Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Learning the New, Unlearning the Old

I’m working on a Master’s Degree, and the final step will be writing a 100-page thesis. (A daunting task for a guy who has spent large chunks of his life writing three-paragraph ads, 30-second television commercials, and 60-second radio spots. Much of what I’ve written has taken just one page.)

There’s actually a class on Research Methods, which helps us learn how to define the subject, do the research, organize the material, and write the paper. Reading one of the textbooks the other day (Your Guide to Writing Quality Research Papers by Nancy Jean Vyhmeister, which is actually – surprisingly – interesting) I came across this quote from Ellen White, written in 1892: “We have many lessons to learn, and many, many to unlearn.”

That sentence caused me to pull out my yellow highlighter. As did the one a line or two later: “Those who think that they will never have to give up a cherished view… will be disappointed.”

I usually think of education as learning new stuff, to pile on the mound of things I already know. But what if some of the timbers in my intellectual foundation are outdated, or insufficient, or flat-out wrong? It may only be a matter of time before there’s some sort of collapse. At best, it could be embarrassing; at worst, a disaster.

Learning, as Ms. White points out, should force us to unlearn as well as learn.

That can be difficult, for two reasons. First, we cherish the “truths” we already have gained, through study or experience. It’s hard to let them go, even when new discoveries and new situations render them false or irrelevant. But second, and quite insidiously, we sometimes don’t even recognize the building blocks of our own intellectual infrastructure. They are comfortable, assumed, unexamined. In the same way that fish don’t know they’re wet, we don’t recognize the assumptions and biases that we’ve acquired along the way.

So how do we unlearn?

Perhaps it takes an attitude and an action.

The attitude would be just a touch of humility. Just a glimmer of an admission to ourselves that we don’t know it all, and that some of what we know might be outdated or incomplete. We keep our ears slightly cocked to hear the warnings that there might be some creaking or sagging in our foundation.

The action would be to force ourselves to encounter information from different sources. Here are just a couple examples. In my work in advertising, I’ve noticed that companies tend to pay attention to the efforts of other entities in their same category – car dealers notice the ads of other car dealers, churches pay attention to what other churches are doing, etc. One secret is to cross-pollinate. Look at the ads outside your industry (after all, your customers are). When I ran the marketing for a Christian university on the west coast, our efforts at a new web design started with looking at many of the sites our prospective students might visit. We looked at the sites of other Christian universities in our category, of course, but then, step by step, we widened the net, step by step. First, bigger universities, state universities, and universities in other areas. Then we looked at Pepsi, Scion, ESPN, even Hollister and Abercrombine and Fitch.

Here’s another example. In my personal life, as a follower of Jesus Christ, I want to avoid the cultural myopia that can sneak up on us. In addition to reading contemporary authors from my home country, the United States, I also try to read authors from other countries and from other centuries. (Often, you can get two birds with one book. Try, for example, something by St. Augustine. He lived in Africa in the fourth century, and today is highly regarded by Catholics, Anglicans, Protestants, and the Eastern Orthodox Church.)

So, thanks, Ms. White, for pointing out that “unlearning” can be just as important as “learning.” It makes sense. Adding new software requires deleting the old. You have to find, cut out, and replace the rotten timbers on your sailing vessel before it’s again seaworthy and can be trusted to embark on your next voyage.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

U.S. News College Rankings

Warning! This post will likely be a bit too "inside" for most readers of this blog... but this is what I'm thinking about this afternoon, and some may find it interesting.

As imperfect as they are, I'm looking over the U.S. News rankings today and noting that Northwest University cracked the top ten in their category, ranking #9 among regional colleges in the West.

Having invested 13 years in Northwest, I'm really gratified to see NU continuing to be recognized as a great place.

I remembered that I did some really rudimentary analysis a few years ago of peer schools, including a number of schools that "compete" with NU for students (we call them "crossapps" schools that also receive applications from our new students). I spent a few minutes and updated the rankings from the current report.

I think a lot of people think that Northwest "competes" most with other Assemblies of God schools, but the truth is that most crossapps are at schools that are in our region, and in more prestigious categories (those shaded in yellow above). Northwest continues to move up in the category, and it is hanging in there with national universities and regional universities.

As Merlin and I are looking forward to serving other organizations, I'm glad that we can point to experience like this... evidence that we've had a hand in greatifying a place like NU.

