The Trainer Gives an Average. So Does AI.

Originally written in Traditional Chinese: Minerva Immersion Week 第 1 天延伸：講師給平均值，AI 也給平均值

Minerva Immersion Week, follow-up 1: the problem with averages.

Context: Minerva's MDA is an online master's for working professionals. Immersion Weeks bring us to one city for a week. I have finished my MDA; Tokyo was my third and last.

On Day 1, a cross-cultural trainer gave us a rule: in Japan, when nobody asks questions after a talk, that is the best outcome. It means you explained clearly. He added that we should keep this in mind when we visited Recruit later in the week.

To learn it more deeply, I asked my Japanese friends about it. Their answer: not necessarily.

On Day 5 we visited Recruit. Their team very much wanted our questions.

Later, talking it over, we realized Recruit is one of Japan's largest companies, but not a typical Japanese company. It calls people who leave "graduates," and it is willing to disrupt its own business.

The trainer was right. He described how many Japanese rooms work. The room in front of us was simply different.

It reminded me of a story from the US Air Force. In the late 1940s, too many planes were crashing, and the cockpit was suspected. It had reportedly been designed around the average pilot of the 1920s. Researcher Gilbert Daniels measured 4,063 pilots on 10 key dimensions, including height, weight and arm length. How many fell within the average range on all ten? Not one. Design for the average, and you design for no one. The Air Force moved to adjustable seats, pedals and helmets, an idea that later reached the car seat you sit in.

In Tokyo I saw three averages.

  1. The trainer gave us an average. It was real. But the person who walks into the meeting room is always a specific person.
  2. AI gives us averages too. Ask it about Japanese meeting etiquette and it will describe the most average Japanese person, with confidence. It cannot know which room you are walking into tomorrow.
  3. What I saw was not average either. None of the 4,063 pilots was average, and neither were the Japanese people I met through Minerva. People who choose Minerva are not Japan's largest group. My friends and Recruit are a small part of Japan.

The one thing I am sure of: in the age of AI, the most dangerous assumption is that everyone looks one way, speaks one way and communicates one way. That assumption is always wrong.

The trainer gives you an average. AI gives you an average. Before you decide, adjust the seat for the person in front of you. In an age when averages take seconds to get, what is scarce is the person who asks one more question.

Try this: the next time you get a rule about "how those people are," from a trainer, a book or an AI, ask one real person: "Is that true for you?"

MDA if you want a degree that changes how you think without leaving your job; World Wise if you lead a team.

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