The Medici Effect: Chapters 9-15

In the final section of his book, Johansson (2006) focuses on realizing creative ideas. Concepts that he covers include persevering in spite of failures, breaking out of one's network, and taking reasonable risks.

As is always my impression when I read this book, I feel like Johansson's goals are questionable. Should a rabbit learn how to swim? To what extent is Johansson's advice just that--encouraging people to live outside of their strengths? At one point, Johansson states:

There is a common notion that Branson’s daring ventures have something to do with who he is as a person. They are part of how he is wired. Taking huge risks is like breathing air for Branson; it’s a behavior that’s possibly in his genes. This notion suggests that there is little we can learn from Branson’s approach to risk taking. All we can do is look at it, shrug our shoulders, and shake our heads at his craziness and then go back to our business. Not so fast (Kindle Locations 2416-2419).

Johansson then goes on to state that by studying such people, we can learn something about taking risk. I don't dispute his underlying point, but I think he is the one moving fast. Why move past this point so summarily? Why not stop and reflect on the extend to which certain creative tendencies are simply a matter of natural strengths? It is not enough to study people who make things look easy. We need to consider more deeply why more people do not (should not?) follow suit. Johansson never really discusses this subject. The above quotation is the closest he gets to such considerations.

However, I really liked a lot of Johansson's ideas. I do think stepping into the intersection includes all of the elements he suggested. He explicitly makes statements that I have found to be true. He states:

If you take a course of action that is widely seen as correct, your reputation barely suffers if you did not make it all the way. If, on the other hand, you proceed in a way that is less understood and fail, it might be tougher to live down because you will be judged harshly. The stigma of failure can be crushing (Kindle Locations 2437-2439).

I feel like I have encountered this phenomenon quite often in my life. It is crushing for me too. In the past, I think I often laid down under others' criticism--surrendered my ground and tried to find a more conventional route. Perhaps I blamed others for being intolerant and myself for not being able to fit in socially. Recently, though, I've been challenged about my behavior, challenged to see it as somewhat cowardly. I think I need to be braver and not blame others for not understanding, but just do what I believe God is asking me to do.

I don't think people should try too hard to be different. It is not God's calling for every person, but if one does have that calling--if, just in the process of being oneself, one ends up at the intersection and everyone is judging you for it, God is calling that person to hold their course. As Johansson notes, great things are often only accomplished by taking risk.

I also liked what Johansson said about risk. He said: [The study] suggests that efforts we take to decrease risks around us, such as making roads safer, amount to little because our behavior becomes riskier to compensate (Kindle Locations 2492-2493).

He proceeds to give several examples, including seat belts and crosswalks. This argument made me smile because I hate the way governments "nanny" people. There are a lot less of these kinds of rules in China. Foreigners are shocked by how messy the traffic is and how there aren't always railings in high places. People do seem to be able to take care of themselves, though. Johansson describes a relationship to deadlines that I found very familiar.

Having more time means taking more time. Having greater experience or better contacts means relying more on them to get things done. It is not that we waste time, money, or contacts, but that we try to do more with the amount that we have. In trying to do more, we slowly begin to increase the risk of failure, until we hit a level we are subconsciously comfortable with (Kindle Locations 2516-2518).

I notice that I do this with my work. Not everyone is wired the same. Some people start working right away, but I always wait until some subconscious switch in my head flips and tells me to kick it into gear. I kind of wish I could start earlier, but maybe that's just the way I am wired--to spend a long time mulling something over before I do anything about it.

Social Justice and Diversity

I think one weakness of Johansson's book is that he does not address this aspect of innovation. A lot of his examples were white men. I don't think this is because white men are inherently more creative than other types of people. There's an aspect of creativity and innovation that owes its fruitfulness to privilege. One has to have resources to be innovative, and some people are able to come by them much more readily than others. I wish Johansson had delved into this question a little deeper. He could have. At least two of his examples were people of color. I wished he had asked them what influence their race had on their ability to be creative. I think they would have had interesting things to say.

The Medici Effect: Chapter 7-8

In chapter seven, Johansson (2006) states that creative people are characterized by having a lot of ideas. He really leans on this idea, giving several examples and argues that quantity and quality correlate, so that a person cannot have quality ideas if they do not also have quantity. Good ideas are also unpredictable. People who have them can have them at any time in their life. He also describes how intersections have the potential for exponentially more ideas.

In chapter eight, Johansson describes how to capture this explosion, giving three steps: strike a balance between breadth and depth, actively generate many ideas, and allow time for evaluation. In this chapter, he discusses brainstorming and notes that brainstorming actually works better for individuals than it does for most groups. He also debunks the idea that pressure makes people more creative and describes optimum timing for developing good ideas. 

My reaction to Johansson's description of the mass of ideas creative people have was tiredness. I wondered, "Isn't it possible that these people aren't just creative, but brilliant?" Johansson has this way of implying anyone can do it with just three easy steps. My own life experience does not suggest that.  Don't get me wrong, I do know what it means to have a lot of ideas, but the productivity of some of the people he mentions is daunting. Most of my ideas flow through my head and into either my journal or into oblivion--and I love to think about things. Not everyone has that kind of energy. On the other side of it, I really struggle to realize many of my ideas, which the examples he describes don't seem to do. I really wish that Johansson would go through and rewrite this book with a strengths perspective. 

I do think what he had to say about the number of ideas at intersections was pretty cool. I also think it is true from my own experience. When one's associative barriers are low, ideas are everywhere. In my cohort, people have talked about not being able to find anything to research, and I think, "Are you kidding?" I can think of maybe ten different topics that I could probably spend my life digging into in about a half an hour. In fact, I brought those ten topics with me to our first week of intensives and sat down with Alex and picked the topic I'm working on now. Finding ideas to research is like picking up pebbles off the beach... so many pebbles... so little time. Developing the idea is just so intensely time and energy consuming. That is where the bottleneck is for me. 

I have been having this experience lately, reading these books, where I predict something or react a certain way and then find the book echoing my thoughts. That was what happened this time when I started to read about brainstorming. Johansson quoted an author who said, "The average person can think of twice as many ideas when working with a group than when working alone." When I read that, I thought, "Well then I must not be average because that is not where I do my best thinking." And sure enough, it turns out that some scientists tested this statement and found out that no, people actually are more creative when they brainstorm alone--mostly because turn-taking rules in a group stifle people's ideas and then they forget about them. I think in my case, I also just have a very quirky way of thinking about things that some people find a little hard to accept. 

Social Justice and Diversity

So I don't think these chapters had a lot to say about social justice beyond the fact that most of Johansson's examples are old white guys who are good at technical innovation. I think it would be nice if he expanded his concept a little in those areas. At the end of chapter eight, Johansson suggests that there is more to innovation than having good ideas. He says, "You must make those ideas happen." I'll admit, that is my weak point. I think there were be more to say about social justice in those chapters because they have more to do with our relationship to each other. 

The Medici Effect: Chapters 5-6

Well, I was going to read three chapters, but I had so much to say about chapter six that I decided to stop there. In chapter five, Johansson (2006) describes the process of randomly combining concepts, using the example of Richard Garfield, who invented the card game Magic: the Gathering. He notes that combining concepts randomly is the basis of innovation. In chapter six, he outlines three ways to increase this tendency to find useful combinations of concepts. He suggests we diversify occupations, diversify our interactions with people, and look for intersections.

I have a complex and somewhat negative reaction to Johansson's ideas. I think that reaction is already clear in other posts that I've written about this book. It is not that his ideas are bad, uninteresting, or useless. Its more of a feeling of "been there, done that, and it's not as easy as you are suggesting!"

Here's a question. Our program embraces positive psychology and the strengths perspective that Clifton came up with. According to that perspective, Johansson is approaching this idea all wrong. He is writing a how-to book for uncreative people. He is saying, "You are not very creative now, but if you follow these steps, you will improve." If we agree with Clifton, this is the classic example of trying to teach a rabbit how to swim (Clifton & Nelson, 1992). On the other hand, I suppose Johansson's argument is that we need more creative people. So which is it? Are we building towards our strengths or trying to get people to contort into attitudes and concepts that are not natural to them? Or maybe Johansson really hasn't thought that through at all. Maybe he just wrote this book to profit off of people's tendency to admire and strive to be what they are not.

One of the reasons that I have this reaction to the book is that I am actually the native fish (to extend the teaching-the-rabbit-how-to-swim analogy). I don't need Johansson's advice. He is describing my natural tendencies. As a naturally creative person who is constantly trying to expand my horizons and find intersection (if that is what one wants to call them), I have not found the challenge to be actually doing it. I have found the challenge to be other people really understanding themselves or their reaction to my personality and gifts.

Take Johansson's idea about diversifying our interactions with people. He says: Humans have a tendency to stick with people who are like themselves and avoid those who are different. Psychologists have a name for this tendency. They call it the similar-attraction effect. I don't really seem to have this tendency. I love meeting people who are different from myself. I have across-the-room envy. I want to know what those people over there are talking about. The more different they are, the more fascinating I find them. This ends up being a somewhat self-destructive tendency because other people don't share it. They are usually pretty content not to know me, and it can be a little intimidating to try to break those social barriers. One of the lovely things about living overseas is that you mostly meet the people from other cultures who share a similar tendency. They wouldn't hang out with me if they didn't like hanging out with people who are different in general. They self-identify.