Monday, September 12, 2011

What Makes an Organization Great?

This question isn’t as simple as it looks at first glance. I think the answer will come in two parts: 1) what are the criteria for defining a great organization? and 2) what are the components – the ingredients, principles and processes – that make an organization great?


Criteria: How do you define – or recognize – a great organization?

Let’s deal with the criteria first. Until you define the qualities of a great organization, you won’t recognize one even if you’re in it, nor will you be able to form, reform, or transform your organization into a great one.

How about size? Is a large organization a great one? Is the largest organization in its category the greatest one?

What about automobiles? Is Toyota the best car company in the world because it builds the most vehicles? Or is Mercedes-Benz the best, based on its reputation for engineering and quality? How about Rolls-Royce, based on its reputation for elegance and prestige? Maybe the winner is Lamborghini, which claims to be building just 20 of the most expensive cars in the world, the Sesto Elementos. Competing for the same honor – most expensive car – is Bugatti, whose Veyron 16.4 Super Sport has a top speed of 253 miles per hour. Maybe the best car company in today’s world should be the one that produces the “greenest” cars: those that are the most environmentally friendly.

What about computer companies? Is Microsoft the greatest computer company, based on ubiquity of its office software? Or is it Apple, based on the popularity of its iPod, iPhone, and IPad? Is it Google, the leader in search engines, or Facebook, the leader in social media?

What about churches? Is Lakewood Church in Houston the greatest? According to Church Growth Today, it’s the largest and fastest growing church in America. It meets in the largest venue, and Pastor Joel Osteen’s weekly sermons are viewed in almost 100 nations. Or is it Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City, whose pastor, Tim Keller, has become the inspiration and mentor for a new generation of ministers who want to engage the culture with a biblically centered, intellectually vigorous exploration of the Christian Faith? With its “Redeemer City to City” structure, it hopes “to build a global movement of leaders and practitioners who build upon and adapt our ‘DNA’ to create new churches, new ventures, and new expressions of the gospel of Jesus Christ for the common good.”

It doesn’t take long to realize the size may not be the best criterion – or at least the only one – for determining greatness. And there are many other criteria, including customer satisfaction, employee workplace satisfaction, stock price, market valuation, and reputation.

Two things seem to come to the front. First, your organization will need to establish its own definition of what it means to be great. Your mission and priorities will determine what will make your group great. Second, you will likely find that your organization’s standard of greatness will be a blend of several criteria. You don’t want short-term profits at the loss of customer satisfaction, for example, or your success will be short-lived. You will probably need to establish your own matrix of standards and benchmarks to define what greatness will look like for your organization.


Components: What do you need to create a great organization?

There’s no simple answer to this question, either. But it seems to me the answer lies more in the intangibles than in physical factors like location and capitalization.

Here are five things that you need to create a great organization.

Purpose. You need to have a goal. A target. Something you want to accomplish. And this usually involves taking advantage of an opportunity or meeting a need (even if, or especially if, it’s a need that no one else perceives).

Plan. You need a road map for reaching your goal. With, of course, the full realization that you will encounter roadblocks and detours along the way that will force you to revise your map.

Passion. Everybody else in your industry or category is competing hard. If you don’t give it 100%, you’ll be left in the dust. If you’re going to do something, do it well and do it with passion. As the ancient wisdom in the book of Ecclesiastes (9:10) reminds us: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might...”

Patience. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Neither was Amazon.com. But in a culture that’s wants instant results and even-sooner gratification, it’s difficult to be patient.
Organizations that yield to the pressure (from Wall Street analysts, for example) may have a successful quarter, at least in terms of profits, but won’t see long-term success.

At the same time, you can’t let patience become an excuse for lack of progress. The secret is steps. Incremental steps. Set short-term goals that can be quantified and achieved, abut that still lead toward your long-term purpose. Achieving each successive short-term goal will energize your organization for the next step towards the ultimate goal.

Persistence. Here’s the bad news. Two pieces of bad news, actually. First, it’s ferociously hard to get your organization to greatness, and second, it’s impossible to rest on that particular mountaintop. The only constant is change. If you do get your organization to a place where people are calling it great, you can expect something to change, and the process of Purpose-Plan-Passion-Patience-Persistence can start all over again. Organizations are like life, I guess. It’s not the destination. It’s the journey.

