Lessons learned
I have just passed the two year anniversary of my tenure as president of Rockford College, not enough time to say definitively what works and does not work, but certainly an occasion to consider some of the lessons learned along the way. Perhaps my lessons will resonate for your own leadership reflection and practice.
Perhaps the most fundamental challenge I have faced these past two years has been the abiding work of transforming institutional culture. Any change agenda requires attention to culture – that blend of institutional practices, stories, expectations, and incentives/disincentives that create and sustain the fabric of our social lives. When we attempt to change an institution without attention to how the culture also must shift, we run the risk of undermining good work by not helping to create the infrastructure, stories, and expectations that make change last.
In a recent essay in the New Yorker magazine ( April 5, 2004), James Surowiecki describes an effort in the country of Ecuador to change from a culture that is always late to one that is punctual. The move to change the culture arose out of a basic economic fact – punctuality pays. As the author shows us, a “just-in-time” global economy (think of Fed Ex and Dell Computer promises about timeliness) does not allow for an “I’ll get to it later” mentality. Attitudes toward time are a central aspect of any culture. But dawdling can be fun (think of toddlers). Tardiness can easily become a way of life. What the Ecuadorians have to overcome, Surowiecki tells us, is the idea that culture is destiny. This is just what we do – and we can do no other . . . Sound familiar?
Transforming a culture, then, is about both changing behavior and changing expectations and attitudes. And it takes time and energy and patience to change a culture. Mistakes will be made along the way. In Ecuador, the press conference to announce the national campaign about punctuality was delayed because the President’s spokesperson arrived late! And so it goes everywhere that cultures are changing . . .
A second lesson I’ve learned has to do with the dynamics of time management (given the myriad demands on my time) and the balancing of priorities – it is the lesson that management consultant Thomas McLaughlin has recently called “ overlooking.” As a vice president for many years, I was often frustrated by the lack of urgency my president seemed to feel about my priorities and projects – why couldn’t he make a decision today or find the time to read my position paper this week?
Now I think I understand. As a president, I have quickly learned that no matter how much I want to pay attention to the various demands and priorities my colleagues recommend to me, I neither have the time to give them all proper attention nor is it wise for me to give them my quick and undivided attention. The reasons are manifold. I cannot and should not pay attention to everything – that is unhealthy for me and the institution.
At the same time, part of my leadership responsibility is to balance the various demands and priorities – which are almost never undivided or without implications for other aspects of institutional life. Time – created because I decide to “overlook” an urgent request – sometimes leads to its own solutions, thoughtful reconsiderations, wise and mature action. For example, full attention to our computer conversion project, pushing its agenda forward without delay, means that I may miss the demands for academic standards or program innovation that are related to the conversion project but that are too easily subjugated in the name of accomplishing an important task. Willingness to miss a deadline, push off a meeting, allow the decisions of others to settle in, can mean that the project ultimately is more successful because its accomplishment is more organic and deliberative.
Overlooking, though, also can lead to more forthright and aggressive action (as opposed simply to waiting patiently), when, for example, I choose to overlook the fact that a particular project may cost more than we have budgeted and we push forward despite the cost, believing that such a course of action is important as a short-term investment in an important institutional initiative. I can’t tell you how many times someone has said to me, “We can’t do that because there is no money in the budget.” I sometimes overlook that fact – and forward we go.
This is not to say that accountability for decisions and priorities is not a paramount responsibility for institutional leaders. It is, rather, that such accountability sometimes requires that I have the wisdom and courage to overlook some things in service to making our vision a reality. This is really hard work!
A final lesson for this anniversary. Pick a vocabulary, a theme and a story, and never be dissuaded from telling it over and over again, no matter whether you are tired of it, you worry that your audience may be tired of it, or you feel that you’ve said it often enough to make your point. You haven’t.
First of all, others aren’t as prepared as you might think to hear your story. They may appear to get it, but don’t believe first impressions. Repeating the words and stories and metaphors over and again – and encouraging other institutional leaders to do the same – is simply good pedagogy, especially for adults. Short attention spans, limited conceptual frameworks, an unwillingness to think differently, varied learning styles, and so forth, all contribute to the need to repeat your core message until you are sure that it has been heard and understood.
As you will remember, my core message is about Jane Addams, a graduate of our college and perhaps the most effective social activist of the past century. I have Jane on my wall, on college brochures, on masks that we hand out to anyone we can find, on business cards, in our course catalogue, everywhere. And there are days when it all gets a bit surreal. I think she is a remarkable woman and her life and work inspire me in my personal and professional life, but surely everyone gets the point by now.