My native crowd, the one that I love the best, is the one that includes my Russian friend, my Mexican friend, my Indian friend, my Filipino friend, my Chinese friend, and my Taiwanese-extraction Californian friend. When we get together, we have so much fun and the conversation is so interesting, but it should be noted and even emphasized that none of these friends are typical of their native land. We are all freaks. Why would we be hanging out together in a residence hall for foreigners in China if we weren't? My Russian friend studied in Lithuania and is going to get her Ph.D. in the U.S. She says that her own countrymen tend to see her as a traitor because of her close ties with the west. My Mexican friend spent eight years in the U.S. before deciding to come and live with a bunch of American teachers in China. My Chinese friend chose to hang out with our motley crowd instead of her own people and is now studying for her MBA in California. None of us fit in in our native setting and it is very unlikely that we will ever be completely happy if we try to go back to that place. I am getting a Ph.D. in my native country, and I know I don't fit in at all.

So I already asked this question, but if Johansson cares so much about fostering creativity and innovation, why is he trying to make more creative people? Why isn't he instead writing a book about fostering the ones who already exist? We don't have a good deal generally. We are forced to specialize and there is not a general value for our differentness. Johansson notes:

Most people, for instance, think they are pretty decent at interviewing candidates for jobs. Some people even claim that they can tell as soon as a candidate walks through the door whether the person is suitable. “When you’ve been in the game as long as I have you can spot them straight away,” they say. Such talk flies in the face of hundreds of studies that have been conducted since the beginning of the century. These studies show conclusively that the unstructured interview has virtually no validity as a selection tool. Such an interview does not give us enough information to understand the candidate’s qualifications. There are many reasons for this problem. People tend to search for commonalities in others. Both the person conducting the interview and the interviewee try to find common ground quickly; if they do, they get a good feeling about each other. The result is that people tend to recruit candidates just like themselves. We do this because we are affected by subjective biases, and in particular by the similar-attraction effect. (Kindle Locations 1258-1266).

He says, "Go out and diversify your experiences" and then he says, "People generally only hire people who are like them." Does he notice the barrier there? I have experienced it. When I was young, I just wanted to explore the world. I wanted to be like the author of Dune, Frank Herbert, who went everywhere and did everything, but I wasn't good at breaking down those barriers, and I didn't really know where to start. I was always too different to get hired. That is the book that needs to be written--a book that helps creative people know where to start and how to connect. For me, ultimately, the answer was to sign up for the Peace Corps. They're not that picky and it really is an amazingly broadening experience, but I tried so many other things first, and there were so many doors closed in my face. Alternatively, there should be a book for non-creative people that helps them to recognize that other people have a gift that they don't have and that they should value and help to promote those people in the work they are trying to do--even if it isn't really obvious how it's going to work out. Maybe Johansson begins that conversation, but most of his focus is on reinventing the way people approach life.

For my student success comp, I suggested that the FHSU administration create a first-year seminar that would be team-taught by a Chinese and American faculty member. For me, this team teaching process would create the kind of dynamism that Johansson is talking about. I just get so excited thinking about the revolutions in pedagogy that might come from such partnerships, and I think it would help our program grow and become more competitive also, but it is really hard for me to communicate that vision to others because creativity and the value of diversity is so little understood--despite the generally mouthed allegiance to "diversity." I don't think the administration here would be willing to face the expense and complaints that such a decision would create (there is always resistance to collaborative work--or change for that matter), so there is an opportunity wasted. I really don't know how to change that. I guess I will hold my idea in reserve and wait for that moment when it might be received.

Social Justice and Diversity

Johansson says, "People tend to stick to their own disciplines and domains. They stick to their own ethnicities and cultures....Why are we so hesitant about working in diverse teams? The reason is at least in part a function of human nature. Humans have a tendency to stick with people who are like themselves and avoid those who are different. Psychologists have a name for this tendency. They call it the similar-attraction effect." (Locations 1243-1245).

I tried to point this phenomenon out in our Social Justice and Diversity class. I tried to make the point that white people are not intrinsically racist in a special way in which no other race is capable (see Coates, 2015, Between the World and Me for an explanation of that concept). I don't really remember what response I got--maybe it was just blank stares.

My point was that white people are like all people in that they trust other white people more than people who are different--because all people are that way--or at least the vast majority. This tendency to trust the in-group creates racism and social injustice. It is the unusual amount of power that white people have as a group that creates the abuses. (Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.) Any race would create the same abuses in the same situation and perhaps even worse ones, depending on how one looks at it. I'm not saying that to minimize or excuse the problem--simply to understand it and put it in perspective. We can't really solve a problem we don't understand.

Unfortunately, from my experience, that doesn't seem to be an idea that social justice advocates want to engage. Maybe they are afraid that it will let the white people off the hook and responsibility for racism will shift and become ambiguous instead of resting so certainly (and comfortably) on white people.

The Medici Effect: chapters 2-4

I have started reading Johansson's (2006) Medici Effect. I read the first chapter some time ago, so I started with chapter 2 and continued on from there. Chapter 2 describes the rise of "intersections" which is a term that Johansson introduces to describe the place where ideas combine to make new ideas, a sort of psychological place of innovation. He argues that because of three forces, increased movement of people, the convergence of science, and increased computational power, intersections between ideas are becoming increasingly common and important. In chapter 3, Johansson introduces the concept of associative barriers and describes how they inhibit innovation. In chapter 4, Johansson gives three ways that associative barriers can be broken down: being exposed to a range of cultures, learning differently, and reversing assumptions.

Johansson's ideas seem very familiar to me. That is, I feel like he is talking about me and my life. I have intensely pursued the cross-cultural perspective that Johansson describes. I have always been driven to learn differently, and I believe assumptions were made to be challenged--somewhat to the chagrin of my family and colleagues.

I always wanted to travel, but I didn't get the opportunity until my mid-twenties. At that point, I joined the Peace Corps. In my application essay, I stated that I needed to get out of American culture, that it was limiting the way I thought and that I felt stifled by it. I don't know how I knew this--only that I was right. Living overseas was a revelation and a catharsis. So many silly, petty, arbitrary rules that I had been acculturated to accept sloughed off me. It was wonderful. I don't think I can ever go back to living in a place that is not intercultural. People's ways of thinking are just too narrow and it is really hard for me to be patient with their perspective. Maybe God will ask me to grow in that area eventually.

In the section about learning differently, Johansson notes that education can inhibit creativity because the more we know about the established way of doing things, the less we tend to question those assumptions or try to find new ways to do things. Since I was a teenager, I have hated this about education. I have always wanted to turn things on their head and find a new way to look at them, but my impulse to do this was ill-defined, and teachers, not recognizing why I would want to do such things, overrode that desire and insisted I stick to the curriculum. To be fair, perhaps if I had been better at articulating what I wanted to do, they would have been more supportive... but when one is a teenager, this kind of clarity is hard to come by.

I wanted to drop out of high school, but persuaded myself to stay in order not to miss the "high school experience." Graduation was a complete letdown, and I spent the summer after I graduated mourning the loss of my senior year. I could have been doing so many other more interesting things besides sitting zombie-like in the classroom. It is one of my enduring regrets. I was less passive about my education in college, but that resulted in me changing my college four times and my major seven times. I finally got my bachelors in communications (almost as non-specialized as one can be), my masters in linguistics, and my Ph.D. in higher education. I have since been toying with the idea of getting a Ph.D. in neuroscience. It is just such an interesting field. It would mean starting all over again, but maybe I could wipe out a lot of the prerequisites with MOOCs... I don't know.

Assumptions were made to be challenged--including Johansson's assumptions. One thing that bothers me about this book is that Johansson makes so many grand statements. I understand it is probably an aspect of his personality. He strikes me as one of those excited idealists, but he sometimes undermines his credibility with me by taking such an uncritical view of the world. Much of what he talks about, I don't know enough about to challenge, but he did make one statement that I know is not true and given my general experience of the world, that statement makes me highly skeptical of some of the other statements that he makes.

He says: In biology virtually every discovery, including the double helix, has reinforced and refined Darwin’s theory of evolution, not questioned it (Locations 440). I am not an expert in biology, but from what I know of science in general, this statement strikes me as ridiculous. How can Johansson treat evolution as a forgone conclusion? I'm willing to acknowledge that it is a very respected theory, but there are scientists whose discoveries in biology have very much not "reinforced or refined Darwin's theory." There have been books written and documentaries made to this fact. Ben Stein created a documentary on a number of scientists who were ostracized from their academic communities for questioning evolutionary theory.

A lot of experts want to pretend these questions don't even exist. They don't have good answers for the questions posed against evolution--they just sneer at anyone who would ask such questions and label them as ignorant or religious. This is a very ironic stance to take in light of the need to "reverse assumptions." Some assumptions are not allowed to be challenged, and Johansson, with his very uncritical approach, demonstrates that he does not follow the tenants that he is extolling. He is locked into his own cultural associative barriers. I suppose we all are, but I would respect what he has to say more if his own barriers were not so easy to see.

Social Justice and Equity

Another aspect of Johansson's approach that I really do not appreciate very much is how he ignores the way social rules and power structures affect innovation. As I noted in my first blog about Johansson's book, he states that innovation is different than creativity in that the general society has to accept and implement a creative idea in order to make it innovative. Perhaps I have just not reached the point in the book where he talks about this, but this social adoption of creative ideas is, from my experience, the single greatest barrier to innovation.

