A Tryptych on Change

Sally

Spare some change?

Spare some change?

in her child like voice

unkempt and unwashed

so many layers of clothing

socks over socks over stockings

soleless boots, tattered and unlaced

shuffles hurried city sidewalks

she collects scraps of paper

to fill her shopping cart

to fill her silent refuge

Spare some change?

Spare some change?

trade for a small meal

to silence her hunger

maybe her only meal

maybe her last meal

Hey buddy, can you spare some change?

This is a phrase heard in every big city, in every country and in every language. It is a quest for currency to exchange for something that will stifle hunger or shift a mood. It is a plea for change to effect change.

With countless people begging for change, why does it conjure fear in so many? Does it really take emotional, economic or social desperation to appreciate change? In our comfortable world why is change still unwelcome, still unexpected?

No person exists in isolation. We may be the centre of our own universe but we are never the centre of another’s universe. We can control nothing but ourselves. We exist in a dynamic culture. People are born. People grow. People move. People die. There are always new trends, new gimmicks, new technologies and new ways. A door leading to a new future usually closes on a familiar past.  We risk becoming a stranger to the world around us when we are tempted to resist change. Resistance is futile. There has never been a choice to stay as we are.

Communities grow and new opportunities come to life and flourish. Where once there was a field or a mountain view there is now habitation and commerce.  Institutions adapt, build new, welcome new and nurture new.  Without growth, communities age and eventually another ghost town fades into the dust.

We announce change with celebrations of new life. We have parties for a new home. We promise change with New Year’s Resolutions. We celebrate transitions, accomplishments and independence. Change comes disguised as growth: a newborn lies motionless, eventually turns over, then crawls, achieves an unsteady walk, then runs and finally turns to wave goodbye.

Some say change is the new constant. It is the only constant. Birth, death and the rising sun are all harbingers of change. Without something new any system starts to decay. Change renews life.  Life is change.

Hey buddy, can you spare some change?

Being Prepared, How to Shift Change to Opportunity

To provide respite until the predator moves on a turtle pulls back into its shell, a possum plays dead and an armadillo rolls into an armoured sphere. Fear drives responses to transitory changes. They are productive only when the danger is real and the predator can be deceived. They are a comical over-reaction for false alarms and terminal when the predator is more cunning.  

How many of our responses to change are still based on fear? 

How much of life is spent on wagon-circle practice drills?

We assume humans differ from the rest of the animal kingdom because of a consciousness  that takes us beyond instinct: abilities to rationalize, to communicate, to create, to record history, to engage in abstract thinking and  to develop complex relationships. Even with scheduled changes such as the first day of school, moving from one grade to the next, moving onto university or becoming independent, fear responses can creep in.

Change is like the weather - some ancient otherworld force makes it happen. What we do when we feel the effects of change is often mistaken for change. It is really just our particular response. Planting a new crop, moving to take a new job, building new infrastructure are all intended to take advantage of changing situations, to somehow make the future brighter or more certain.  The drive-ins of the 1950’s and 1960’s were redeveloped in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Golf courses and the suburban shopping mall are now in this queue. The redevelopments are not the cause of the changing urban environment. They are a consequence of the social and economic realities of the day.

 

Preparing for the inevitable helps develop resilience and supports us through the unforeseen. Resilience is still an instinctual response but being prepared is that part of humanity that allows us to optimize life. Where some see adversity, others see opportunity. Where some see good luck others see a leveraged opportunity. The difference is expectation and anticipation.

Global connectivity is shifting business practice, education methodologies, career opportunities, social interactions and lifestyles. As with any change the early adapters will ride the crest. In this case, the late adapters risk getting caught in the undertow.

If only you could see it my way.......

As part of my university education in a pre-architecture program there were several mandatory arts electives: English, Anthropology, Psychology, Sociology and Philosophy. After two years of ‘intro’ courses I opted for a third year course on the psychology of perception instead of Philosophy 101. Since then I have had a continuing internal dialogue around the question:

   

Is the reality I perceive the same reality you perceive?

We learn our realities by experience and positive reinforcement. When I see something I call ‘green’ my reality is affirmed if everyone else also calls it ‘green’.  I still have no way of knowing if our sensory experience of ‘green’ is the same, I just know that we agree the experience is ‘green’.

Ambiguity creeps in when the object is teal. Does it tend to blue or to green because of a unique reaction to lighting conditions or a variable number of colour receptors in the retina, or...? When compared to the general population taste testers are said to have more physiology relating to the sensation of taste. At other spots on the spectrum: is it possible to understand what creates reality for an autistic person or someone with ADHD? 

Nature prepares each one of us to construct different realities.

For some teal is a new entity called teal.

The significance of an element in our environment also affects how we define it in our reality. 