Or so I thought, when two weeks ago after I had made a budget presentation, a faculty member came up to me and exclaimed, “That is the first speech I’ve ever heard you give without mentioning Jane Addams,” and my immediate thought was that I had failed. Or maybe not, given his expectation that I would mention her and the fact that he noticed when I didn’t . . . small steps!
I have this clipping from a book review (author unknown) that I found illuminating on this topic. The reviewer claims that the book’s author has compressed the facts of the story he is telling and thus has left his readers without a full understanding of the context. The reviewer says of this tendency: “There is, in this diffidence, a hint of the academic dread of the twice-said. Academics suffer from an anxiety that if they repeat what they imagine other self-respecting professionals already know, they will seem naïve, or even worse, “not smart.” I am an academic at heart and I have a bit of this dread. I’m learning to overcome it in service of a more vision-driven college. Jane would have approved!
Charters and indigenous communities
Our college has a wonderful tradition of celebrating its founding each winter with an academic convocation known as our “Charter Day.” My brief remarks at this year’s convocation seem relevant to many of the themes I pursue in these Notes. I offer them here in an edited fashion, with apologies for the strong Rockford College-specific references. I think the points have general relevance.
“My teacher, Martin Marty, taught me that colleges are indigenous communities – that is, they are native to a particular place, a particular environment, a particular set of values and practices that define the institution – and that means something for the way they live their lives
What does it mean to think about our college as an indigenous community? That is a question much on my mind these days as we continue to explore the relevance of our historical commitments as a college for what we plan to do going forward. It is a question especially appropriate for this occasion, our annual celebration of the college being granted its charter by the Illinois state legislature in February 1847. It is a question that, it seems to me, we need to ask each and every day of our lives here at this special college.
The poet and essayist, Wendell Berry, whose work I return to often for guidance, writes these wise words in his prose poem, “Damage” – “No expert knows everything about every place, not even everything about any place. If one’s knowledge of one’s whereabouts is insufficient, if one’s judgment is unsound, then expert advice is of little use.”
I sometimes think about this quote when talking with all the experts who are happy to offer their advice (for free and for a fee!) about running a college. My responsibility is to have knowledge of our whereabouts; otherwise all the experts in the world will be of little use. If we don’t know our place, our mission, our history, how can we expect to enlist others in pursuit of our aspirations?
Yesterday I was pleased to be invited to attend a class and participate in a conversation about several questions students had about the college and its direction. The question that was posed to me at the beginning of the conversation had something to do with our enrollment and the current curricular reviews now underway. I listened for a while as students suggested ways to be more visible in Rockford and how we should be adding programs to attract more students. I then asked whether any of the students knew the college’s mission statement, when the college was founded, or what its historic commitments as a college had been. A few did know some of that, but not many.
My point is, of course, that we must know our whereabouts, our history, our values, our place in the community and in the culture, before we can seek solutions to the issues we face as individuals and as a community.
And it is our whereabouts that we celebrate on this Charter Day. It is our nature, identity, and character that we lift up. We mark our links to this particular place and culture and set of values and practices that make us Rockford College – as we have done since 1847.
So today I lift up for our attention (from the charter with which I was entrusted at my inauguration) three simple parts of our whereabouts that I hope we might continue to explore in the days and months ahead – they are things found in our charter – they are indigenous to us.
The charter reminds us, first, that instruction in the liberal arts and sciences adapted to the highest order of instruction is what we are here to offer – a vision of higher education. An education grounded in the liberal arts, and complemented by professional and practical experiences, says our mission today. Do we know what that really means for everything we do here?
The charter prescribes also that our work shall occur primarily in the town of Rockford, a particular place – much different now than in 1847 – but still a place that demands our attention and respect and concern. In what ways are we an institution grounded in this place?
The charter proclaims finally that the college shall comprise a body politic, with the rules and practices necessary for the good government and success of said institution, officers, and servants. A body politic, bound by its whereabouts, and we have the privileges and obligations of being its current members. How well do we tend those privileges and obligations on behalf of our commonwealth?
Today we mark our indigenous character, our indigenous charter. We celebrate our need to know our whereabouts, and the wonderful and intriguing work we have the privilege to undertake as the body politic of Rockford College.”
What does your charter call you to be and do? In what ways is yours an indigenous institution? The answers to those questions are worth remembering and celebrating.
The company as village
My interests in corporate giving and philanthropy have waxed and waned over the years – perhaps occasioned by my personal ambivalence about the tensions between capitalist machinations and the gift economy that is foundational to philanthropic practice in our democracy. Not that they can’t coexist – they do, of course, and some would argue that they coexist in a stronger and more vital form than could ever exist in a less capitalist economy and milieu.