Johansson's examples of innovation include Edison, Da Vinci and Darwin--white males. He admires them for their creativity, but they would never have accomplished what they did without patrons and without the respect that their gender and race gave them. Lots of creative people are marginalized. They don't fit the usual paradigm of more conventional people in the world--people who have the power to sideline them. Prejudice is a rampant and common poison to creativity and innovation, and there is as much or more of that in the world than ever. I hope that later in his book Johansson acknowledges this fact. Innovation does not necessarily have a bright future. With all of the forces that he describes that create more intersections, we could very well have the rise of a totalitarian state instead.

Deep Change: Chapter 21-23

The last three chapters of Quinn's (2008) book on deep change address how the inner life of an individual affects a community. In chapter 21, Quinn talks about developing a vision, and most notably, uses Ghandi's approach to developing a vision as a ideal example. Ghandi traveled throughout India talking to people and finally developed a vision that everyone found compelling, addressing people's desire for "bread and salt."  Quinn states that a leader must find the "inner voice" of the organization and speak from that knowledge.

In the notes at the end of the chapter, Quinn gives the statement that one CEO developed for his organization. In those notes was this statement:

We tell them that they should be empowered. Occasionally, they make the mistake of taking us seriously and act on their own. For a moment, they become responsible adults. Their act of independence makes us uncomfortable, and we let them know how we really feel. They respond in amazement, "Oh, that is what you meant by empowerment. Now I understand. You don't need to worry anymore" (Kindle Locations 1758-1761).

This statement really resonated with me because I have experienced this event in so many situations. I'm the type to say what I mean and take other people at their word. I have recently been told that this is a very impractical thing to do, that "normal" people don't say what they mean. I really rebel against that kind of pragmatism, though, because to me, the idea that we accept that this is inevitably the system means that we have accepted this "slow death" that Quinn talks about. I hate that idea. I think I would rather be kicked out of a program for speaking out than accept that idea. I suppose that is the crux of Quinn's vision of deep change. Sometimes the system accepts one's honesty and sometimes it ejects the person. Sometimes, I suppose, it does both. It is hard to love an organization enough to accept that final outcome.

In chapter 22, Quinn gives the example of a Quaker, named John Woolman, who used his disruptive--but not confrontational--vision to convince other Quakers to give up slavery. Finally, in the last chapter, Quinn addressed the idea of empowerment, pointing out that people generally have different ideas of what empowerment means. Even as he was describing the two competing visions, I was speculating about my own view. I thought that the two views should be combined, and sure enough, that was Quinn's idea also.

He makes the statement, right at the end of the book, that leaders can create environments where empowerment is possible, but people need to empower themselves. That struck me as quite apropos. I try to structure my own class so that initiative is rewarded. However, there is only so much I can do to create space for students to strike out. If I make things too unstructured, the students are completely lost, not least because their Chinese classes tend to be so structured and we don't share common cultural assumptions about what a classroom experience is supposed to be. The disappointing part is that so few students try to stand up or really challenge the system that I have set in place. I wish they would, but mostly they just do the things that I make them do with as little thought as possible... *sigh* I am rather pragmatic as a teacher, because I spent so much time as a student. I have often behaved the same way.

Social Justice and Equity

John Woolman's one-man fight against slavery is a good challenge that we can take on social injustice even as one person and make a difference if we really hold to our vision strongly and understand the people we are trying to persuade. I think Quinn would agree that part of Woolman's success was that he was a Quaker himself. Sometimes we think it is enough to have the high moral ground, but being able to understand others' values and speak to those values in our efforts to confront social injustice is really important.

I mentioned that idea to one of the teachers in our program last intensive--that a lot of the reason that Trump won the election was that many social justice advocates had stopped listening to the people they were trying to persuade. We cannot force people to accept change--without a costly civil war, anyway--and even then it is not really successful, as Quinn notes. If we want the change to really come from the heart we have to deeply understand and appeal humbly to the people we are trying to change by asking real questions. Social justice advocacy is floundering in the United States for this reason: nobody is really listening anymore. There is a lot of, "Please tell us what you think... so we can point out how wrong you are."

Deep Change: Chapter 11-20

I read several chapters of Quinn's (2008) book on deep change. Most of those chapters focused on aspects of corporate change. I was especially interested in Quinn's description of the technical, transactional, and transformational paradigms. Quinn notes that many people gain individual technical skills that initially help them to succeed, but ultimately, as they are promoted to leadership positions, they learn to operate by a transactional paradigm. In contrast to the technical paradigm, the transactional paradigm has little to do with technical skill or expertise and more with how well that person is able to work with others and find solutions that everyone can accept. Quinn calls these "political" skills. The third type of paradigm is the transformational paradigm. This sort of person is internally motivated and willing to sacrifice themselves in order to enact their vision.

Quinn introduces the first two paradigms without suggesting that there is a third, but somehow I knew there would be a third. In my own life experience, I have not fit well into any of these paradigms. Initially, I did not have either the technical or transactional skills, but at heart I operated according to a transformational paradigm. Quinn doesn't really address this phenomenon. I wonder what he would have to say about it. From my own experience, I would say it's not really very useful and that these paradigms must build on each other (and Quinn does say that they build on each other rather than being interchangeable). I always struggled with having a vision for the world that I was incapable of achieving. I think that living out of this place for a long time undermined my self-confidence and optimism. It is now somewhat difficult for me to believe that I can make a positive change, even through self-sacrifice.

Eventually, I gained some measure of technical skill. I earned my bachelor's degree and started teaching English, a language that I know both as a native speaker and as a linguist. My struggle with my idealistic approach, however, created a strong disinclination to engage in a transactional paradigm or attempt to manage others. I have been, for many years, very happy to stick to teaching my class and let others do the managing. Then recently I was challenged to see this passivity as selfish and I started to engage, cautiously, in the managing/transactional paradigm (I joined committees and helped with negotiations). It turns out that I am fairly good at it as long as none of my principals are on the line.

The transformational paradigm still fills me with qualms, though. Those years of wanting so badly to change things and not being able to because I lacked the technical and transactional capital still haunt me. I want to stay in my shell. I want to just teach my class. I want to conduct research and write about it, somewhere further off stage. I don't know if that desire will ever change.

Quinn spends so much time talking about change for its own sake. He talks about how organizations must have change or they will die. He doesn't really give much direction on what kind of changes are necessary beyond saying something like, "Look into your heart. Face the truth and live with integrity." I wonder how much we can really fix the system as it exists, though. Maybe it needs to be taken down entirely, and we need to start over from scratch. After all, education is a servant to the status quo. Is it somewhat heretical to suggest that possibility of higher education in the United States? I think that might be an "undiscussable" topic in our program. I have to admit, I've run up against three or four of them since I came to Azusa.

Social Justice and Equity

During our orientation for this program, one of our instructors got up and presented the topic, "What is the purpose of higher education?" She had us listen to a short talk by an expert who said that higher education was in crisis in the Unites States and would be completely changed in twenty years. Then she passed around a handout of statements of purpose from maybe ten different presidents of higher education institutions in America.

As she talked, I skimmed through the various statements, and the feeling began to grow in me that these were not the people best qualified to answer this question. They represented the very establishment that was under attack and were therefore too invested to have honest answers. I flipped the handout over and wrote on the back, "Higher education exists to reinforce the established elite and to acculturate new members into that elite." After our discussion, I approached this teacher and showed her my written statement. I think I expected some kind of engagement, but that teacher glanced at what I had written and said, "Very nice," and turned away.

I have to admit, that was a very disappointing introduction to this program. I have since encountered other "undiscussible" topics, but this one troubles me the most. How can educators who say they are committed to equality and social justice ignore the intrinsic gate-keeping purpose of their own profession? If they don't believe their profession has that purpose, why don't they have a better answer for those who think it does? There seems to be so much effort to make higher education more accessible, but the more accessible we make it, the more education people will have to get in order to achieve the purpose of higher education: to join an elite who are distinguished as experts from the general hoi polloi. In this sense, pursuing equity and social justice in higher education ends up being a matter of chasing our own tail.

This is an undiscussible topic that under girds much of what we do in our program, and I know that I, for one, would very much benefit from an open discussion on it.

Deep Change: Chapters 9 and 10

It's been a while since I've written in here because my life has been kind of crazy. I had to submit my comprehensive exams and grade my students' rough drafts, which is the most demanding grading project of my semester. However, I have handed all of those back and this is a holiday weekend, so I have time to catch up on my blog.

I read Quinn's (2008) Deep Change book, chapters nine and ten. Chapter nine is the final chapter on personal change, and chapter ten is the first chapter on corporate change.

In chapter nine, Quinn states that we need to "build the bridge as [we] walk on it." He states that we often don't know where we will go, but we need to believe that we are sufficient to get ourselves there. He says, "When we pursue our vision, we must believe that we have enough courage and confidence in ourselves to reach our goal." This statement is troubling to me because it seems to imply that we are our own measure of what we can do, and I don't think that measure is very reliable.

I attend a church service that is designed as an outreach to students. In a recent lesson, we were asked to reflect on the quality of truth. My student friend suggested that truth was whatever we agreed that it was. I noted that by his definition, any community could establish truth and as long as everyone agreed that it was truth, it was true. I pointed out that many wars start this way--when two large communities with different truth claims encounter each other. Terrorism is only the most recent focus of that kind of conflict. By his definition, the truth claim of a fundamentalist Muslim terrorist, that the death of the innocent is justified in order to protect and promote Islam, is legitimate because it is agreed upon by his community.

