by Dr. Paul Pribbenow

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"What we have loved, others will love, and we will teach them how." (R. Rilke)

THE CONVERSATION BEGINS

>>Dialogue with readers<<

The responses to the first issue of Notes have been very gratifying.  You have found things to think about, to apply to your work and life, to read and discuss with others. You have been challenged, inspired, enriched, surprised, and reminded of things you know already. I trust that you will continue to send me your ideas and feelings about what you find in my notes. I hope that you might begin to keep your own notes notes about the ideas, values, and practices that make your work more meaningful and successful.

Simone Joyaux helpfully pointed to a source that might be of value to some of you: Pegasus Communications in Massachusetts publishes a newsletter entitled "The Systems Thinker," which often has very good articles about putting learning theory to practice in organizations. I am happy to pass along her recommendation. Please send your own recommendations as the spirit moves you. May our conversations continue. Reflective practice must not be a solitary undertaking and it is not passive. Don't imagine that you can simply sit in your office or living room or retreat center, take time to "think," and suddenly become a reflective practitioner. Build communities and organizations of reflective practitioners and we all will be well served.

My good wishes to all of you for a most spirited and blessed holidays including a glitch-free Y2K!

>>Subscription information<<

I remind you that subscriptions to Notes are simple to establish. Send me an email at pribbenp@wabash.edu, ask to be added to the list, and you will receive a confirmation from the mailserver at Wabash College that you are on the list. Please feel free to forward your email versions of Notes to others they then can subscribe by contacting me. I also am happy to send Notes as an MS Word attachment to an email, if that would make reading it easier for some of you. Just let me know.

A couple of corrections from the first issue of Notes. I indicated that Notes are available on the websites of Johnson, Grossnickle, and Associates (JGA) and the National Society of Fund Raising Executives (NSFRE). Unfortunately, I provided the wrong web address for JGA. It is www.jgacounsel.com. Even if you receive Notes by email, you might enjoy seeing the wonderful service Eva Aldrich at JGA provides as she creates hyperlinks to all of the sources I cite in my Notes. With a simple click of the mouse, you can be in contact with publishers and/or Amazon.com to purchase the books or subscribe to the magazines and journals. JGA also is archiving Notes, so you will be able to find back issues on their web site. I am very grateful to Eva for her fine work. The NSFRE website is in some transition and Notes won't appear there until some redesign work is done.

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REFLECT ON THIS

>>A story to begin<<

Sometimes a simple reminder serves the cause of reflective practice. 

Abigail (my spouse) and I were at lunch recently when a senior friend, who we have come to know through Wabash activities, came by our table. Our friend is showing a few signs of her increasing age and when we asked about her Thanksgiving holiday, she told a bit disjointed story about a visit to Florida with her extended family, pausing on occasion to offer a comment about how things had gone with the family. "Everyone got along well and no one shouted," she told us, "which made me happy." And we all agreed that the fewer angry words, the better, especially at family gatherings.

She was a bit confused as she attempted to relate locations and personalities and menus and finally, lacking the words to say what she wanted to say about her experience, she stopped, looked us both in the eye, and said, "You think about that," and she was off.

You think about that. After our friend had departed, Abigail and I reflected that, even in her confusion (which must be so frustrating for this once active and still most intelligent woman), she offered a profound challenge to all of us thinking must be a part of every life, every day, and we should be grateful for the opportunity to make it so. We owe each other, and our friend, a renewed commitment to share that message.

>> How do we create seamless, integrated organizations? <<

Our publics deserve it, our missions mandate it, and the Web makes it possible. Are you ready for radical organizational change? I think that is a question worth serious reflection.

I have spent a good deal of time in the past year or so exploring the role of the web in the life of Wabash College. I offer no special expertise in this task, but I have learned many important lessons about how an organization needs to plan for its involvement on the web, not because of technical issues those issues are fairly easily solved--but because we haven't faced the more significant challenge of the web to plan and create an integrated, seamless organization, which is what our publics have come to expect.