That said, I’m always looking for metaphors of corporate life that are friendlier to the core mythology of philanthropy as gift-giving and receiving. It is why I am so drawn to the work of Peter Block, whose Stewardship: Choosing Service over Self-Interest has become a guiding text for my work on stewardship. Originally written with a for-profit audience in mind, there are wonderful parallels between Block’s stewardship contract and its implications for a particular sort of corporate community and my notion of a stewardship covenant that underlies strong philanthropic organizations.
Another such way of thinking about corporate life that I find intriguing has been posited by the eminent organizational theorist and philosopher, Charles Handy, who uses the metaphor of the “company as village” to describe his vision of corporate life. “A company ought to be a community, a community that you belong to, like a village,” Handy says. “Nobody owns a village. You are a member and you have rights. Shareholders will become financiers, and they will get rewarded according to the risk they assume, but they’re not to be called owners. And workers won’t be workers, they’ll be citizens, and they will have rights. And those rights will include a share in the profits that they have created.” (As quoted in strategy+business magazine, October 2003, p. 78).
It is a vision that likely will not soon be fully realized (at least in many publicly-held companies), but Handy is a prophet for concrete change in all corporations based on the principles of the “company as village” vision. What impact might this vision have for understanding and practicing corporate philanthropy? A few thoughts come to mind:
- There is, in Handy’s view, a strong emphasis on the well-being of the company citizens, those who do the work that lead to profits and success. His point is that the company must be concerned (as would a village) with the overall lives of its citizens. Workplace conditions, professional growth, equitable and fair practices for sure, but also a concern about an employee’s family life, his or her outside commitments, motivations he or she may have to make the community stronger. This is a powerful way to ground a philanthropic program for a corporation – and many companies have such a focus, looking for ways to have corporate giving follow employee commitments in the wider community. The company citizen will be happier with and more proud of his or her employer if the company illustrates its values by supporting causes and projects that confirm citizen values and commitments.
- Handy also believes that strong companies make room for unreasonable people, those who are not willing simply to adapt to the world, but who rather want to change it. We must be unreasonable, not tied to patterns and the status quo, he argues. We will create meaning (and successful organizations) by positioning unreasonable people to show us new ways of organizing our lives. For corporate philanthropy, this focus on the unreasonable and the call to change the world rather than simply adapt to it seems to challenge corporate giving that focuses on the usual suspects and motivations for its support. Yes, civic pride and stability feel good and may make us look good, but how does our giving make the world better, how does it break down patterns of life that may be keeping us from creating a society that is just and humane? This is entrepreneurial philanthropy, giving that demands accountability and evidence of impact, but that also is full of hope for the possibility that the world can be changed – and company giving might help make it happen.
- Finally, Handy’s more recent work points to the creative tension between companies in which people have long-term careers and the trend for people with certain skills to offer their services to a variety of companies as free-lancers (a distinction between what Handy calls the elephants and the fleas). Though some may think this focus on the growing role of the free-floating consultant (the flea) may undercut the company as village idea – how does someone become a citizen of a company when your loyalties are more to yourself than to a particular company? I think, instead, that it is important to recognize the coexistence of the elephant and the flea ideals in our contemporary world. There is a tension in a cosmopolitan world between institutional and personal loyalties. Our normal conceptions of the boundaries of organizational life are stretched. But this is a reality of an ever-increasingly more global and virtual world. As an unreasonable person, my response to this tension is not to hunker down on one side of the tension or the other, but to see the synergies that are created when the talents and experiences of individuals become connectors between organizations. In other words, the fleas create links between elephant organizations because they are able to recognize the potential for strategic connections. Truly strategic corporate philanthropy then – linking the common priorities and values of different villages in a federal structure – can lead to some remarkable influence and impact because together these company villages can change the world, if only they are watching and listening for that possibility. The fleas are one possible resource for such wisdom and insight – the elephants may take the insight and make it real.
I’m not sure that Handy’s vision necessarily leads to different corporate philanthropic practices – many corporations are doing the sorts of things I have described. It may be, however, that the “reasons why” to give, supported by imagining companies as villages, are a closer ally to a more robust and principled philanthropic community. That, it seems to me, is a good thing.
Deliberation days and other radical rituals
Yale professor Bruce Ackerman and Stanford professor James Fishkin recently published a provocative essay entitled “Righting the Ship of Democracy, Presenting Deliberation Day: A radical proposal to help voters make better decisions” (Legal Affairs, January/February 2004) in which they argue for a new national holiday, to be known as Deliberation Day. The idea of Deliberation Day is that it would replace Presidents’ Day and would be an occasion for registered voters to be called together in neighborhood meetings to discuss the central issues raised by the current political campaigns. This attempt to create a more attentive and informed public would transform the electoral process, the authors claim, because it would focus the attention of candidates, lobbyists, pollsters, and so forth, on sharing information and campaigning in ways that respect these deliberations and attempt to make them successful.
