Humility Is the New Smart

Smart machines are replacing more and more jobs. Edward Hess and Katherine Ludwig show how to develop abilities that machines don't have so we can thrive in this Smart Machine Age. Underlying them all is a sense of personal humility: honestly recognizing our limitations and working to mitigate them.

Smart machines are replacing more and more jobs. Edward Hess and Katherine Ludwig show how to develop abilities that machines don't have so we can thrive in this Smart Machine Age. Underlying them all is a sense of personal humility: honestly recognizing our limitations and working to mitigate them.


In nearly every industry, smart machines are replacing human labor. It's not just factory jobs-automated technologies are handling people's investments, diagnosing illnesses, and analyzing written documents. If we humans are going to endure, Edward Hess and Katherine Ludwig say we're going to need a dose of humility.

We need to be humble enough to let go of the idea that smart means knowing the most, using that information quickest, and making the fewest mistakes. Smart machines will always be better than we are at those things. Instead, we need to cultivate important abilities that smart machines don't have (yet): thinking critically, creatively, and innovatively and building close relationships with others so we can collaborate effectively. Hess and Ludwig call this being NewSmart.

To develop these abilities, we need to practice four specific behaviors: keeping our egos out of our way, managing our thoughts and emotions to curb any biases or defensiveness, listening to others with an open mind, and connecting with others socially and emotionally. What all these behaviors have in common is, again, humility-avoiding self-centeredness so we can learn from and work with other humans. Hess and Ludwig offer a guide to developing these NewSmart abilities and to creating organizations where these qualities are encouraged and rewarded.

Contents
Introduction: Why You Should Read This Book 1
Part 1 A New Mental Model for the Smart Machine Age
1 The Smart Machine Age: A New Game Requires New Rules 15
2 NewSmart: A New Definition of Smart 35
3 Humility: The Gateway to Human Excellence in the SMA 59
Part 2 NewSmart Behaviors
4 Quieting Ego 79
5 Managing Self: Thinking and Emotions 95
6 Reflective Listening 115
7 Otherness: Emotionally Connecting and Relating to Others 123
8 Your NewSmart Behaviors Assessment Tool 133
Part 3 The NewSmart Organization
9 Leading a NewSmart Organization 153
Your NewSmart Organizational Assessment Tool 183

Epilogue: Our Invitation to You 187

Notes 189
Recommended Reading 201
Acknowledgments 205
Index 207
About the Authors 212