He then stated that truth was something we had to establish for ourselves. I asked him, "If I claimed as my truth that I no longer have to eat, does that make it true?" Answer was "no." I asked, "What would happen to me if I lived by this truth?" All of the students admitted that it would not be good for me... that I would eventually die. I observed that truth is not establish on a personal level but as a law in the world. One law that is generally recognized is "You must eat to live." Another one is that "if you drop your phone, it will likely break." This last law is called the law of gravity. The world does not really conform to suit us. We have to know its laws.

Quinn is suggesting that there is a law that says, whatever you set out to do, you will be able to do it--as long as you think you can. I don't really think that is true. The problem with truth is that if you get it wrong, you'll die. If I decide I don't have to eat, when I actually do, I will die. If I decide that I can jump off a five story building because the law of gravity doesn't apply to me, I will also likely die. Getting it right is important... but there is something to what Quinn says. I actually only think it makes sense within a Christian paradigm.

Quinn tells the story of Ghandi, saying that Ghandi wasn't surprised when resources started to show up because the thing he was trying to do was "right." This story reminded me of a well-known character in my own faith tradition. George Mueller was a English orphanage director who decided to take God at His word when He promised to provide. For years he ran an orphanage without any source of income or fundraising and God did provide. I think that Quinn's idea should be revised to say, "God will build the bridge that we are willing to walk." That undertaking is scary enough. I don't think I would want to try it if I was my own sole resource.

Social Justice and Equity

In chapter 10, Quinn begins to talk about how goals are formed and pursued in organizations. He notes that all organizations are made up of coalitions. The organization might state a public goal, but usually the operative goal of an organization is different. He notes, "The operative goals are usually congruent with the interests of the dominant coalition." As an example, he says that universities say they exist for their students but generally they exist for the interest of their faculty and administration. Recently, I've been helping with reform efforts in my own program, and I know what he says is very true. We spend very little time talking about how to improve things for the students. Most of our focus in on the faculty and their working conditions.

Quinn goes on to describe how this dynamic works in a business school that he worked with. I thought it was interesting that the dominant coalition was not willing to change until they realized that their survival was on the line, and even then, the change that they implemented was a matter of balancing their interests with those of the students. Quinn states:

Organizations are coalitional. The dominant coalition in an organization is seldom interested in making deep change. Hence deep change is often, but not always, driven from the outside. In the future, great business schools will still be built by hiring great researchers, but they are also likely to be expected to meet the needs of other constituencies. This will mean that they will have to meet a wider and often competing set of expectations. Competition and the motivation for survival will remain intense.

I wonder if this is one of those immutable laws, like gravity. Is it possible for a dominant coalition to put the interests of a coalition with less power before their own? Or is it always a matter of balancing interests? Social justice advocates often try to make dominant coalitions change without considering this instinct for self-preservation. In fact, such self-preservation is despised. Are advocates such as this breaking themselves against a natural law? How can outside forces be used to create this impetus for change? Or are those forces already in play?

Hiatus for Comps

Because my comprehensive exams are due in a little over a week, I am going to take a break from writing in this blog for two weeks. I will post again by May 22.

Deep Change: Chapters 2-5

So I've been reading a lot of Quinn's (2008) Deep Change book because I am working on my leadership philosophy paper and his ideas are the ones I resonate with the most deeply. I've been reflecting on some of his ideas. Quinn tells a story that I would like to discuss:

Some years ago, I was invited to a meeting of senior officers at one of the military academies. The officer in charge talked at length about the moral decay in society. There seemed to be no focus to his discussion, and I could not figure out what problem was actually concerning these men. Eventually it was revealed that some of the students at the academy were cheating on their exams. The cadets were not following the academy's honor system. The officers' explanation for the cadets' behavior was corruption in society. They felt that by the time an eighteen-year-old arrived at the academy it was too late; the cadet was irredeemable. 

After a long discussion about the corruption in society, I attempted to turn the topic around. I asked if anyone in the room had served in Vietnam. Most had. I asked if any of them had participated in the phenomenon known as the body count. (This was a measurement system used to determine how American forces were performing in the war. At the end of each battle, the number of enemy dead were counted, and the number was reported. As this process unfolded, vastly exaggerated numbers were routinely reported.) 

From the atmosphere of discomfort in the room, it was clear that some had participated. Why, I asked, would an officer and a gentleman man (as opposed to an uncommissioned cadet) engage in such behavior? Answering my own question, I suggested that when an impossible objective is given to people in a large hierarchy and when it is accompanied by immense pressure to produce, the people in the organization will also experience growing pressure to engage in unethical behavior. An invisible form of corruption at the top, the exercise of authority without concern or demand without out support, results in a very visible form of corruption at the bottom. 

I then suggested that perhaps the problem with the cadets did not take root "out there" in society. Maybe large numbers of students were cheating because the system demanded and taught them to cheat. Were the arrangement of classes, the design of assignments and workloads, and traditional military values like "cooperate and graduate" combining to teach, require, and reward cheating? Was the problem in the cadets alone, or was it in the relationship between the cadets and the authority figures who were condemning and externalizing the problem? 

There was a long silence. Finally, the man in charge spoke. He turned to the man next to him and, as if I had never said a word, resumed the old discussion about the moral decay in society. For the rest of the day they ignored me-I simply did not exist.

When I read this story, I recognized myself in the author. This is exactly the sort of thing I would do. People are complaining. I see their hypocrisy. I point out said hypocrisy in a way that is almost impossible to refute, and people kind of hate me for it. My sister sometimes tries to make me see this as a character flaw. She says that God doesn't do this, that he is more diplomatic and gentle. She says that he woos us--not come crashing down with some ugly truth we are unable to face. I have a hard time accepting her perspective though. For one thing, Jesus wasn't very careful with people's feelings, especially regarding hypocrisy.

Of course I recognize the value of diplomacy. I think I am actually quite capable of being diplomatic. It's just that when I am being diplomatic, I am not being my most caring self. I am being passive and disengaged. It's kind of a brutal gift to have, though, this truth telling. People are much more likely to appreciate one if one has the gift of service. Maybe I should stop caring so much about how people react though. Quinn doesn't seem too concerned by the mental fallout that he left behind him. Is that loving? Where is the line between loving through telling the truth and loving through protecting someone ego? I'd be interested in your perspective.

Social Justice

Truth telling can be used in the service of social justice. Jesus did that. He called out the Pharisees for laying burdens on the people that they were unwilling to carry themselves. Quinn's conversation with the senior officers was also a challenge to the oppression and hypocrisy of leaders.

I think this is perhaps the place that I am the most called to use my gifting. I think in my context, the students are also villianized for the way that they respond to the academic culture. It is my job, at countless dining room tables, to be their advocate and defense attorney in front of teachers fresh from the States who are struggling with culture shock. I think my job is easier than Quinn's though. When people are surrounded by evidence that their paradigm isn't working, they are much more open to my kind of truth. Maybe that is yet another reason that I am grateful that God has put me where I am. It is easier to exercise my gift here, much easier than in our program at APU, for example. It's also harder to speak up in this way when the people concerned are in authority over me. That is really scary.

Medici Effect: Chapter 1

I have decided to jump around, now that I am no longer reading an anthology. Also, I need to write my Leading Change Philosophy Statement and exposing myself to a variety of ideas seems to be the way to get started. So this time around, I'm reading Johansson's Medici Effect.

Basically, Johansson says that in order to innovate, we must find the Intersection. This is the place where ideas from different fields converge and combine. In this place, creative, innovative ideas are born. The author begins by defining creativity and innovation, which I thought was very helpful. These words get thrown around a lot. Here in China, "innovation" is such a special word. It is kind of a Holy Grail for Chinese students, but it's been my observation that there's a lot of talk about how important it is and not much understanding of how to foster it.

Johansson also describes the difference between directional innovation and intersectional innovation. He points out that directional innovation is the more common kind. It is incremental and requires some mastery of a field in order to achieve. Beyond that, there is a lot of competition in that kind of innovation. By contrast, intersectional innovation does not require as much mastery in a field and it tends to happen in leaps and jumps, opening new fields to be explored, with a kind of serendipity.

Johansson writes with the kind of energy and optimism that I associate with a certain type of people--the kind of people who ignore obstacles and irritate people with other personalities in the process. I myself am cautiously optimistic. I feel like what he is describing is a very real phenomenon and that it is something that can be strategically pursued, but I don't think it is as straightforward as he is implying that it is in this first chapter. I may be judging him too quickly.

Here's the thing: I've always been one for the interdisciplinary approach. I changed my major seven times as an undergraduate because there were so many interesting things to learn and specializing made me bored. Despite this predilection to the Intersection, as Johansson describes it, I have not had any truly innovative breakthroughs in the way that he describes. I live at Sias because it is such a place, though, for the record.

I think his own explanation perfectly accounts for my own lack of innovation. He states that creativity is a matter of coming up with a new idea that others find valuable--and value is socially determined. I think I've come up with new ideas that others found valuable, but then they just co-opted them without necessarily acknowledging me as the source. My ideas may become "memes" (Have you ever encountered an idea that you came up with on your own spouted back to you a month or a year later by someone you never told it to? Who is to say whether it is my idea or someone else thought of it at the same time, but that happens to me all the time), but I certainly haven't created a new field or developed a following. That requires a certain kind of proprietary knowledge that I have not been able to lay claim to. Secondly, I've never been in much of a position to realize my ideas in a way that would count as "innovation." I think my classroom is the first of such opportunities, and my innovations are small and not recognized or copied by many people.