In my reflection on the challenges of helping to build more civic literacy in our society, I have found several overlapping themes with this Deliberation Day proposal. First, it is not just about getting people to vote. Uninformed voters don’t do our democracy much good. We cannot just focus on process; we must focus on substance and meaningful discourse about important social issues.
Second, one of the central challenges to creating a more engaged and informed citizenry is the issue of scale. Our political process is too big and seemingly impenetrable for most citizens. The scale of engaging people must be such that there is a meaningful sense that my voice means something, being informed is important, my thoughts about a particular issue can shape others’ opinions. Right now, there are few incentives for being informed – talk radio shows are what most people think political discourse looks like and they don’t much like it. The neighborhood-based model for Deliberation Day reminds me of Jane Addams and the settlement house philosophy which focused attention on the needs and interests of a particular neighborhood (seeking to create a healthier and more engaged citizenry there), which then was the foundation for wider political engagement and policy deliberations.
Finally, I am convinced that nonprofit organizations (colleges, museums, social service agencies, arts organizations, environmental agencies, etc.) are the most appropriate contexts in which to model for our society the role of healthy public discourse about important issues. We live in a society in which there are few models for talking constructively about politics – certainly not many children learn it from their parents. Our sense of community has been fragmented. Trust in leaders has eroded. Nonprofit organizations are well-situated to respond to each of these challenges. We can help people talk about important issues – all of us have a stake in public policy issues related to our causes. We can help build community around the priorities and values of our organizations. We can illustrate how trust and integrity in our leaders can help to create moral successes. These ideas certainly expand the work of our organizations, but what could be more important for the long-term well being of our missions and our democracy.
Maybe every day needs to be deliberation day.
Next steps in cultural change
Relevant to my earlier discussion of the challenges of culture change, a few concrete next steps for organizational leaders by way of Southern Oregon University’s Provost Earl Potter (as reported in the Stamats strategy e-newsletter, QuickTakes, 6:19):
The pace of change may have an impact on quality, but surely there are aspects of your organizational landscape where the pace is slow for no good reason. Start there.
- Reward good ideas immediately and publicly.
- Celebrate successful efficiency. If someone creates a way to save money, tell everyone about it.
- Collect and use data to make decisions – it is hard to argue with research.
- Resist the temptation to respond to problems with tactics. Teach and demand strategic analysis.
- Remember the important difference between unanimity and functional consensus. You may never get the former in the midst of change; the latter will drive you forward.
- Don’t be a slave to structure and hierarchy – take a chance on good ideas, from whomever they come.
PAY ATTENTION TO THIS
Resources for your reflective practice
I have learned so much about institutional and professional ethics from our colleagues at Independent Sector. The IS board recently has adopted a “Statement of Values and Code of Ethics for Nonprofit and Philanthropic Organizations” (available at www.independentsector.org) that they urge other institutions to use as a template for their own such statements and codes. More on this topic in an upcoming issue of Notes.
I have ordered a copy of The Transparency Edge: How Credibility Can Make or Break You in Business (Barbara Pagano and Elizabeth Pagano, McGraw-Hill, 2004) and am intrigued by the helpful discussion questions for the book published in the March 2003 issue of Fast Company, including this timely zinger: “Do you think leaders are prepared to be overwhelmingly honest and admit mistakes?”
Check out www.mckinseyquarterly.com in general for insightful research, but especially for a fine article on “The dynamic nonprofit board” (2004: no. 2).
Benediction
As we send our students out into the world each spring I have many occasions on which to describe our aspirations for them and to remind them of the privileges and obligations they now have as educated men and women. I recently found this eloquent benediction, crafted originally for the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary community by one of its distinguished faculty members. I will use it this spring and urge you to do so as well.
“Because the world is poor and starving,
Go with bread.
Because the world is filled with fear,
Go with courage.
Because the world is in despair,
Go with hope.
Because the world is living lies,
Go with truth.
Because the world is sick with sorrow,
Go with joy.
Because the world is weary of wars,
Go with peace.
Because the world is seldom fair,
Go with justice.
Because the world is under judgment,
Go with mercy.
Because the world will die without it,
Go with love.”
Subscription information
Subscriptions to Notes are simple to establish. Send me an email at president@rockford.edu, ask to be added to the list, and the listserv will confirm that you have been subscribed to the list. Please feel free to forward your email versions of Notes to others—they then can subscribe by contacting me. The current and archive issues of Notes are available on-line at www.jgacounsel.com.
Topics for the next issue (June 2004)
- Crafting an institutional code of ethics
- Who was Maimonides and what does he have to do with being philanthropic?
- Why I always include “sense of humor” in job descriptions!
(c) Paul Pribbenow, 2004