Difficult cases of a lack of knowledge

I'm going to start this post by (I'm guessing) alienating everyone who reads it. Yes, I'm going to quote Tony Blair.

“The single hardest thing for a practising politician to understand is that most people, most of the time, don’t give politics a first thought all day long. Or if they do, it is with a sigh…., before going back to worrying about the kids, the parents, the mortgage, the boss, their friends, their weight, their health, sex and rock ‘n’ roll…. For most normal people, politics is a distant, occasionally irritating fog.”

I'm not all that interested in the political/voter case. I'm interested in a similar case. The case of institutional politics. Let me paint a picture (it's full of oversimplifications). 

All institutions have leaders; probably a small team whose job it is to oversee the running of the institution. If it's a large institution, it will likely then have some middle managers, and also some folks who I shall grossly unfairly call the 'rank and file'. 

Over the last couple of years, there's been quite a bit written about one particular kind of institution--Universities--and how their upper management are 'out of touch' with what life is like for the rank and file. (Or, if they are in touch, that they are deliberately and callously making life worse for the rank and file.) That issue has been aired enough and I've no intention of re-hashing it here.

What I see written about far less is a different kind of case: that those in senior management positions know an awful lot about the external environment and aspects of the internal environment of a University, that the 'rank and file'  know nothing about. An example? How about the apprenticeship levy. Or, if you fancy something a bit more research oriented, how about the UK industrial strategy white paper. These are both pretty complex. They'll both have knock-on effects. How a University, as a whole, will respond to these challenges will be a function of many things: budget, budget projection, appetite for risk, existing connections and networks, where its preponderance of research lies, staff time and morale, and so on (and there's an awful lot under the 'so on'). 

Two things to note. First, that means that in order to properly assess a decision, we need a lot of information. Stacks of it. And, probably, a decent background in decision making and an understanding of how strategic decisions normally play out in the medium-long term. For obvious reasons, most (clearly, not all) 'rank and file' will lack both of those things. 

Second, it will also require a willingness to learn about such things. Now perhaps it's unfair of me, but most of the time I don't detect that willingness--indeed, I detect a preference for not finding out about it. How many of you reading this were aware of both of the above and also the upcoming revision to the UK Quality Code? 

It seems to me (and let me be clear that I am a long way away from being a University leader!) that unless we have a good grip on what's going on in that external environment, it's pretty tough for us to have an informed position on how our University should plot its route forward. Very roughly--and to return to the quote from Tony Blair--if all of these things are a distant, occasionally irritating fog, then it doesn't seem that we have a good epistemic basis for being involved centrally in the decision making process. It's akin to a case of voter ignorance. 

I accept entirely that the point cuts both ways: those 'at the top' need to know what life is like for the rank and file. That piece of information is hugely important. But my sense of it is that while we rank and file are often quick to champion the point that 'the management are out of touch' we're far less open the criticism that we, too, lack hugely important pieces of information. A little epistemic humility might go a long way.