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So what makes an organization great? In terms of “what” -- I can’t tell you. Probably no one can. You have to decide for yourself how you define greatness. And in terms of “how” – I can’t give you specifics here either. Probably no one can. Again, you’ll have to determine for yourself how your organization will pursue greatness.

I doubt that anything written here is new to you. But as C. S. Lewis pointed out, most people don’t need to be taught, they need to be reminded. So take a minute, step back and look at your organization with fresh eyes. Maybe there are new ways to define what greatness would look like for your organization. And maybe there are news ways to achieve that greatness.

And maybe we at GREATIFIERS can help. Sometimes you just need someone to ask the questions you’ve forgotten or suggest the routes that you don’t see.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Communication Networks and Decision Structures

I'm thinking again about an interview in which Ed Catmull, president of Pixar, reflected on a September 2008 article he wrote for the Harvard Business Review about fostering collective creativity. One of the key quotes from the interview went something like this, “we need people at Pixar to recognize that we are highly organized, but the organization structure and the communication structure are two different things.” I downloaded the article; here’s how he stated it in print: “Everyone must have the freedom to communicate with anyone. This means recognizing that the decision-making hierarchy and communication structure in organizations are two different things.”

Organization structures and communication networks need to both be leveraged to their maximum potential in collective creativity and decision making.

The skilled leader will keep both the structures and the networks in harmonious tension. It is easy to err by failing on either side.

In my experience, we don’t need to do anything to create the communication networks; people talk. Our task is really to better acknowledge the networks and leverage them to their maximum potential; we can do more to enable the networks. Managers err when we build a culture that causes the networks to go underground, failing to acknowledge and encourage open communication. The extremes, with awful consequences, are those that attempt to forbid or punish open communication.

The opposite error is to fail to acknowledge the organization structure for decision making. We commonly forget that an open communication network does not negate what Catmull calls a “decision-making hierarchy.” Short circuiting, or even the perception of short circuiting, an organization structure generally results in chaos that includes poor decision making, bruised relationships, and damaged communication networks.
For a while now, we have adopted a vernacular for three stages of decision making:
  • discussion,
  • deliberation, and
  • decision.
I think it is helpful to think of these ideas in a simple matrix:
Collective creativity and sound decision making generally is best served by open discussion that may or may not involve the organizational structure. This is the early stage in the process characterized by brainstorming, floating of ideas, and what I often call swirl.

Deliberation ought to involve the networks and must consider the structure. This is the stage when operable plans come together. Productive deliberation should reflect the work of networks, and consider the structure in such a way that it results in a proposal that is actionable by the structure.
Decision, then, should be well informed by the networks via the previous stages, but entrusted to the organizational structure. The best decisions will include a feedback loop that demonstrates the value of the networks, especially when there is respectful disagreement.

If only it were this simple. Models like these are easily thrown by distrust and insecurity. Those in the communication networks may not be able to trust the organizational structure, even when open communication is enabled and thoroughly considered. Those in decision-making hierarchies may be so insecure that open communication is threatening, discouraged or disregarded. Then there are the added complications that might include legal constraints, confidentiality issues, and the various competing goals and perspectives of all involved. Nevertheless, sometimes a simple model like this helps, even in such complexities.
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Friday, September 9, 2011

I Didn’t Smell the Potatoes

“I didn’t smell the potatoes,” said Laurie a few days ago; it was an important lesson I’ll categorize under greatifying the home office.

Here’s the back story…

Laurie knows that I have freakish olfactory memory; I have a good nose and my nose knows. If I’ve smelled it once, I can usually identify it again. Furthermore, a smell often brings up an entire host of memories. I know that for some folk a song or colors or some other trigger can put them right back in a memorable place and time. For me, it is a smell.

For example, I got on the elevator early one afternoon last month and immediately recognized a smell that I hadn’t detected in years. It was so out of context, just to satisfy my curiosity, I stepped out of the elevator and asked the receptionist if she remembered who came through moments before. The aroma took me back to the company which employed most of my family during my teenage years. It was the after lunch fragrance of the owner (we called him “the old man”); he didn’t always eat the same lunch, but he did always drink the same lunch. I’m confident that whoever was last in that elevator had a whiskey or two at lunch. And while I wouldn’t trust my nose to this level of detail, I would further guess that it was a double Chivas Regal on the rocks.

