Go Slow to Go Fast

My daughter has epilepsy. Her seizures began at age one - very brief, frequent shuddering spells which we later learned were small bursts of electrical activity that overwhelm the brain and interrupt the flow of information. Kind of like the really loud, obnoxious guy who elbows his way into what was a meaningful conversation with a friend.

Fortunately her seizures were small and with none of the frightening side-effects so many people with epilepsy live with every day. That said, it became clear pretty quickly that her episodes were impeding her development - consider how long it takes you to do or learn anything when you are constantly being interrupted - and so we found ourselves in the world of neurologists, sleep-deprived MRIs (super fun!) and medications we were told "aren't really meant for small children but are the best we have to offer."

At age three our daughter qualified for support from the local school district to work on her speech and language delays. We found ourselves in another new world, the bureaucracy of county and state-funded support services. It took us awhile to sort things out as these resources aren't exactly well-published and once you get started it takes persistence and curiousity to successfully navigate the landscape.

We learned that the centerpiece of any support is a learning contract called an Individual Education Plan (IEP). At the outset of services and on an annual basis thereafter all the stakeholders in our daughter's education, depending on the specific types of support she needs, weigh in on both her progress and on new goals to be established for the coming year. It is a laborious, time-intensive and slow process. And, it works. We had a two-hour meeting yesterday to discuss our daughter's transition to kindergarten. It was a thorough and detailed look at her progress over the last year as well as an opportunity to discuss the best environment and services to help her "access her education" (my newly adopted IEP lingo) in the year ahead.

At an emotional level, these are very hard discussions to have. We, like every other parent we talk to, want our daughter to be "normal." We want to save her from the labels and categorization that are so easily attached and so difficult to remove. That said, I feel extremely blessed that we have people in our lives who want to help her overcome and succeed. That there is a system in place, cumbersome though it may be, dedicated to her development. It was in the middle of that thought in the middle of this meeting that it became painfully clear to me why it's so hard to get development right in our organizations. Processes and initiatives that are slow, involve a lot of people and require complete individualization for greatest impact aren't exactly welcome in the private sector.

That said, if we really want to help our managers manage effectively and our leaders lead with purpose and passion, we need to get intense, individualized and involved in learning plans that create real goals with real outcomes for real impact. No, bureaucracy is not the answer but neither is the excuse that business moves too fast for us to take the time to do the real work required for learning, development and change to occur.

Here's a recipe for your consideration:

Mindset: Go Slow to Go Fast

1. Involve the right people - who has perspective and feedback that needs to be considered?


2. Write a plan - focus on strengths, gaps and the full context of business needs


3. Track progress - stay in the conversation over time


4. Revise and renew - keep the plan relevant to individual and business changes


5. Review progress and do it again

Two Poems by Kay Ryan

TICKET

This is the ticket
I failed to spend.
It is still in my pocket
at the fair's end.
It is not only
suffering or grief
or even boredom
of which we are
offered more than
enough.

DOUBT

A chick has just so much time
to chip its way out, just so much
egg energy to apply to the weakest spot
or whatever spot it started at.
It can't afford doubt. Who can?
Doubt uses albumen
at twice the rate of work.
One backward look by any of us
can cost what it cost Orpheus.
Neither may you answer
the stranger's knock;
you know it is the Person from Porlock
who eats dreams for dinner,
his napkin stained the most delicate colors.

Constancy

Last week I wrote about a pattern of change in my life - four year cycles of education, exploration, and employment. I recognize in reviewing these cycles that during each one I was gathering critical information to successfully transition into the next phase. In small and large doses I was picking up knowledge, wisdom, emotional intelligence, self-awareness, confidence and purpose with each pass I made. And now, as I'm confronted with the end of yet another trip around the cycle, I am asking a new question: what if I don't continue this pattern? What if, instead of a change of scenery, I embrace constancy - the recognition that in this time and place there is more to be made out of the bits and pieces I have cobbled together into this thing I call my vocation?

These questions got me thinking about the artist, Andy Goldsworthy, and the themes he introduces in the book, "Time", a collection of photographs of his work. He says the following:

"Whenever possible, I make a work every day. Each work joins the next in a line that defines the passage of my life, marking and accounting for my time and creating a momentum which gives me a strong sense of anticipation for the future. Each piece is individual, but I also see the line combined as a single work."

I take reassurance from this that all of my cycles are connected. I am creating my own line of work and my own unique momentum toward the future. But then he goes on to say this:

"Time and change are connected to place. Real change is best understood by staying in one place."

His point here is that you can't fully appreciate the passage of time and the changes that take place where you are if you don't stay put and participate in it. