Robin's Interesting Thoughts

Dear Williams College Presidential Search Committee,

As you know, one of the challenges facing higher education right now is the paradox of wanting to create a diverse and welcoming environment yet not knowing what to do with the diverse set of people who disagree with that aim (whether full-on white supremacists or those who just dislike affirmative action).

I believe that many college leaders have been far too heavy-handed in dealing with this challenge — and therefore not as effective as they could be. For example, Williams’ outgoing president has repeatedly said that tolerance and respect for diverse views is “the one thing that’s not up for debate.” The grave downside to this approach is that it misses out on the critical educational opportunities that come from debate and conversation. If it’s just “not ok” to have racist beliefs, what is the racist community member to do? Stay silent and stay racist? Act out with racist graffiti as we have seen? If the debate is allowed to happen, I believe that the thoughtful community at Williams will have the opportunity to test their ideas, learn how to have difficult conversations, learn to empathize with “the other”… and perhaps break out of this polarizing cycle that the nation and world is caught up in.

Note that the leader can (and hopefully will) still firmly support diversity efforts. The trick is to do it in a way that invites conversation rather than denounces it. I have seen this done effectively by some leaders. For example, notice in this community letter how the author avoids any moralistic language but rather invites the reader to consider the consequences for community members of color.

There was a lovely article in a recent alumni magazine about a Williams professor who grew up as a white supremacist. He came to Williams and learned a more full history of the South and came to understand the problems (both moral and logical) with white supremacy. He now passes this on to students in a simple way. He doesn’t explicitly condemn racism — he doesn’t need to. He simply shows students primary documents that make the conclusion obvious.

This led me to wonder whether the Williams of today should offer admission to a student who was openly white supremacist? It may be an interesting question to ask candidates.

If yes, does that violate community standards? If no, how could we have modern successes of the type in the story? I hope Williams’ next president will be able to grapple with the subtleties and tensions in this sort of question and will not resort to a firm yes or no.

Indeed I have come to realize that overcoming hatred and division is not a matter of right and wrong, inclusion or exclusion. Rather it is a process of having difficult conversations and learning how to empathize with marginalized communities and those doing the marginalizing. Only then can we truly move forward together. My hope is that the Williams leaders of tomorrow will be able to grasp these subtleties and will not resort to moralistic thinking which simply deepens the divide between “us” and “them.”

Best,
Robin Stewart

“Maya Angelou suggests there are four questions that we’re all unconsciously asking each other all the time: […]

1. Do you see me?
2. Do you care that I’m here?
3. Am I enough for you?
4. [Am I] special to you?”

-Katherine Schafler (via Thrive Global)

As we interact with others, we can be mindful to demonstrate — through our attention and body language — that the answer to each question is YES.

“Here you have this wonderful, wonderful drug: placebo — that because of the way it was studied in the medical world, anybody who was trying to assess the efficacy of a drug was upset when it didn’t outperform the placebo. However, that placebo was curing a lot of people, so it’s a very, very powerful medication.”

-Ellen Langer (via On Being)

“We’re told to get an idea, build a team, then go out and make your idea real. But the people who succeed — what they have at the beginning is not really an idea. It’s more like a sense that there’s something broken. A hunch. […] The only thing that you can guarantee is… that you’re going to be learning by mistakes.”

-Luis Perez-Breva,
as quoted in MIT News (July/August 2017, p.10)

I randomly stumbled onto the world of Zentangling a few weeks ago when browsing the local library. It’s a meditative type of drawing where you follow a loose set of repetitive instructions to create art, from doodle-like scribbles to rich textures and designs.

Trying it out, two thoughts came to mind.

First, it reminded me that there are many ways to meditate (besides deep breathing in lotus pose, which gets boring after a while)! Many types of art, music, exercise, rest, caretaking, dialog, and ritual can be meditative.

