Susan Marshall’s Media

The title of Chapter Five in my book How to Grow A Backbone (ISBN: 978-0-8092-2494-4) is “Expand and Contract: Your Thinking Must Change.”

The theme of the January-February 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review is “Reinvent.” In a variety of articles, readers are repeatedly encouraged to rethink where they are; reassess assumptions, roles, and links in a changing marketplace; rewrite playscripts and re-energize their organizations.

To do these things, we must embrace the challenge to expand and contract our thinking. On one hand, we need to step back from our work to expand our vision, search a broader world, and develop a relevant context for our endeavors. On the other hand, we must guard against distraction and the danger of being led far astray from our work by interesting but irrelevant information. There’s a lot of noise out there!

As a concept, this is easy to understand. In practice, it is difficult to do well. Purposely seeking out different perspectives and opposing viewpoints is not something we rush to do. Challenging current assumptions and questioning the status quo can feel risky. As leaders and decision-makers, we are taught to develop a point of view and hold it with conviction.

Which makes my point all the more compelling. In order to develop a strong point of view that is relevant to today’s challenges and opportunities, the discipline of sorting and sifting through enormous amounts of data to create information and act upon it is essential.

Sadly, it seems that discipline fell out of favor some time ago. About that same time information exploded. Technology spread the explosion. We need a refresher course on how to scan the global information horizon to see what is happening out there and apply it to what we are trying to accomplish in here.

Expand and contract. If you are serious about thriving in the New Year, your thinking must develop this kind of flexibility and purpose. Read chapter five in my book and pick up a copy of the current Harvard Business Review. Then make time to think.

I’ve been thinking a lot about schools lately. The debate about whether the Mayor of Milwaukee should take control of the Milwaukee Public School system has raged for a long time with passion on both sides of the issue.

Education is a building block of any society. Public education seeks to equip members of a society to understand how it works and be able to effectively participate within it.

There was a time when “society”—whether local, regional or national—had a similar view of life and agreed, for the most part, on what things kids needed to learn in order to become productive members. Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, and Andy of Mayberry are examples of the television barometers that defined an accepted view of life once upon a time.

That time was a long time ago. Ask ten people today to define society and you can expect ten different answers. The role of education? Depends who you ask. While most people will still agree that education is a crucial building block of society, there is little agreement these days about what that means, who should be involved, what should be taught, who should pay for it, and what outcomes should be required.

If you peek inside a business, you will find the same changing landscape. Yes, most organizations will acknowledge that continuing education is important to their ongoing success. Workers/employees/associates need to understand what the business does, who it serves, how it makes money, and how it operates and adapts to be successful.

So we have learners. That’s most of us.

Then we have teachers. These are the people uniquely trained to understand society and know how things work, who have demonstrated their ability to inform others, and who make a living by helping others learn the ropes.

By definition, we have set up an uneven playing field. Learners lack; teachers fulfill. Learners need; teachers provide. Learners wait; teachers set the pace.

It occurred to me as I was thinking about all this that we are using outdated notions of education, where the student is a blank or under-developed slate and the teacher is a magician of sorts. How distorted a view this is!

When businesspeople (myself included) are brought in to assist in improving school performance, some are quick to say that the school professionals’ inferior knowledge or experience led to the under-performing situation. These same people would say that if only education professionals could learn what business professionals know, the situation could surely be turned around.

The abject disrespect of this approach is shameful. No businessperson can know—unless they have spent time in a school or classroom—what a principal or teacher encounters day to day.

The same is true, of course, for a teacher’s understanding of what a businessperson encounters in the course of doing business.

Here’s what shook out of my thinking. If we are to share our experiences to assist one another in doing better work, we must first respect one another. We all bring some level of experience and knowledge to the table. Tossing this aside is not only an act of disrespect, it is also a foolish act of disregard for the collective knowledge resource we can draw upon.

It is only after we have offered respect to our students that we can begin to teach them. Too many teachers want to take the podium as experts, preaching to the uninformed. While students may lack the knowledge of the expert, they do bring some accomplishment to the lecture. And they want it honored.

My colleague and mentor, University of Michigan professor Noel Tichy, has captured this dynamic and named it. The Virtuous Teaching Cycle acknowledges that both students and teachers bring information to the exchange and that both are learners as well as educators.