A recent issue of the "Harvard Management Update" (4: 6, June 1999) suggests that part of the challenge of building a web site is building an integrated organization that will support the perspective of our various publics in their efforts to have a seamless, obstacle-free experience of their interaction with us. The web, then, becomes the catalyst for challenging us to create an organization that our publics (our alumni, our parents, our clients, our members, et al.) can negotiate without finding gaps in services or communication.

Imagine this very concrete situation: An alumnus visits your web site to check out the scores from weekend sports contests; while there, he decides to change his business address and title on-line. The change is made on your main alumni database system. But two weeks later, when your career services office is calling to line up summer internships for students, does the career services staff member have the new contact information in front of her as she calls to ask for help? Does your alumnus have the right to expect that once he provided the new contact information, everyone in the organization who needed the new address, would have it? Of course he does, but can he count on it?

This simple illustration symbolizes our larger challenge to create seamless organizations. Can we deliver the goods? Can our "customer" get from here to there when they contact us, in person, on-line, or on the telephone? What hasn't changed, according to the "Harvard Management Update," is the "twin difficulties of getting human beings to adopt new behaviors and persuading organizations to let go of old practices in favor of the new and untested." (page 3) The moral, logistical, and practical implications of creating seamless organizations may be the greatest challenge for our work lives in the 21st century. Are we ready to face it?

>> Work as a calling<<

I have spent a good bit of time trying to understand whether vocation still has any meaning for our contemporary lives. Recently, a series of intriguing books and essays have helped to expand my perspective on work as a calling.

In my own work, I have relied on James Gustafson's very helpful description of vocation, articulated in his article, "Professions as Callings'," ("Social Service Review," 56: 4, 1982, pp. 503-515), in which he says "Viewing a profession as a calling involves two distinguishable features: certain qualities of motivation, and a broader and deeper vision of the ends to be served." (p. 510) This understanding of vocation links our work to purposes and reasons beyond our immediate self-interests.

In his recent book, "Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation," (Jossey-Bass, 2000), Parker Palmer suggests that the genuine vocational question is "whether what I have done is my life." (page 1) Though some might find the question nonsensical, some among us might find it precise, piercing, and disquieting, reminding us that the life we are living is not the same as the life that wants to live in us. What is our true and authentic life? How shall we find it? Again, Palmer challenges us by pointing out that "Our deepest calling is to grow into our authentic selfhood, whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be." (page 16) Palmer quotes Frederick Buechner, who asserts that true vocation is the "place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need." (ibid) Perhaps the simplest and most helpful question Palmer posits is whether the life we are leading has been imposed from without, or whether we have found our way in response to a voice within. Palmer's "Let Your Life Speak" is one of the most beautiful and moving books I have read in a long time. I urge all of you to make the time to read it.

There are many other helpful sources in finding our vocational ways. Friend and University of Chicago Episcopal chaplain, Sam Portaro's, new book of meditations on vocations, "Crossing the Jordan," (Cowley Publications, 1999) offers a devotional text for all of us. I also have been enriched by Lee Hardy's "The Fabric of the World: Inquiries into Calling, Career Choice, and the Design of Human Work," (Eerdmans Publishing, 1990).

Here is Palmer again with a final word about vocation: "If we are to live our lives fully and well, we must learn to embrace the opposites, to live in the creative tension between our limits and potentials .We must take the no of the way that closes and find guidance it has to offer and take the yes of the way that opens and respond with the yes of our lives." (page 55) Are you ready to answer for your life?

>>It's about time<<

I've been thinking a great deal lately about time and patience and how hard it is to keep up with all of the demands placed upon me (by myself and others!)

Two sources have helped me to describe and better understand the tension in my life between the time I do not have and the longer horizon that I believe must guide my life and work.

I'm reading James Gleick's fascinating book of essays, entitled "Faster: the Acceleration of Just About Everything" (Pantheon Books, 1999). How about that title? Hits pretty close to home, doesn't it? Listen to Gleick's words: "We are in a rush. We are making haste. A compression of time marks the century now closing. Airport gates are minor intensifiers of the lose-not-a-minute anguish of our age. There are other intensifiers places and objects that signify impatience Doctor's anterooms ("waiting" rooms). The DOOR CLOSE button in elevators, so often a placebo, with no function but to distract for a moment those riders to whom ten seconds seems an eternity. Speed-dial buttons on telephone Remote controls " (page 9). Gleick's essay titles read like a summary of my life: "Life as Type A," "Quick Your Opinion?," "7:15. Took Shower." You get the point.