In an environment where the quality of snow affects survival: how you build shelter; how you walk when hunting for food or how you travel, this white stuff is much more vital. Pre-technology Inuit used multiple terms for what the rest of us call snow.

The tachistoscope, a device that displays an image for a specific amount of time, demonstrates that we are quicker to perceive something if it is familiar. There actually is an exposure time required before we can even ‘see’ a completely unfamiliar object.

Nurture prepares us to collectively define a reality.

My tribe’s reality might be different from your tribe’s.

Differences in how we perceive reality creates our culture. This is the reason for the 'generation gap' and could be the foundation of the struggle the education system has meeting the expectations of students today.  Effective communication starts with an awareness of these differences and is amplified when there is translation into a culture. Cross-pollinating cultures is complex when value laden issues arise. What is polite behaviour? What is an injustice? What is fair? What is truth?

Some say up to December 31, 1999 humanity modeled a competitive paradigm and the 21^st century, enabled by new technologies, is the dawn of the collaborative age. Collaboration draws us out of our tribe. Understanding how our own reality fits into the reality of others allows awareness to shift beyond the self and ultimately to the global ecology.

The concrete shoes of legacy and sunk costs.

I am slowly working my way through Thomas L Friedman’s book Hot, Flat Crowded (2008). One reason for taking so long is that my reading time is limited to airports, planes, and car service waiting rooms. Another reason (the book is only 482 pages) is the thought provoking content. A new understanding, a twist of the current way of thinking or an explanation will often set my own thought wheels turning, causing a background conversation that competes with further reading.

In the part on “America” just after the chapter “Can Red China Become Green China?” the notion that “legacy industries” are one of the main resistors to the greening of America is introduced.

Legacy industry (a weak attempt at a definition):

• industries that are fundamental to the way our economy and social structures exist today (e.g. the auto industry, the tobacco industry, the carbon based energy industries - coal and petroleum, the banking industry, the insurance industry, the arms manufacturing industry, the medical service industry, trade unions, etc...)
• industries that base their current success and market position on maintaining the status quo (this is how we always do this...)

According to Friedman, one of the problems faced by America is that the democratic system opens the door for the legacy industries to stop the implementation of energy policies required to end the dependence on a carbon based economy. 

China is now leading in the environmental technologies:

• their governance allows for top down policy change
• the inertia of their population brings them closer to environmental collapse
• if necessity is the mother of invention, their necessity is larger than any other country's

They may fail because in the democratic system everyone can be a watchdog and has voice, but that is topic for another discussion.  

Also this week I was introduced to the concept of "sunk costs" and their ability to limit change. The wiki definition seems to get suffocated by economists’ theories and testing. The simple notion of “sunk costs” is that your investment to date may increase your resistance to sell out. This would be the reason you stay in the check-out line that seems to be the slowest, or why you are devastated when your report is shelved (after all that work!).

Two concepts: “legacy industries” and “sunk costs”, same fundamental evil. They are found everywhere.

The union structure protects workers rights against any change that may make the worker redundant.

When the mini bus was introduced to the public transit system for routes with low ridership it appeared to offer marginal employment (off peak hours, split shifts, ect...). The senior drivers wanted to be sure they wouldn`t be driving the mini-bus. Once they realized that the mini-bus is actually “easier” work and offers more consistent employment (fewer big buses run during off peak times so there are fewer shifts available for the senior drivers) they fought for exclusive rights to this scope.

The democratization of information management, through the internet, social media, open source software, and advancements in computer technologies, is the disruptive innovation challenging our educational system. .

Educators, once the gate keeper of knowledge (a legacy industry), are facing a dilemma: redefine your scope or become redundant. Even the shift from “sage on the stage” to “guide by the side” is being eclipsed by open source “mentors” on Youtube, or on sites such as "edufire" or "The Khan Academy".

Departmental exams based on information retention were never measures of intellectual accomplishment.  They continue to be mandated by provinces, states or other levels of government (the legacy industry) as a way to demonstrate accountability and have become legislated life-wasting exercises.

What other legacy constructs exist in the educational system?

The old person distrusts the young person because the young person lacks experience. Or is the new order a threat to the “sunk costs” embedded by the old person’s life experiences?

Budgeting with public money

How many of us have:

• worked for a boss that gloms onto the newest technology? This technology could improve productivity, except the boss is not part of the production line.  So while the boss is away the technology sits idle. sacrificed  because “it is not in the budget” and then watched as a new suite of furniture replaces old furniture in another office?
• watched as new initiatives are started while basic services are abandoned

The budget process is basically:

Step one: identify all your “to do’s”, needs and wants.