Second, it reminded me of sketching user interfaces. Since software tends to deal with significant amounts of data, when you sketch interfaces by hand you end up needing to draw the same basic component many times. Perhaps there are many items on the screen (as in a long list or data visualization) or perhaps you are drawing the same screen many times to test changes in state or different variations on an idea. Either way, I sometimes get impatient or wonder if it is really a good use of my time. Zentangling was a reminder that it’s indeed ok to spend some time on repetitive tasks, to relax into it, and to enjoy the beautiful results that inevitably come when you put care into your work.

The word “budget” tends to make me cringe. I think that’s because budgets have mostly been something that I was subject to as an employee or volunteer. They were yet another tool (and symbol) of power and yet another grounds for politics and resentment. At best, they were something I simply didn’t have to worry about when there was generally enough money to go around.

But budgeting can be a source of great creativity and can hold deep meaning if framed as an answer to the question: How can we best use the resources we have in service of our organization’s purpose? The answers are profound in that they reflect our deeper priorities and beliefs about what seems possible and what is most worth pursuing. And there is always creativity to be applied in finding ways to make progress — both with and without significant funding.

What’s preventing the budgeting process from reaching its full potential? I think one of the more interesting impediments may actually be the widespread use of grids of numbers — i.e., spreadsheets — as the medium for the task. Focusing on raw numbers and arithmetic emphasizes scarcity — literally the zero-sum nature of allocating money. If our goal is to be generative and in touch with our deeper aspirations, we need budgeting tools that emphasize instead the infinite possibilities for how the money can be spent and the flexibility with which we can adjust the plan in response to new information and ideas.

The numbers still have to add up, of course. But computers can do the math faster than we can blink. Software can alert us to any problems and mismatches — and even better, it can support us in exploring the space of possibilities. It just might help us take budgeting to the next stage of its evolution.

As you might have guessed, I have some ideas for such a tool. Let me know if you are interested in contributing in some way to its creation. For starters: how would you like to evolve the way your organization does budgeting?

Five years ago I wrote (with more than a little frustration): “I’ve read quite a few books related to organizational psychology and culture. All of these books use scientific evidence to support ideas that in many ways fly in the face of conventional wisdom. What’s surprised me most is that many of the clear best practices have still not been widely adopted, sometimes decades after first publication. Culture and habits are difficult to change.”

But why? Why is it so difficult to adopt practices that clearly work? When I pose this type of question to innocent bystanders, they tend to chuckle and tell me how idealistic I am. (A visiting Congolese elder once replied, “You have a pure heart.”) The implication, I suppose, is that human nature is self-centered, ignorant, and lazy. But I’m not the only one who questions that assumption. Certainly in my own life I’ve found some types of change to be very hard. But I’ve also worked very hard to make the changes that were important to me, and I’ve seen others do the same.

One explanation for change resistance I eventually honed is what I call “the Pope’s dilemma.” It goes as follows. Suppose you are the head of the catholic church. Your institution has for decades discriminated against LGBT members. You now realize that there is an avalanche of evidence showing that homosexuality is not a “choice” and your past policies and behaviors have caused incalculable suffering amongst the very congregants you hoped to serve. To make a change implies acknowledging the terrible mistakes of the past. How do you do this in a graceful way that does not upset the very credibility of the institution?

I eventually learned that this process has a name: reparation. Clearly, most of us are not yet very good at it. The hardest step in the reparation process is to forgive ourselves for the pain we have caused. There are all sorts of mind games we use to avoid thinking about that pain at all costs and to cast doubt on even the clearest of evidence that change is both warranted and possible. Although the suffering caused by outmoded business assumptions is not usually as dire as in the textbook cases of reparation, I do continue to think that this is a major factor holding up the adoption of many beneficial business practices.

But more recently I’ve realized that there is an even deeper answer provided by the theory and practice of next-stage organizations, many of which apply all sorts of best practices — sometimes seemingly effortlessly — while also continuing to invent new ones. Curiously, these companies tend to implement these practices for reasons that have little to do with any experimental evidence showing increases in employee retention, customer satisfaction, or profitability. Rather, they do it because that is the type of world they want to create and live in. A world abundant in generosity, compassion, connection, and wholeness. Next-stage organizations appreciate that those things often turn out to be good for business, but it’s not the motivating factor. These cultures choose generosity regardless of its direct impact on sales.