And then I happened upon Witold Rybczynski's new biography of the great 19th century landscape designer, Frederick Law Olmsted, entitled "A Clearing in the Distance" (Scribner, 1999). In the precis for the book, we read this simple quote from Olmsted: "I have all my life been considering distant effects and always sacrificing immediate success and applause to that future." With those disquieting words, Olmsted, the designer of Central Park in New York and Mount Royal Park in Montreal, reminds us that the horizon of our lives matters. We must think on the end times, on the future good, on the history of our work and relationships, for only in our distant effects will we find the strength and courage and wisdom to do our best work today in the midst of this time.

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PRACTICE THIS

>>The clearness committee<<

I first learned about the concept of "the clearness committee" when I was involved in a discernment process to consider whether I had a calling for the ministry. Since then, I have thought many times how valuable that process was for me and what a challenge it provides to our normal ways of thinking through personal and common issues in our organizations.

Recently, Parker Palmer has suggested that "the clearness committee" concept, adapted from the Quaker tradition, might have merit for our busy lives in organizations. In "The Courage to Teach: A Guide for Reflection and Renewal," (Jossey-Bass, 1999), Palmer and co-author, Rachel C. Livsey, propose the clearness committee as a communal approach to discernment.

The basic premise is this: A small of people come together to help an individual discover (discern) the answer to a dilemma through questions that help the individual find the inner voice of truth that often offers the best guidance and power for dealing with our problems. The process is full of silence and honest, open questions. It is not an advice or brainstorming session. It is not a cure-all. But it can be a powerful way to rally the strength of community in the pursuit of wisdom which all of us could use more of!

I urge you to read the Livsey/Palmer guide in addition to the clearness committee "rules" and description, it also offers various other ideas and disciplines for helping us and our colleagues prepare for reflection.

>>How does your meeting go?<<

I must say that I am not a great fan of meetings, though I spend a good bit of my work life in them.

A recent article in "Fast Company" ( April 1999, pp. 205-210) offered some hints about how to make meetings a more effective and integrated part of your organizational lives. According to Michael Begeman, a meeting consultant, there are some basic principles to running meetings that are marked by good behavior, good communication, and good results.

Among his suggestions: (1) Meetings are work--and great meetings take lots of work. You must design and plan your meetings; give them the attention you would a plan for a new program or service. They are just as important. (2) Different meetings need different conversations. Is the meeting about a possibility, a decision, a call to action, an opportunity? Understand these important distinctions and your meeting will be more successful. (3) Always play by the rules of engagement. Make an explicit commitment to establishing rules at your meetings. People expect them and in fact, many people already have rules in mind as they come to a meeting. Make the invisible visible. (4) Small talk is a big deal. There is an important social component to meetings. The ritual of social interaction, which happens one way or another in most meetings, is crucial to plan for and make an integrated part of your meetings.

Meetings may continue to be dreaded time for all of us, but perhaps with a bit of thought and deliberation reflection, perhaps our meetings can become tools for good rather than boredom, passivity, and pent-up anger.

>> A teachable point of view<<

Noel Tichy, a business professor at the University of Michigan and author (with Eli Cohen) of "The Leadership Engine" (HarperBusiness, 1997) has proposed the notion of a "teachable point of view" as a key strategy for how effective leaders translate their visions for an organization to various constituencies.

Tichy says that a "teachable point of view" includes vibrant stories that lead an organization into the future. There are six characteristics of the teachable point of view: teaching, learning, ideas, values, energy, and edge. Teaching and learning are the process by which we share and engage in conversation about our ideas (our theory of organizational success), our values (our personal ideology), our energy (how we motivate other people), and our edge (our thought process for making difficult decisions).

As an integrated package and communicated effectively with others the teachable point of view works well for three main reasons, Tichy says: (1) The very act of creating and testing our teachable point of view makes us better leaders; (2) The teachable point of view multiplies in effect and speed as it is shared within an organization; and (3) It provides a substantive tool a body of knowledge, if you will which can be very effective in the important work of helping other people to learn and grow and lead. If we share what we know and believe through our "teachable point of view," others will develop their own teachable point of view in response to ours.

