Munger on Multidisciplinary Thinking, Part 5

In the first four parts of our series on legendary investor Charlie Munger's thoughts on multidisciplinary thinking, part of a speech he gave at a Harvard Law School reunion in 1998, we looked at the first four questions he put forth. These pertained to why professionals need to think beyond their own disciplines, why traditional education often fails to teach them how to do so, what a better multidisciplinary education could look like, and how academia has progressed in bringing different disciplines together.

Munger’s argument is that broadscale problems require knowledge from a variety of different fields. But developing that knowledge is not just about studying more subjects: it needs practice, the right systems, and a willingness to keep learning beyond the confines of a formal education.

Here, we look at the fifth question and final question he asks in his 1998 Harvard Law School reunion speech: “What educational practices would make progress faster?”

What educational practices would make progress faster?

Munger’s answer to this question is practical: he suggests making several changes to the way professionals are educated, designed to make multidisciplinary thinking part of how they approach problems rather than something they encounter by chance.

• More courses should be made mandatory: Munger argues that more courses should be made compulsory or mandatory rather than optional, particularly when they offer essential broadscale problem-solving exposure. He points out that psychology and accounting, for instance, should be required parts of legal education. The larger point is that students cannot be expected to recognise the importance of knowledge that they have never been required to learn.
• Practice multidisciplinary problem-solving: Munger wants students to spend more time solving problems that cut across several disciplines. He gives the example of a Harvard Business School exercise involving two inexperienced old ladies who inherit a struggling shoe factory. The best answer was not based on the most recently taught business concepts, but on more fundamental ideas such as agency costs and marginal utility. For Munger, this is the kind of practice that teaches students to connect ideas rather than simply recall them.
• Read more of what is happening in the real world: Munger recommends business publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Fortune as tools for continuing intellectual practice. He compares them to an aircraft simulator because they provide regular opportunities to relate real-world events to causes that are often intertwined across disciplines. He also argues that this kind of reading must continue throughout a professional's life.
• Avoid ideological rigidity: Munger also believes that multidisciplinary thinking requires objectivity. He argues that professionals and academics who are strongly bound to a certain political ideology may struggle to make the difficult connections required for genuine multidisciplinary thinking. For him, intellectual flexibility is essential to good judgement.

The heart of the lesson…

Munger's fifth question brings the entire argument back to practice. Building a multidisciplinary mind does not require becoming an expert in everything. It requires deliberately learning important ideas outside of one's own field, practising how those ideas connect, and continuing to refresh that knowledge throughout one's career.