizing what works, everyone is competing to get their voice be heard and make it stand out.

The opinions that are most important to consider I have found in the field of development are from the stakeholders, followed by the advisors, and lastly, the investors. A stakeholder’s most valuable insight comes from what their potential gains from a project could be, an advisor’s contribution is what are some of the best ways to most efficiently manifest those desires for a stakeholder. Advisors can be split into two types: those who can analyze a project or program and develop one, and those who are implementing them in the field, seeing what works and how well it is going, as well as how to adjust it with the planners. Investors also have a large role in not only determining available funding and resources, but ways to look outside of the super specialization and going back to our frog in the well analogy, almost tunnel vision-like views of both advisors and stakeholders.

Use experience and pool your wisdom together while listening to opinions to help others understand. Just like some cafes have suggestion boxes from customers, those opinions give insights to the businesses–even if they aren’t necessarily the information that the people submitting them intend to give!