Step two: create list one = priority = funded and list two = non-essential = not funded

Assumption: the budget process supports the core business

Challenge: trim the fat while enabling muscle building

The public sector operates on a limited budget. The overall budget is created by politicians. The assignment of dollars to departments and their constituent cells is based on the squeaky wheel syndrome.   In the private sector you work harder, more efficiently, or learn new technologies to improve the corporate bottom line. In the public sector this effort tends to increase scope, reduce staff or reduce next year’s budget.

Although creating a budget starts with a foundational philosophy, each level in an organization tends to develop singular priorities, sometimes shifting items from the non-essential list to the priority list. With a mindset that requires spending all one year’s budget an inventive manager will also create uses for all of their budget allowance. This is especially common at the end of a budget cycle.

The financial psychopath is someone who:

• says “you really need more help”, or “we really need to add equipment” while they can find money for corporate non-essential items (new furniture, capital improvements, conferences, etc...)
• ignores corporate needs within the budget assigned to them and treats it as their own money
• regularly shifts items from the corporate non-essential list to their own priority lisy
• values power and prestige over corporate productivity

The language of the financial psychopath:

•  “it isn`t in the budget“ = “I am more important than our core business”
• “I have money in my budget for *corporate non-essential item* = “I always pad my budget request” or “really this is my money, I’ll spend it how I wish”

Budgeting in a time of scarcity requires:

• placing a higher value on corporate needs than individual or political wants
• making decisions that support the core business of the organization
• decisions that support productivity not power and prestige
• sacrificing the power interests in the organization

So is it ever appropriate to consider government or quasi-government groups to in any situation other than one of scarcity?

How many of us have heard a public sector executive say "after all I am the head of a multi-million dollar corporation" - public sector groups don't manage income, they only manage spending.

Site Based Management – a Formula for Failure

Have you ever noticed the difficulty communicating to someone so that they exactly understand an idea that is crystal clear in your own mind? We all seem to work with an internal filter that receives information, adjusts it to suit our basic bias, cognitive abilities and personal stories and experiences. If there was only one language and we all had a common background communicating would be a lot easier. Even better would be a read-o-graph that displayed exactly the script that was being received. I am always amazed by the skill of the translator taking one language and immediately voicing it back in another language.  I am sure it isn’t an exact translation but at least there are no international incidents resulting from the slight reinterpretations that do occur.

The reality today is that we are starting to need instantaneous translations into the world of the ‘forty year old male’, or the ‘twenty-five year old female’, or the ‘teenager’ or....

In any organization we like to think that there is a corporate culture that is understood by all.  Again if we were all cloned genetically and experientially this might have some chance of being a reality. Organizations are many layered with teams and groups but the constituent parts at the foundation are always individuals, individuals who have a unique understanding of goals and a unique way of acting on their understanding.

Site based management is a common management practice intended to divest decision making to the ‘front lines’ where decisions can more accurately reflect the needs of clients and the local conditions. Seems good in theory, but considering the wobbly nature of communication and the insistence of people to behave as individuals site based management  can actually be a recipe, at best , for the dilution of corporate intent , and at worst,  the collapse of the corporate structure.

The Bay seems to be going through another rebirth, and again the aim is to try to create an ‘upscale’ market retail environment. I say ‘again’ because this story has been told many times before. The Hudson Bay store used to be on my lunch time walk, and after the start of one of these rebirthings I recall one lunch hour when I witnessed a gaggle of retailers, led by a blond bespectacled individual, going through the redesigned store waving and gesturing. Soon after what was once a spacious retail floor became crowded with racks, tables, bins and other displays reminiscent of a bargain -basement .  I could never imaging that ‘head office’ intended each rebirth to be played out this way.  Was this restructuring of a head office renovation the product of a ‘local’ mindset?

Defining corporate goals and priorities....

The communication of corporate goals suffers each time the explanation occurs. So imagine what is left of the original when head office tells the national organization who then tells the regional organization who then tells the local / franchise level. Now add the trend in some organization where each level can also develop goals and priorities. This is supposed to happen under the umbrella of the parent, but it doesn’t take much to imagine all the scattered themes and variations of the corporate goal that ultimately find airtime.

Accountability....

The variety of translations of corporate culture that results from site base management is also the limiting factor in any attempt to demonstrate accountability.  Is there any wonder that the site-based managed systems of health care and education are under attack for their inability to justify their worth when each level reads and writes their own script, fights with the goals of other teams and seems to have little regard for the goals set out by government.

The question of equity.....

The need to assume that the sites are ‘equal’ is another failing of the site-based management paradigm. If this assumption did not exist the parent would be dictating a differentiation of the sites – not part of the paradigm. Sometimes the sites are given a structure that allows for the self-identification of variations leading to enhanced considerations from the parent. The end game here is that the site based managers determine their variations based on their understanding and the chance that they will receive some sort of enhancement. Sounds like a bell ringing for a salivating dog.