In other words, these new business practices tend to flow naturally from a certain world view (specifically, the view that has come to be known as “teal”). Conversely, those new business practices tend to react like oil and water against the world view of mainstream business. I can imagine plenty of managers who read these business advice books and want to implement some of their well-reasoned recommendations. And then: the organizational antibodies set in.

• Some of the ideas seem too risky. (“Maybe it worked for some, but our business is different.”)
• Some seem too expensive. (“We can’t justify spending money on something so peripheral to the core business.”)
• Some seem too uncomfortable. (“We don’t talk about emotions at work.”)
• Changes that do make it through get so watered-down as to be useless, or get little enough buy-in to be irrelevant, or quickly get cast aside when the next crisis or crunch comes along.

And thus we find ourselves in the paradoxical situation where mainstream business fully accepts the value of science and experiment and yet cannot integrate some of the best practices that result from these experiments! Meanwhile, in the emerging world of next-stage organizations, those very same scientific results are viewed as largely irrelevant, and yet the best practices they support are adopted eagerly and authentically!

For me, it was the scientific pursuit of best practices that helped me uncover these paradoxes and the understanding that there are other, perhaps more important ways of discovering best practices. (Are they generous? Compassionate? Do they build relationships? Are they authentic? More broadly, do they promote the type of world you want to live in?)

And, perhaps less importantly, it helped shed some light on why business advice books continue to fly off the shelves with little apparent effect on the day-to-day culture of business.

Suppose you and I have fundamentally different views on an issue of the day. (For example, let’s say one of us thinks climate change is caused by human activity and one of us thinks it’s not. Or one of us thinks immigrants improve the economy and one of us thinks they weaken it.) Let us have the grace to put aside for the moment the question of which view (if either) is true. Instead, let us share in our outrage that at least one (and perhaps both) of us is receiving fundamentally misleading information!

We all seek truth, and we all hope to act in a way that leaves the world better for our families and communities. We desperately need each other’s help in finding ways to sort out what is reliable and what is not in this internet age of fake news, corporate spin, echo chambers and political grandstanding. And we all fall victim to confirmation bias every day of the week. The truth is out there — but it is increasingly complex, increasingly context-dependent, and increasingly difficult to untangle from all the surrounding noise. Information is power, so what strategies can we use to seek reliable sources of information? How can we be reliable sources of information? Sources that admit and actively correct their own mistakes?

Suppose one of us has been advocating all our life for greenhouse gas reductions and it turns out that climate change is no big deal and all we have accomplished is to destroy good jobs in the oil and gas industry and upend the surrounding communities. Or suppose one of us has spent our life working to protect the oil and gas economy and it turns out that the resulting greenhouse gases are leading to floods, droughts, famines, war, and destruction all over the world. Or maybe the truth is somewhere in between. We all need each other’s support and compassion if we are to find truth together and grieve and forgive our own culpability in it.

 

“My observation is that these algorithms — they don’t show up randomly. They show up when there’s a really difficult conversation that people want to avoid. Like, ‘We don’t know what makes a good teacher, and different people have different opinions about that, so let’s just bypass this conversation by having an algorithm score teachers.’ Or: ‘We don’t know what prison is really for, you know? Let’s have a way of deciding how long to sentence somebody.’ We introduce these ‘silver bullet’ mathematical algorithms because we don’t want to have a conversation.”

-Cathy O’Neil (via 99% Invisible)

“Valuable collaborators in the evolution of this book have been the people in my [psychotherapy] practice who have worked so unreservedly to develop themselves and their lives. I am obliged not to name them. Perhaps, in another era, entering into psychotherapy will be defined not as remediation for personal failure, but as an esteemed discipline for evolving one’s ability to contribute.”

-Rosamund Stone Zander,
The Art of Possibility (Acknowledgements, p.203)