FUTURE TALENT November - January 2019/2020 | Page 55

ON TOPIC
(writers such as Michel Foucault, Pierre
Bourdieu and Judith Butler). That
transformed my relationship with what
was happening at work. I saw the
power dynamics in a very different way
and was able to be more assertive and
to express myself.”
As part of its engagement with
philosophy, for three years now, BDO
has been running training on the
psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s
concept of “slow thinking” (see case
study, p54). (McSweeney is quick to
point out that the distinction between
psychology and philosophy is a very
recent one: “philosophy covers
ever y thing, really,” she s ays.)
She believes companies could build
on programmes like this with one-to-
one coaching.
“Good coaches, who don’t just train
people to get through a promotion,
genuinely disrupt your thinking and
help you realise that you don’t really
know what you think you know,”
she says.
S
ome organisations have
gone further to integrate
p h i l o s o p hy i nto t he i r
thinking. Google, Apple,
LinkedIn and Microsoft have, in the
past, employed philosophers to help
with high-level decisions, especially
about the effect of their actions on the
world, while (post-2008) Citigroup has
intermittently consulted an “on-call
ethicist” to tackle abstract issues
around banking and morality; The
Pentagon’s AI centre recently hired an
ethicist to help it explore the
complexities of modern conflict.
However, these initiatives do not
always go well: Google disbanded a
board of experts established to look
at the ethics of artificial intelligence,
m a c h i n e l e a r n i n g a n d fa c i a l
recognition, which included Luciano
Floridi, professor of philosophy and
ethics of information at Oxford
University after just two weeks,
following complaints from Google staff
about one of its members. (Professor
Luciano Floridi supported their cause.)
The company says it has no plans
to reinstate it. And, although there are
calls (not least from philosophers) for
companies to create a ‘chief
philosophical officer’ to advise the
b o a rd o n e t h i c a l d e c i s i o n s ,
no large company has so far put that
into action.
Wilberforce-Ritchie is optimistic,
however, that companies will begin to
see the advantage of embedding
philosophical thinking at every level of
the organisation and believes that the
success of diversity and inclusion (D&I)
programmes provides a useful model
for them to follow.“I think people can
be trained in, or just have their minds
opened up to, philosophical ideas, as
has happened with D&I initiatives,” he
says. “You have D&I executives at the
Thinking is
basically
doing
stuff with
knowledge
O
top driving strategy. But equally, D&I is
being included at yearly workshops,
conferences and other discussions.”
D&I initiatives have tended to
succeed in companies that allow all
their people to express opinions, no
matter their position in the hierarchy.
Professor Steare sees this as a starting
point for introducing philosophical
thinking into the workplace. “I focus
very simply on getting people to create
a safe environment within which to
have good, honest argument and
debate, where people inside the room
forget who has the biggest job title,”
he says. “It’s actually the role of the
person with the biggest job title to stop
dominating the meeting, allowing less
senior people to speak their mind.”
Meanwhile, echoing Jacoby’s point
that business is about managing
information, he argues that everyone
in corporate life needs to become
more curious about the world and see
how business fits into the wider picture.
“It saddens me that so many people
have such a narrow vision,” he says.
“You have to think about everything
from astronomy to anthropology, from
q u a nt u m p hy s i c s t h ro u g h to
honeybees. Spend time reading about
what’s going on outside your bubble.
It’s very simple. If you want to be like a
philosopher, you need to love wisdom.
That’s what the word means.”
Gauge your MoralDNA:
are you a judge, governor or angel?
The MoralDNA test draws on the following three key strands of moral philosophy:
Consequentialism: what are the effects of my actions on other people?
Virtue ethics: what are the moral values I believe in?
Ontology: how much do I comply with my rules, systems and processes?
It then delivers results in terms of moral
identities such as angel, guardian,
judge, philosopher, governor and
teacher, and helps users understand
the strengths and weaknesses of each.
It’s a simple tool, taking about five
minutes to complete, but reading
through the questions and results, it’s
noticeable how seldom ideas like this
are discussed in the business world,
and how little, at work, many of us feel
able to take an ethical stance.
(This writer found he was an angel, with
many of the pros and cons resonating!)
Take the test at moraldna.org
November – January 2019 // 55