...So, I think there is more to really game-changing ideas than just "staying in the Intersection." I think there has to be some level of social capital, or one's ideas never really become a force of their own. They kind drip into the local culture and diffuse outward, creating small ripples of change, but nothing that could actually be measured. So, allowing that innovation is socially organized, I think it ought also to be acknowledged that the people who are fond of directional innovation just tend to be more socially organized, on the whole, than those who like to innovate intersectionally, and that gives them a huge advantage. It may seem like intersectional innovation has less competition, but it's merely a very different and more insidious kind of competition. It is the competition for attention and the competition for legitimacy, that intersectional innovation tends to lose.

Social Justice

And... that is where the social justice piece comes in. Having intersectional innovation that other people take seriously (and therefore counts as "creativity" by Johnasson's definition) is a privilege that not everyone has. That is a big part of my struggle. If you are not educated, if you are not an adult, if you are not a man, if you don't have money, if you don't have charm, if you don't speak the right language, no one listens to you, and it doesn't matter how wonderfully unique or useful your ideas might potentially be, you are a mad man shouting in the desert. Lots of books are written in the effort to make people who are not naturally creative, but who have money to buy books, be more creative. The sad part of it is that there are some many potentially creative people out there who no one will listen to because we've all been so thoroughly brainwashed by the system.

Ah well.

I also think there is a spiritual aspect to all of this. Maybe I will delve more into that another time.

Deep Change: Chapter 1

So I finished the Harvard Business Review articles and decided to move on to Quinn's Deep Change. Having only read the first chapter, I think I will like this book. Something that struck me rather forcibly about it is that Quinn is preaching Jesus' gospel without Jesus. He could have just as easily started his introduction with Jesus as he could have with Oscar Robertson. Basketball and racial equity are safer topics to allude to, I suppose. In one way that similarity is really amazing, because it shows the deep truth of what Jesus taught us. On the other hand, it's kind of sad because I don't believe that really truly deep change is accomplished by human effort. Ultimately, we have to allow God to change us.

I did highlight a lot of passages, for this first chapter, though, and I am going to copy some of them down. First one:

"We have always been embedded in a dilemma. We have always had to agonize over the choice between making deep change or accepting slow death."

This is the challenge Jesus gave us. God said in Deuteronomy, "I set before you life and death... Choose life." Some people really don't understand this concept, but it meshes well with what Quinn is saying, because the change God calls us to is also deep and agonizing. Quinn doesn't label this death as spiritual, but it might as well be.

"Our capacity to face uncertainty and function in times of stress and anxiety is linked with our self-confidence, and our level of confidence is linked with our sense of increasing integrity."

Quinn made this statement and I find it a bit mysterious. What is it about integrity that creates self-confidence? He doesn't really expand on this concept here, but I hope he does later in the book. This is an area that I'm wrestling with now. Where does my self-confidence come from? It is so easy to have false confidence. Again, from a Christian perspective, our only sure source of confidence is God, but He is big and mysterious. What can we really trust Him to do? If one doesn't have an almighty Father to place one's confidence in, what is the alternative?

There is an Indian movie called The 3 Idiots. It is a really interesting movie about educational culture and change in India that I recommend you watch sometime. The leader of change in the movie gets his confidence in kind of a hokey way, though. He says that when he was a child, the town watchman would cry out "All is well!" and everyone would feel safe, but one day they found out that the watchman was blind, yet through all those years, the town had felt safe because they believed the watchman when he said that all was well. The protagonist says, "Our hearts are easily scared, so we must always tell them, 'All is well.'" He models this behavior throughout the movie.

I can't quite buy that. Really? The courage for change comes from closing one's eyes, lying to oneself, and hoping for the best? And so I go back to this question of our source of confidence again. And I wonder how it relates to integrity. One, tentative idea in this regard is that we need to learn to value what God values. As we challenge the values we've absorbed from the world and replace them with God's values, we become more confident that God will protect our hearts. As the things that are the most important to Him become the most important to us, we have confidence that He will protect those things. I wonder if that is what Quinn means by integrity?

"The deep change effort distorts existing patterns of action and involves taking risks. Deep change means surrendering control."

Again, I wonder how it is possible to surrender control like this without knowing to whom one is surrendering the control...

Social Justice

"Facing an intense global economy, organizations and their members are having to reinvent themselves frequently. This is a top-down process. Pressure for change comes from the outside world, which forces the organization to reinvent itself. Organizational change then builds pressure for personal change. This sequence is assumed in nearly every discussion of organizational change strategy. The accuracy of this top-down model, however, blinds us to an equally accurate but seldom recognized model based on an opposing set of assumptions. It is a model of bottom-up change. It starts with an individual."

I really liked this comment because it reflects my reaction to many of the HBR articles. My intuitive idea is that change does not come from the top. Jesus is my model for change, the model that I think is truly sublime, if you will, and he didn't use John Kotter's eight steps. Jesus said, "Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it remain alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit." He was referring to himself, of course, but he is our model in this way, and his model is bottom-up. His model begins by embracing "the least of these" and rejecting spiritual power structures that were not obedient to God--not actual governmental ones. I think this idea of seeds dying is echoed in the example that Quinn gives of Peck's reflections of a psychoanalyst:

"Of all the good and useful rules of psychotherapy that I have been taught, there are very few that I have not chosen to break at one time or another, not out of laziness and lack of discipline but rather in fear and trembling, because my patient's therapy seemed to require that, one way or another, I should step out of the safety of the prescribed analyst's role, be different and risk the unconventional. As I look back on every successful case I have had I can see that at some point or points in each case I had to lay myself on the line. The willingness of the therapist to suffer at such moments is perhaps the essence of therapy, and when perceived by the patient, as it usually is, it is always therapeutic."

Peck is reaffirming Jesus' words. "Unless a seed falls into the ground, it remains alone." God wants us to step away from the comfort of our religious rules to, not because of laziness or lack of self discipline but in fear and trembling because the situation and the people we have responsibility for require it. So often we want to break the rules for the former reasons rather than the latter, but it is our love for the "patient" that guides us.

I think this point is reiterated later by Quinn, but what really gives the concept power is the way Jesus modeled it. If one studies his life, one realizes how revolutionary he was--not in the way people expected, against the Roman government, but against the rules and regulations that even the righteous among them had come to accept. Jesus broke the boxes and suffered the risk needed to bring deep change to the world.

"Excellence, however, never lies within the boxes drawn in the past. To be excellent, the leaders have to step outside the safety net of the company's regulations, just as the therapist had to step outside the safety of the traditionally defined role. To bring deep change, people have to 'suffer' the risks. And to bring about deep change in others, people have to reinvent themselves."

At the end of the chapter, Quinn talks about people who have made deep change a habit. I would really like to learn more about the people because I think that this is such a difficult thing to do. I have experienced my share of deep change, I suppose, but I am still terrified of it. I have really been praying into this recently, that God would help me to challenge my sources of security that block me from being completely obedient to Him. Quinn says of this process, "After a while, terror turns to faith." I hope to get there, but I think it is one of those battles that one wins inches at a time. One might find that one has conquered the terror in one area only to turn and find it still reigning in another. However, the Scriptures do say, "The righteous man lives by faith."

HBR: Why Change Programs Don't Produce Change

I think this was my favorite article of this anthology, but that may just be because it is the last one. Beer, Elsenstat, and Spector argue against the top-down institution of "change programs" in favor of fostering a grass roots change. Some key elements of their idea include being task and production oriented (focusing on the question: what is the most effective way to accomplish objectives?) and leaning on the expertise of front-line people to answer that question. They say that upper management should examine their organization to see what departments are performing very well and then try to spread the change happening in that department to others in the organization.

I think these authors do the best job of any of the HBR authors in explaining the concept of utilizing the resources that are there in the company. It seems such a common approach to assume all that the lower levels can do is complain and all of the good ideas will come from consulting groups who have had about two months to learn about one's organization. In the change efforts that I have been a part of, I have found this attitude to be highly annoying. Even when upper management does ask for input in change initiatives, it's usually a matter of a meeting or a forum where the people who yell the loudest get heard and the management pick and choose what they want to actually listen to.

In the case of the conference center that I worked at during a change effort, they didn't ask the employees what they wanted. Strike that. They did ask us, and then they used our opinions as reasons to get rid of us. It was not a safe place to try to contribute. In the change effort at FHSU, the president asked all of us to share our concerns and then she ignored everything that my department had to say because she had decided that the business department had the only real potential for expansion. The business department, by the way, loved her and were very upset to see her go, but my department was made cynical and reluctant to participate in any other change effort.

There is a difference between asking employees for input and giving them ownership of a change effort. I think the giving of ownership is the greatest and least utilized kind of leadership out there. Managers don't know how to do it. They talk about it, sure. It's kind of a buzzword. But management generally doesn't really believe that their employees are as smart as they are, and in some instances probably even smarter. Again, that is a point of annoyance for me in this program here in China. Our top level of administration in the U.S. has no idea the kind of challenges we face, and those challenges are not easy to explain. They are not patient enough to listen to long, drawn-out explanations or (even better) expose themselves to the actual experience. Instead, they listen to whoever they know the best and talk with the most and make stupid wasteful choices for the program. I have mentioned this before, so I'll leave it at that.