A shortage of leaders....

The biggest failing of the site-based management paradigm is the assumption that there are sufficient leaders to go around. In addition to the consequences of a ‘Peter-principled’ corporate reality statistically speaking there are just not enough champions to go around. Even if there were enough people, there would not be enough money to pay all the superlative leaders required for all the sites being managed. Even less likely,  given the CEO corporate structure, is the chance that site based managers, who are making the frontline decisions, will actually be paid more than the CEO or managers at the upper levels.

Awareness to the rescue....

So are there any benefits to site-based management?  They only start to surface when the shortfalls are accounted for.

Aligning Bell Curves

The bell curve was the analytical tool used by educators to marginalize those who do not fit within the normal range of intelligence – intelligence as measured through western-biased  tests. There is lots of controversy around this measure, especially when someone tries to connect it to other aspects of society - employment, social status, criminal behavior, and so on into the depths of bias and incoherence.

If we remove the aura of elitism from the purpose of the bell curve and look at it as a demonstration of levels of a specific attribute or skill within the general population it can be an abstract tool to help understand how to optimize an organization and ultimately how strategically position an organization when confronted with evolving market demands. Essentially the bell curve represents the notion that there are lots of people in the ‘average’ category , some with more and some with less.

Since this may be outside of the typical / deep rooted understanding of the bell curve - take something like athletic ability. They say people who are high performance athletes have an acute awareness of where their body is and how it moves. They probably also have a physique that is conducive to their chosen sport (swimmer’s build, runner’s build, wrestler’s build, etc...). Their body is also constructed in a way that makes their movements more efficient. Their mind can imagine the proper execution of their skills. So people who are in the average range of the athletic ability bell curve have some of these attributes, people in the upper range have more, people in the lower have less.

In the world of musical talent the bell curve could have  the ‘tone deaf’ at one extreme and the composer that imagines the music before it is written, just as a writer thinks the text before it is written, the artist the painting before the brush stroke, at the other extreme.

Educational organizations struggle with learners who fall outside of the average range. There is a time table structure for the school day that says all students need to spend a specific amount of time in front of a teacher to gain the knowledge required to proceed to more advanced levels and eventually graduate. In some cases this measured interaction is also the basis for funding. It also can be the measure to compare the relative value of similar institutions. When the real measure of success is demonstrating the ability to complete a task how do you work with the student who needs more time, and how do you respect the time of the student who needs less time. The time table model actually entrenches the belief that the educational system has the right to waste the life of highly performing students and also abandon those who need the additional time. Recognizing the individual needs of students is one of the justifications for a self-paced learning environment.

We now see the mantra ‘any time, place, pace, path learning' which promotes individualized programs and is the driver for online learning. The difficulty in the implementation of truly ‘any time, place, pace, path learning' is releasing the time-tabler's stranglehold on the educational system.

Public education also struggles with the notion of excellence. There is a tendency to try to provide equal access to programs: if you start a fine arts program or a high performance sports program in one school, you need to offer it in all schools – a Julliard on every corner concept. This leads to the perpetuation of mediocrity. This is fine if that is your goal, but representing your efforts as superlative is false advertising since statistically there are not enough people in the expert area of the bell curve to staff anything other than average programs. There is also no ability to customize according to the varied levels of commitment in students.

The magnet school is based on the notion that you pair expert mentors with highly skilled and committed learners. You then create an environment  that meets their needs in the best way possible. The 'state' says we still have to shepherd them up the ladder of educational achievement but priorities are different for an individual whose life goal is the Olympics, Hollywood, or Everest. Yes it is an elitist attitude, which for some has no place in public education, but the reality of the bell curve distribution of life is that we do not all have the same abilities or drive, we do not all have the same past or future but we all have the same rights to be the best we can be in society. A multiplier of the possibilities created by the magnet school occurs when the reputation or synergy of the institution allows connections to external sources of excellence.

The grim reality of life is that everything can be arrayed on a bell curve.  You trust your doctor (or maybe not), but there is no guarantee that your doctor finished at the top of the class. Someone was at the bottom of the class that year. A good server in a restaurant never writes an order down. A less than good server brings your salad to the next table.

The struggle in any organization is recognizing that everyone is somewhere on a variety of bell curves. In addition to the required employment skill sets these demonstrate their levels of commitment, creativity, divergence in their thinking, ability to adapt, ability to multi-task, etc...

The move to digital learning technologies in education, as a response to the evolving culture of learners, is changing the bell curves and shifting the points of excellence required in our institutions. Maybe it is time to take stock.

Next topic - the perils of site based management.