Tichy suggests that there are three types of stories we must tell in our teachable points of view: stories of who I am (autobiography), who we are (the story of our organization), and what our future will be (our strategic future) these stories are intertwined in the teachable point of view. We are all teachers and learners life-long teachers and learners. Tell your stories, share your point of view, and help your colleagues to understand and see themselves as part of the common story for the future of your organization.

For a good summary of Tichy's work and the impact it has had on Ford Motors, see Suzy Wetlaufer's "Driving Change: An Interview with Ford Motor Company's Jacques Nasser," ("Harvard Business Review," March-April 1999, pp. 76-88).

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PAY ATTENTION TO THIS

>>A few suggestions<<

Though I may find the history of theology an interesting topic for my recreational reading, I imagine the same is not true for most of you, but if I might, I'd like to suggest and recommend a slim volume by Garry Wills, entitled "Saint Augustine." (A Lipper/Viking Book in the Penguin Lives Series, 1999). Wills' fascinating and highly condensed biography of Augustine of Hippo, the 4th and 5th century cleric, offers many lessons for our modern lives. It is about conversion, about a deep faith, about an authentic life. Who could ask for more?

In the last issue, I expressed my great appreciation for the magazine, "Fast Company," and many of you agreed. One additional benefit of a subscription to "FC" is that you receive a quarterly supplement to the magazine entitled, "Net Company," in which I have found many helpful articles that contextualize where the web and e-technology fit in our organizational lives. More about that topic in future issues.

Another follow-up item is in reference to my comments on 'pursuing accountability' in the last issue. As you may recall, I am concerned that many of us in philanthropic organizations wait to have accountability imposed upon us rather than using our ingenuity and imagination to find ways to pursue accountability for what we do and how we serve our various publics. A recent issue of "Change, The Magazine of Higher Learning" (November/December 1999), published by the American Association for Higher Learning (AAHE) includes several articles that illustrate what pursuing accountability might look like, at least in an academic setting. There are some clear lessons for how all of us might organize integrated assessment programs that allow us to measure how well we are doing our work and fulfilling our mission, and that provide a grounding for communicating those measures with those who have put their trust in us.

>>Millennial thoughts<<

I won't say too much about the end of the millennium, except that my millennial expert, Abigail, has us well prepared for whatever comes our way. A new cast iron pot that hangs over the fireplace, lots of bottles of drinking water, and several cases of champagne, ensure that we are ready. We look forward to welcoming 2000 here at home with many good friends from Chicago and Crawfordsville and other environs.

I would be remiss not to offer a couple of sources for interesting reading related to millennium themes.

First, my graduate school colleague, William Schweiker, has a beautiful article entitled "The fullness of time: Reflections on the millennium," in "The Christian Century" (November 3, 1999). Bill, who now teaches at the University of Chicago, suggests that "We live best as creative stewards of time." He describes two threads of thought in Western thought concerning time: one that time is full, the other that time is empty. We all live in the tension between the two threads.

Finally, Martin Marty and his son, Micah Marty, have produced a series of wonderful devotional books that include Marty's words and Micah's beautiful photographs. My favorite is "Our Hope for Years to Come: The Search for Spiritual Sanctuary" (Augsburg-Fortress Press, 1995), in which Marty offers these spirited and comforting words for the turn of the millennium: "From the distance come sounds trumpeting encouragement. They herald reinforcements at hand, to be relied upon in our efforts of any day, of this day and night." (page 39)

May it be so for all of us.

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Topics for the next issue (February 2000)

* The disciplines of your life

Do you read, pray, exercise, write? Professional disciplines may be the key to recovering a sense of the awe and wonder of the work we have the privilege to do.

* Blending commerce with community

How does e-technology challenge our notions of community? Is there such a thing a virtual community without a physical community? How do you know a community when you see one?

* An ethics statement for your own organization

Have you ever tried to write one? What role might it play in focusing the purposes of your work, building a consensus in your organization, and finding links between your mission and your work?

(c) Paul Pribbenow, 1999