Here's an interesting question: what if FHSU administration recognized the fact that the China program and their virtual college are actually the more successful models in their organization and used that fact as impetus to change their on-campus programs instead of just pouring money gained from the fiscally healthy programs into that financial sinkhole? As long as they continue to favor the Kansas campus, they are creating a push for our program to become modeled after that program, a model which is demonstrably unsustainable because it must be sustained through the exploitation of less privileged students. I know, I know. The collegiate ideal is at stake. Would FHSU even be a real college without its Student Union and state-of-the-art laboratories? We make do without them over here in China, but the would probably never survive in the U.S.

Social Justice

I think this article does the best job of any at presenting a really egalitarian approach to change that still maintains some structure. Sadly it just scrapes the surface and apparently it isn't that popular of a model because the article was first published in 1990 and none of the newer articles build off of it. Is is possible that giving away power is just not that popular of a thing to do?

People argue about "rights" and "equality" but the real bottom layer of any organization still tends to get crushed, even sometimes by the social justice advocates in defense of their liberal arts education ideals. Everyone must have certain privileges, and if it turns out that the system can't afford to deliver those privileges to everyone, we'll just find a way to get them for "our people," and screw the rest of them. Yeah, that's a little out of left field, I guess, but it is a thought I have about this faculty union in Kansas that insists on a "fair working wage" and all the rest the rest of it, which just means my students don't get the full benefit of their tuition because the money is needed to feed already wealthy programs and faculty in Kansas.

HBR: The Hard Side of Change Management

Sirkin, Keenan, and Jackson explain their DICE Theory. They begin their article by noting all of the various ways that change can be approached and the fact that no one has found the final answer. Then they offer the final answer. They say that "[c]ompanies overemphasize the soft side of change.... [and] though these elements are critical for success, change projects can't get off the ground unless companies address the harder elements first." What is interesting to me about this argument is that it just seems to be a matter of shifting one's weight from one foot to the other: "All right: we've determined that change needs both soft and hard elements. Now let's spend all of our time discussing the hard elements." The next article will just argue the opposite: "companies tend to ignore the soft side..." and so on and so forth.

Having made that complaint, I do think the authors describe a very systematic process to examine a change initiative and if the company or system is open to such systematic scrutiny, their process must be very valuable. Their statement that their system reduced a twelve hour discussion into a 2 hour goal oriented analysis was especially compelling to me. Does every leadership have the capacity to focus like that? If they can't focus like that, does that mean their change initiative is doomed? Apparently, the DICE Theory had been developed and tested by the authors in their consulting company, which reminds me that Theory E change tends to use outside consulting more than Theory O change. Is it possible that this consulting agency is preaching to the crowd regarding the classic Theory E reasons for change? Again, I think their DICE Theory is very orderly, coherent, and effective within its sphere. It's just been my life experience that this sort of effectiveness is made possible by the limits of the sphere.

Being Restorative by strength, and therefore problem-oriented, I wish the authors had explained more clearly the limitations of their own system. They began their article by saying there was no final answer regarding the best way to affect change. Did they believe differently by the time they finish the article or did they just mean there was no final answer until now? The thing is, they've been using this theory for a while, so if they do think it is the final answer, they were a little disingenuous there at the beginning. I am looking for the final answer, and so there's a need to stamp out all of the problems, not just the one directly in front of us.

Social Justice

This article had very little to say about diversity and social justice. I think that is very consistent with the difference between "hard" and "soft" and Theory E and Theory O. These bottom line approaches generally don't address issues of power difference or diversity. For what it is worth, I don't think every article necessarily has to address these "soft" issues, but the article would have been more complete if the authors had addressed their theory in light of them, even briefly. The reason they didn't, one might suppose, could be because "[c]ompanies overemphasize the soft side of change." I don't know if that's really true. In all, I think HBR tends to focus more on the hard elements. Interestingly, the DICE Theory says you can't create change without buy-in from upper management which sort of implies that bottom up change is to some extent impossible. I wonder if that is true?

For a while now, I have been thinking of Jesus as an agent of change. He began a revolution, and I don't think he followed any of these models that HBR authors propose. Since Jesus came to earth to be the image of God for us, his version of being a change agent seems like it should trump all the rest. I wonder if anyone has written about that? Maybe after I finish this book, I will try to find one that addresses self-sacrificial change. Jesus said, "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone." In what ways did Jesus revolutionize the world through his sacrifice? Another theme that is probably of a more "soft" nature that had not been discussed by any of these articles is the role that trust has in change. I see it all around me: the distrust that leads to lack of communication and under utilized resources. The distrust that leads to the undermining of a leader and a vision. That is another area of change that I would like to explore more.

HBR: Cracking the Code of Change

Beer and Nohria describe the different between two change theories: Theory E and Theory O. They note that, while each theory has been used successfully to create change, the best, most long lasting change uses a combination of the two theories. Theory E is top-down change with the focus on shareholder value. By contrast, Theory O is bottom up and focuses on other concerns, such as the employee culture and the productive capacity of the organization. Theory E tends to be a quicker process that relies heavily on outside consultants, while Theory O is a much more gradual process that depends on the employees to identify necessary change.  Beer and Nohria use two examples of company turnaround to explain these theories and then a third company to explain how the two theories could be merged.

I had a little difficulty understanding the significance of their proposed merging of the two theories, since, in my mind all three organizations didn't change that successfully. For one thing, all three companies were eventually sold and I don't think the authors were very clear as to why the third company (which used the combination of the two theories) was more successful than the first two. However, I think their concept is sound, not based on their explanation but just based on common sense.

In Myers Briggs Personality typing, there are two characteristics that align strongly with Theory E and Theory O. I think that Theory E is a "thinker" way to create change and Theory O is a "feeler" way to create change. Perhaps because I am so interested in Myers Briggs, I am more apt to put things in these categories, but it has helped me make sense of a lot of dynamics that I see. For example, the United States tends to have a more "thinker" culture and China tends to have a more "feeler" culture. Paradoxically, though, China tends to be governed top-down and the U.S. to be governed bottom-up (in theory at least). The paradox is that neither way of operating works very well without using some of the other approach to balance it out, so it makes sense that Theory E and Theory O must be used together. The challenge it so get people who operate according to those different paradigms to see that.

I think normally, I would try to explain this if I could, but I just came back from a meeting where I think I tried too hard to explain things, so I'm going to give it a break for now. If you want me to explain more, just let me know.

Social Justice

I think most social justice advocates would say that Theory O is the superior way to create change, seeing as it allows people at the bottom to create the change. On one level, I think that is a really wonderful idea... except that sometimes the people at the bottom really don't have the vision they need to make productive changes. So much of the time, our priority is our own welfare. When the system is democratically run, people tend to vote themselves more and more benefits and eventually the whole system can't afford itself. I think the higher education systems in the U.S. are a classic example of this. Of course, if the company has good leadership that encourages people to a broader view, that moment won't come for awhile and perhaps this process can be short circuited, but it takes a leader who isn't afraid of offending people or being accused of oppression on occasion. If the people at the bottom are willing to fight hard enough for their "rights," they can still sink that ship.

The other problem with the Theory O approach, though, is that it can create such a strong culture that people who are different become marginalized. Then everyone who is in the group or part of that culture congratulates themselves on creating such strong team spirit and unity without recognizing the way that they have eliminated diversity from their culture--of one sort or another. The classic fallacy in this case is to focus on one kind of diversity and completely overlook the way one is making one's environment inhospitable for other kinds of diversity.

Anyway, I think the drawbacks of Theory E are pretty obvious, especially from a social justice perspective, so I thought I would point out some of the drawbacks on the other side.

HBR: The Real Reason People Won't Change

In this article, Kegan and Laskow Lahey describe a concept they call competing commitments. Basically, when leadership (or anyone, I suppose) is trying to get change to happen, they encounter people who seem to be very on board and agreeable to that change and yet somehow don't change. According to the authors, these people are not liars or insincere. Instead, they have subconscious beliefs and commitments that they are holding on to that keep them from wanting to change. The authors recommend a process of self-reflection as a way to discover these hidden "competing commitments." They give several examples and describe this process of discovery.

This was an interesting article because someone I know sprang to mind immediately. I recently created a survey for the residents of Peter Hall (where all the foreign faculty at Sias live). After I created this survey, I got in trouble the director of housing on the foreign side. There is also a Chinese director--they work together. At any rate, she was angry with me for not consulting with her before I posted the survey. I did notify her about the survey, but I did not consult with her because as a representative of the teachers, I didn't think I needed her input or permission to conduct the survey. She didn't really argue with this idea but she said that it was really important to keep her in the loop.

So... competing commitments. When the director said this to me, my thought was, "Well, you have a funny way of showing it." Pretty much all complaints that the director encounters are immediately referred to the front desk. ("Talk to the front desk.") What usually follows for many teachers is a lot of run around. They are asked to sign up for repairs or the front desk workers tell them that the problem is being worked on. Then, the problem does not improve and the repairmen don't come to make the repairs during the agreed upon time. When they finally show up, as often as not, the teacher is not at home and the repairmen go away again, and the process starts all over with the teacher needing to sign up again. If the teacher tries a few times (a process that usually takes more than a week), then they must track the director down. Her office is not near the front desk and her hours are limited to the time when teachers are the busiest (working hours: 9-5, 2 hours off for lunch). We also have a chat group that is on our mobile phone, in which many of the housing grievances are expressed, but this director has declined to be part of that group. Most teachers get tired and give up before they actually find time and attention to work through the whole process and the director is not very accessible.