So, while I sat at my makeshift desk in our dining room earlier this week, Laurie asked, “When you have a minute, could you come smell this pantry? Something is not right.”

On my next walk to the coffee pot, I stopped by the pantry and put the knowing nose to work. I called up to Laurie saying “there’s an old potato in there somewhere.” Sure enough, some renegade potato had escaped its bag some time back, finding refuge in a dark corner of our pantry. Case solved; problem eradicated. 

One of the side effects of my “transition” from Northwest was that we had to move out of a small windowless office that our church was using for an office. It served as storage, workspace and a meeting spot for the church, and Laurie used it several days each week as an office. With the end of my duties at Northwest, Laurie had to move her office back home too.

So… now to the point of greatifying the home office. When Laurie said, “I didn’t smell the potatoes,” she was saying that there was something great about physically leaving the house and going to the office. For most of our nearly ten years of serving our church, the church office has been our home office. But for the past year, since moving the church to Northwest’s campus, we have had use of that little office. Laurie found it an enormous help since when she is at home, she simply cannot not smell the potatoes. It didn’t matter that there was church work calling, knowing that the panty needed attention downstairs meant putting aside the church work to handle what appeared to be more urgent in the kitchen.

Saying “I didn’t smell the potatoes when I wasn’t using the home office” was an admission that the urgency wasn’t real; the renegade potato could certainly wait.

Nearing the one month anniversary of my makeshift home office, I know that I have to develop disciplines to greatify my home office. While I can actually let the potato wait, there is a potentially long list of other distractions that could easily take me away from my work. It seems to me that steps ahead for me to greatify the home office include:

  • Establishing office hours and a routine (So far, it still feels like every day is a Saturday; I need a weekday routine for the home office.) 
  • Making the office less makeshift and temporary (I need to get stuff into drawers and out of boxes).  
  • Getting a more comfortable setup, espescially a desk chair (I think we purchased the one I’m using twenty years ago and it is time to be retired).
  • Establishing a way to collaborate with others in the home office (my real office has always been a place for my work alone, but more importantly my work with others; the home office has never been a place for meetings).
These are some of the ways I’m starting. Got any other great ideas? 

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

You Can't Steer a Parked Truck

One of my guiding maxims has been, “you can’t steer a parked truck.”

The picture that comes to mind is one of me and my brother on Old 29. When Randy and I were growing up, our Dad (Tom) served as a volunteer firefighter. So, from time to time, we had the enormous privilege of hanging out at the fire station. Most of the equipment was off limits, of course, but we were occasionally allowed on Old 29… a restored, antique fire engine that was used for parades and community events.

We could spend hours bouncing on the black leather seats and cranking on the large, wooden steering wheel as we raced to imaginary emergencies. In our minds we were Johnny Gage and Roy DeSoto aboard Squad 51; lives were at peril and relied on our swift arrival. It was great fun!

The cranking on the steering wheel had no real impact, but only aided our imaginations. No matter how hard we tugged, our efforts didn’t move the truck an inch. Furthermore, these childhood “driving” experiences caused me to wonder, “Just how strong will I have to become to drive a truck like this?” Try as I might, I couldn’t get the truck tires to swivel. Only later would I realize that in order to have any hope of turning the wheels, the truck need to first start moving.

I’ve translated this little maxim into a bias towards action. Planning is vitally important, but it takes movement to get things done. Although there is a certain amount of gratification of “bouncing on the seat” and imagining how the plans and resources at my disposal might accomplish a goal, the engine needs to be started and the wheels need to start rolling before we can actually begin to steer into any accomplishment.

Today I’m reminded that God can’t steer the parked truck of my life either. Sure, He speaks to me and molds me in times of still quietness. But in order for Him to accomplish much through me, I need to be moving. I have especially found that I need to be moving in order for Him to accomplish the things He has planned for me to do that I don’t yet know anything about.

So it is with this new venture. Greatifiers isn't "all buttoned up" and we're not exactly sure where this path will take us... but we are rolling and we are excited to see what is in store.

I think that it is natural for us to, especially when in doubt, choose stasis; rather than risk failing with an incomplete plan, we sit still far too long. Let’s face it; our plans are always incomplete because we simply can’t account for every eventuality. So let’s adopt a bias toward action and remember that we, and even God, can’t steer a parked truck.