The Emerging Threat of Cognitive Liability

Agile minds are our richest resource for sharpening our competitive edge. So just how closely should management monitor their employees’ minds?

You’d be remiss if you knowingly allowed employees with propensities for physical injury to move heavy machinery. The economic risks of cognitive liability call for comparable precaution. Those risks are growing. Get ready to manage them.

America’s aging population has inspired an explosion of medical research into Alzheimer’s, dementia and cognitive diminution. Of course, these pathologies are global phenomena, and their impact on the workplace is demographically destined to increase. There’s no escape.

Fortunately, a revolution in better, faster and cheaper diagnostics is furiously underway. Our ability to detect the early onset of cognitive affliction has improved by orders of magnitudes in barely a decade. These tests are not yet foolproof or definitive. But they’re improving. Free Web-based diagnostics, such as the Test Your Memory assessment, can tell you whether you, or your employees, will likely confront difficult challenges in the not-too-distant future.

Patients undergoing complex heart operations, clients getting legal advice and venture capitalists investing millions in entrepreneurial teams might understandably want to know the cognitive health of their doctors, lawyers and entrepreneurs. In fact, they’ll probably insist on knowing. In an era of growing global litigation, regulation and accountability, do they have the right?

A powerful case could be made that regularly running mental-health tests could be in an organization’s best interest as part of its human capital “quality control” investment. Perhaps submitting to such examinations – not unlike drug testing – will become a condition of employment.

While personal and professional pain around the likely loss of one’s faculties is unavoidable, the legal and ethical implications have only begun to be addressed. Unless meaningful therapeutic interventions, or outright cures, for Alzheimer’s and dementia materialise, this diagnostic dilemma will be one of the most contentious and controversial issues confronting tomorrow’s work force.

No doubt, executives will have to lead by example. Are you ready to take your test?

(Michael Schrage is a research fellow at the Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also the author of “Serious Play” and the forthcoming “Getting Beyond Ideas.”)

© 2011 Harvard Business Publishing