If I had to speculate, I would say that the director's competing commitment is that she doesn't want to be flooded with complaints. There are a lot of complaints and she is trying to filter them out. Unfortunately, she misses a lot of important information in the process and ends up being behind in addressing issues. It could be a survival mechanism.  Kegan and Laskow Lahey note that sometimes competing commitments are valuable and cannot be given up. It is true that this particular director is Filipino. She spent a couple of years in the U.S. trying to get her citizenship (her husband is American), and during that time, two other foreign teachers held her position and it drove them both crazy. They were no more accessible than she was, and in some ways, less helpful. However, as she reprimanded me at length for not keeping her in the loop, I reflected on this dichotomy. Perhaps it would be helpful for her to be more aware of her competing commitment and perhaps let go of her prejudice against belonging to large chat groups--she wouldn't have to address every problem if she was just part of the group, but it would help her to keep her ear to the ground, so to speak.

In our last meeting, STRC (Sias Teachers Representative Committee) suggested she set up a chat group that she herself could monitor. It will be interesting to see what she does with that suggestion.

Social Justice

There is a lot going on here at Sias right now. I am part of several groups that are working for change on one level or another. I'm not in charge of any of them, but it is kind of interesting to listen to the different conversations that go on, because these groups tend to have competing interests. Just yesterday, my director from Kansas came to our campus and observed my class. I think I did all right because he also asked me to sign a letter of intent stating I was coming back next year.

Anyway, at our department meeting (the only one of the year), he described in detail the way that he was fighting for our rights in Kansas. He noted the general ignorance regarding our situation and the sort of passive efforts to disenfranchise us. For example, he has become a member of the faculty senate, and there was a movement to change the by laws so that the faculty senate members only represented the faculty who worked on campus. That is kind of a creepy suggestion from our perspective, even though to this point, our faculty hasn't had much knowledge or influence in the faculty senate. Still, as my director went on about equal pay and fair contracts, I wonder how disadvantaged we really are. Everyone in my department gets paid easily twice the salary of a Sias teacher, and they seem to scrape by. On principal, it seems fair that we should be paid the same salary as a Kansas instructor. The argument against is that our living expenses are lower, but that argument wouldn't fly in different parts of Kansas, as my director has pointed out, so why should it fly just because we are a little further removed?

On the other hand, the system in Kansas is not sustainable. They can't afford to pay their teachers there what they are paying them presently without the surplus from our campus in China. From a certain perspective, it is because the faculty senate has such a tight grip on things in Kansas that we exist and have to run such a lean machine here in China. The surplus money they make from our program is soaked up like a sponge by all of the "necessary" programs, services, and salaries in Kansas. So my director is perpetuating a broken system by trying to get us all to feel like we are being taken advantage of and to sign up for the union. I hope we do get a little raise, but I don't want the vision of "our rights" that he is trying to sell us. A system that can't afford itself is a system that doesn't exist, and I like working here.

When does advocacy become greed? It's an interesting question.

HBR: A Survival Guide for Leaders

Heifetz and Linsky lay out several steps leaders can take to protect themselves from the vagaries of leadership. As is typical of these articles, they lay their idea out in several steps:

• Managing your environment
• Operate in and above the fray
• Court the uncommitted
• Cook the conflict
• Place the work where it belongs
• Manage yourself
• Anchor yourself

Again, while I thought the article had some interesting ideas, the authors seemed to over-simplify. There wasn't enough description of each of these steps--only on brief example that one is assured will look different in different contexts. Still, I suppose there is something to learn. 

I think it is important to note that being a leader can be dangerous. I've also noticed that in American culture, especially, it is a place of constant attack. Leaders are made to be criticized. Chinese people don't think like this. They still have some respect for the position, although they may be cynical enough in their own way. Is it any wonder we struggle to have good leaders? This article reminded me of your president who was asked to leave Baylor and our erstwhile president at FHSU. What would you say were the steps in this article that the Baylor president neglected? I think the FHSU president failed to court the uncommitted or to place work where it belonged. At some point, people who didn't warm to her vision were discarded from her calculations and she began to work around them. She really couldn't afford to do that, so maybe she also let the power go to her head and didn't manage herself well enough. 

I am working on some "change initiatives" right now. Another way to put that is that I am part of several committees here at Sias, and I am working within at least two of them to try to get administrators to address some long-standing problems here at Sias. They are the kind of working and living conditions faculty would never put up with in the State, but actually, compared to a lot of Chinese universities, Sias treats its foreign faculty pretty well. A lot of people struggle with the fact that they don't work in an American environment, though, especially when they work for an American university. While they talk about how these things would never be excused in America, though, I sometimes wonder if that is the reason American universities have such budget troubles: their faculty are just so entitled. 

It's quite the tug of war, and I wonder where to put my weight. I don't just want to advocate for the issues that I think are important. I want to be fairly representing issues that others care more about. An example is air filters. If the faculty were perfectly honest, they would admit that they can afford to buy their own air filters on the salaries that FHSU gives them. We don't have rent or very high living expenses and we are making American salaries (although not high by American standards). A good quality air filter for our apartment costs about $150. We can afford it, but we shouldn't have to pay for it, the argument goes... and then it just become this huge power struggle and I think, "Well administration can't be blamed for not taking our requests seriously when we just try to get and get and get." A lot of faculty just assume that the administration is withholding from them on principal so that the only wise course of action is to take them for all they are worth--so little trust! 

And lack of trust is what brought down our former president, I think. She stopped trusting people to be able to help her. She dismissed the things they cared about. She made arrangements to exclude them from her plans. I wonder why the authors of these articles don't talk more about trust.

Social Justice

On the other side of the issue, I wonder when social advocacy in the name of social justice just becomes a matter of greed: a matter of taking "the man" for all we can get whether we need it or not because we are entitled to our "fair share"? I get weary of that side of the social justice issue. It makes the Chinese system of knowing your place and working to create a harmonious society seem rather attractive. 

I realize that this blog entry is late. The reason that it is late is that I and the leader of STRC (Sias Teachers' Representative Committee) have undertaken to survey the faculty on living conditions in Peter Hall (our place of residence). I got so caught up with launching it yesterday that I forgot to work on this post. I'm sorry. Here, in case you are curious, are the questions that we are asking the teachers:

1. Do you have a hot water heater? (mostly yes so far)
2. If you do not have a hot water heater, approximately how many days have you had hot water in the last three weeks? (average: 7 days)
3. Approximately how often do you eat in the dining room during the week? (average: 2 times a day)
4. In the last three weeks, how often have you come down to a meal only to leave again because the dining hall had run out of certain dishes? (average: 1-2 times a week)
5. How often in the last three weeks have you taken food from the dining room that you do not intend to eat immediately? (about half admit to taking food on occasion)
6. Have you ever had mold related issues in your apartment? (more than half) If yes, have they been resolved? How long did it take housing staff to resolve mold issues? (mostly resolved)
7. Do you have unresolved repair issues? How long have you had these issues? (nothing major)
8. Do your air conditioners work? (about half do)
9. Does your hall water dispenser work? (about half)
10. Please briefly name any other issues that you are aware of in your apartment. (Most add something)

I wrote the questions quite quickly, and I expect it isn't the best research protocol ever, but I am very interested in what the tallies will be when we get in all the results. There are some issues that appear bigger than they are because the few people who have them are so vocal. This way, maybe we can get a more exact picture of what is going on. I will try to update. 

HBR: Tipping Point Leadership

This article, by Kim and Mauborgne, describes the leadership style of William Bratton, known for his ability to dramatically improve police operations in the organizations that he worked in. Perhaps his most notable accomplishment, at least at the time the article was written, was the turn around of the New York City Police Department, which became much more efficient and effective in the first two years after Bratton became the chief of police.

The authors note four barriers to such success and four strategies that Bratton uses time and again to combat those barriers. Challenges leaders face in such situations include an "addiction to the status quo, limited resources, demotivated employees, and opposition from powerful vested interests." Bratton met these challenges through overcoming the cognitive hurdle, the resource hurdle, the motivational hurdle and the political hurdle. The authors present these four steps as a winning formula that any leader can adopt because Bratton successfully used them in more than one context.

I'm not sure I agree. I don't see how it follows that just because Bratton was able to replicate his success, it was not linked, in some way to his unique personality. I'm not saying that there isn't something to be emulated there. Merely, it's not, as I see it, a winning formula.

One thing that struck me about Kim and Mauborgne's description of Bratton's process is that he must be a very intelligent, capable kind of person, someone for whom excellence is a personal practice, not just a public policy. He had to instill confidence in his direct reports, which means being fair and honest, having such integrity that there was nothing of note to hide about his own dealings. Few people, especially in his position, have that kind of integrity. He often seemed to lead by setting the example, which meant having strict self-discipline, and he could not set that example without having an excellent understanding of the social and political influences that shape police forces generally and an excellent understanding of human nature, an unusual kind of intelligence. To reduce that ability to a four-step process is simplistic and even glib.