Bottom line: If you want someone to learn from you, respect them first, then teach.

‘Tis the season to be politically correct in our holiday greetings and thus, not very spontaneous or joyful. Bah humbug to that!

I wish all my family, friends, colleagues, clients, neighbors, and fellow citizens a very Merry Christmas! It makes me happy to wish you the joys, blessings, love, and celebration of the season in the way I learned to express it growing up.

I have friends of many backgrounds, nationalities, religious beliefs—and non-beliefs—and I love it when they extend the greetings they know. What a rich tapestry of joy we weave together! What a wonderful opportunity we find to learn from one another and expand our knowledge and appreciation of other human beings and their cultures.

This is what the season calls forth. Peace on Earth! Goodwill toward Men! (A universal sentiment which includes us, ladies. Let’s not get a nose out of joint about that, too.)

Think about what happens when the political correctness cops come out. If we heed them, we hesitate. We wonder if our words are going to be misconstrued. We worry about who might be offended. When we stop to wonder if someone is going to be offended, we hesitate to share happiness and goodwill. What a shame! How stilted we become, and how resentful. That’s a betrayal of the season!

Here’s some advice. Be your joyful self this holiday season and be genuine in your expression. If someone gets bent out of shape because they don’t like your greeting, invite them to share theirs. If they cannot or will not, ignore them and move on. They are never going to be your friend. More important, they are never going to do the work of expanding their own understanding to embrace joyful difference.

The people who want you to put a generic label on your greeting are trying to force their way of thinking upon you. What’s okay about that?

Merry Christmas, my friends! May the season bring you great joy in life’s simple pleasures, and may you be blessed by the true gift of sharing.

This week from The Backbone Institute and Susan Marshall:

“IT’S NOT PERSONAL… IT’S BUSINESS”

When do we hear this?
• Downsizing – “You’re fired!”
• Contract expiration
• Conclusion of some business relationship
• Any unpopular decision
• When person delivering bad news does not want to deal with emotion

What is our immediate reaction?
• Anger
• I don’t believe you
• There’s more to this story
• It’s worse than I thought
• Business is cruel
• This IS personal but you’re too afraid to deal with it – These people don’t have a BACKBONE!

Characteristics of these situations:
• Lots of emotion.
• Little understanding.
• Feelings of dismissal and disrespect.

Result: Long-term ill will toward this particular employer, manager, situation.
People carry wounds - develop pessimism and cynicism that makes them less attractive to other employers and more susceptible to this very thing happening again.

On a grander scale, we build distrust as we toggle back and forth between weak hiding behind lame excuses and completely frank and indelicate behavior. We create wounded people.

STORY: HR directives on how to fire a senior manager to avoid an age discrimination lawsuit. 3 sentences + 1 witness + 2 minutes = “It’s not personal, it’s business.”

My disobedience. 90 minutes to deliver news, allow venting = no lawsuit. Manager left with friends; understanding the business reason for the decision and feeling respected.

Thinking back to coaches, teachers, other important people, we realize that the people who pushed us and were honest with us made us better. We get sidetracked by culture and niceties that tend to prevent honesty.

CALL UP YOUR CHARACTER!

How to deal with a disappointing decision that is delivered in a cold, impersonal way?
• Don’t make it personal, even if it feels that way.
• Ask—as objectively as you can—for as much information as you need to understand the decision.
• Ask for feedback – what might you have done differently? What can you do going forward?
• Accept the fact that you may not get the information/feedback you want. Some people just don’t deal well with conflict or disappointment.
• DON’T BURN BRIDGES.
• Take the high road. Your reputation is worth far more than this particular situation.
• Recognize that when one chapter ends a new one begins.

SUMMARY:
We make business personal when we bring hopes and aspirations to work. Whether we think about it or not, we expect companies and bosses to honor and support our career goals. But that’s not their responsibility.

Keep track of your contributions. Add value where you can. Recognize that sometimes things don’t work out. Take the learning and build on it so that you can continue to move forward.

It’s Not Business, It Is Personal. Build a personal reputation for maturity and contribution – you may be surprised at how many businesses will want to talk to you!

Next week: How to be an effective team player.