The authors also don't give much attention to the resources that Bratton had at his disposal. Again, not every chief of police can count on the support of the mayor against the courts. Bratton came in with some level of confidence from his people, both those under him and those he had to negotiate with. He is, as so many of them seem to be, a white male.

I was struck by Bratton's practice of having his upper management travel by subway in order to help them understand the reality of the problem. I think that is a really effective way to get people on board with reform, but it's not as easily done as said. For example, I work in a program that is based in China. All of the upper leadership for my program live in Kansas and have never done more than visit China. They flatter themselves that their few weeks at Sias, in the constant company of handlers, attending meetings to listen to faculty talk and being wined and dined by Chinese administrators, has created an understanding of the situation here. They are proud of that dinner where they ate something odd and the three words of Chinese that they can use (with an atrocious accent). If challenged, they might, in theory, agree that they don't actually have a very deep understanding of China, but it is enough (they believe) to make intelligent decisions about this program...

And they make mediocre and wasteful decisions about this program. Those of us who teach here have enough autonomy that if we want to do a good job, we can avoid most of that wastefulness in our own work, but there is no synergy between different departments and a general ignorance of how students fair once they leave our classrooms. And some faculty really don't do a good job at all. We occasionally see the result of these problems (in graduates who can't speak English for example) and shake our heads. Those who can't quite stomach it leave and the rest of us console ourselves that at least students get something out of our class.

I have suggested, on occasion, that upper management should spend at least a semester in China teaching Chinese students before they are allowed to make decisions about the program, but such suggestions are not taken that seriously. The people with power are not willing to put aside their work and lives in Kansas for such an uncomfortable learning experience, and where is the Bratton who can make them? Usually, such a person is lacking. Those in leadership comfortably read an article in Harvard Business Review, confident in their understanding of the "formula" but missing vital ingredients in their leadership that the article never mentions... and their administration limps along.

Social Justice

This week, the Leadership Council that I am a part of was asked to make a list of things that the president and new provost at FHSU can do for us. This request was met with cautious optimism. Apparently, this process of airing grievances proved fruitful for the business department when Dr. Martin (our former president) conducted it. I and the other comp teacher in the council couldn't get any suggestions from our own department though. Last time we wrote out lengthy document and nothing ever came of it. The way my colleague who works in the business department describes it, Dr. Martin saw the business department as the place for growth in the program and that's why it got all of that attention. Is it inevitable that we lead out of our personal biases and values? I know that my vision for the program is greater collaboration between the American and Chinese sides. We had another administrator who was working to expand TESOL/English programs at other universities in China. When we foster one vision, does another die? Is it possible, as a leader, to be fair to everyone?

It will be interesting to see where the present administration takes our suggestions. Maybe they'll shock my socks off and give us an administrator with real power who has actually worked here in China (but I'm not holding my breath). Anyway, there were many requests made by the Leadership Council and the students barely came into it. I don't know if they had to--after all, we faculty like to think that if you help us, we'll help the students, but I wish these conversations went deeper than they do. There's a lot of discussion about pollution and FHSU's obligation to provide air filters and raises.

(I don't know how closely the above comments relate to social justice, but I think power differences influence the way change happens so much. For what it's worth, that theme runs through much of this blog entry.)

HBR: Radical Change the Quiet Way

Hmm... so this article by Debra Meyerson answers some of the questions that I've been having about the other articles I've read. It takes a pretty radically different approach to change than the other articles and does I think the most genuine job so far of addressing change from the bottom up. I also thought it was interesting that Meyerson stopped to describe two general approaches to change: one that would pretty well describe the first three articles in this collection and the other which would describe this article's approach. The other articles never acknowledged that there were two ways to approach change. I wonder if the fact that this article does address that overview reflects something about the relative power and privilege that those two perspectives hold?

Whatever the case, I could relate a lot more to this article, which described the strategies of people who tried to change their organizations from the bottom in a more gentle and non-disruptive way. Meyerson notes four ways that her research found that people did this: disruptive self-expression, verbal jujitsu, variable-term opportunism, and strategic alliance building. Meyerson makes the point that it is not only important to lead this kind of change, but also for other types of leaders to recognize and partner with individuals who are able to lead this kind of change.

I think I have already explained my own struggles in this area--and perhaps alluded to the fact that part of the reason I struggle is that I always feel different. I have spent years of my life trying to figure out why I'm so different and why fitting in seems to be so much harder for me than other people. I suppose taken from the kind of change perspective Meyerson describes, this tendency could be considered a gift...

*sigh*

I don't know. It seems like it is so much easier to admire and examine this phenomenon from the outside than it is to live it. For one thing, it's hard to feel like the change you are creating is really worth anything. How important, really, is it to wear lace socks is you are a female surgeon? Optimistically, one might point to it as a positive influence, or pessimistically, as merely a personal idiosyncrasy. Again, for the observer, the difference doesn't matter that much--it's easy to take the optimistic view on things, but from the inside, when you are living that reality, it can be very easy to just feel that the struggle to hold to one's identity is futile. It can be so hard... and the changes really difficult to see. And the rhetoric, which seems to imply that this is something we all admire, often does not reflect the reality which is that being different is lonely, isolating, and doesn't always end in positive change.

Anyway, I think God has been challenging me in this area recently. For the longest time, I kind of gave up. I was never any good at fitting in, so I just kept my head down. It seemed like any time I tried to take initiative, I was flooded with negative feedback. Maybe I'm just really sensitive, but it felt like all I ever did was make mistakes in my efforts to make changes. Recently, though, I have felt moved to make mistakes, to stand up for what I really think and let the chips fall where they may. I failed one of my comps doing that, and I'm not sure if I changed anything, but I kind of decided that if I was too afraid to fail, I would never try. But standing up and being different is really scary!

I wish Meyerson had addressed that issue more. Maybe it really wasn't within the purview of her article and perhaps someone else addresses it, but when I look at the process she describes, I just see fear on all sides, and the people who make or support change in this way are the very few people who are not locked down by fear.

Fear for people who are different and try to create change comes in a few different forms. One fear is the fear of rejection. Rejection can take many forms. It could be something really concrete like losing a job or failing an exam. It can take more subtle forms like not having anyone to sit with in the cafeteria or not being on the "right track" for promotion. There are so many ways a person can be shut out for being different.

One can also just be afraid of failure. Perhaps the change I want to see isn't the change that's really needed. I often think, "My way is not the only way. They'll figure something else out and it will be just about as good." How can I really know that my idea is that good or that change is really needed? Such perceptions can be so subjective. Or maybe, in an effort to make change, one pushes too hard. Meyerson indicates what a tightrope this is to walk: how people try too hard just end up building resentment. That resentment can be so hard to measure, though. There is a point at which one pushes hard enough to change and there is some backlash but ultimately the change is positive and then there is a point at which the backlash is all that happens and no positive change comes, and the line between the two is very fuzzy. So there can be a fear of not knowing which battles are really worth fighting. To make all that sacrifice and have nothing to show for it is heartbreaking, and I know that I, for one, tend to blame myself for that failure. I often struggle with the thoughts, "Was that really worth it? Why are you making such a fuss? No one else cares! Maybe you're the problem, Ahneka, not them..."

On the side of those who help or enable change, there can be fear of the unknown. Here is this strange person who wants things to run differently, but who is to say how far they will take it? I was really impressed by Meyerson's account of the conservative Republican manager who helped the more progressive female employee make changes. Political differences, especially, make people close down because, at least in America, we are so prone to see the other as the worst case scenario. Any woman who is trying to improve the situation for women in the workforce is presumed to hate men (by many conservatives). Any hetro male who expresses doubts about the morality of homosexuality is presumed to be a hate-filled homophobic (by many liberals). In order to be someone who can help others promote change, this kind of fear has to be overcome, especially for people working across party lines, which is, in my opinion, the place where change needs to take place the most. People who help others create change also have to face the risk of rejection, but to a lesser extent.

The answer to all this fear, at least for Christians, is to believe in God's protection. Maybe I will write more about that in another blog entry.

Social Justice

One thing I really appreciated about Meyerson's article is that she did not just limit the ideas of change from the bottom to conventionally acknowledged social inequities. I can easily imagine another writer only looking at people of color who were making change, or women, or non-cisgendered, but she expands her inquiry to people making decisions about how much time they spend with their family. I think that it is important not to get too locked into categories when talking about the kind of change the world needs because there is always new kinds of difference being marginalized.

Tolerating difference is something a lot of people struggle with. Although I recognize that as true, it is a little hard for me to understand. Why do people get so uptight when others don't fit in? I enjoy living in China because I'm different no matter where I go, so living in China is actually relatively easy--and I love meeting people who are different. I'm expected to be different in China but in the U.S., people don't know how to label me. My difference is not immediately evident by looking at my identity on paper (white, female, cisgendered, Christian). One thing about being forced to face my difference everywhere is that I have a very strong value for this ability to tolerate difference.

True tolerance of that sort is a broader, more subtly complex perspective than I have yet encountered in most rhetoric on social justice. Maybe it has something to do with accepting one's own oddity. People who live between cultures understand it the best. I don't know if I can really describe the distinctives of that perspective because I know it primarily by experience. Like a secret handshake, I meet people from across cultural and linguistic boundaries and, within a few minutes of conversation, feel akin. Perhaps at some point in this blog, I will try describe it better than that.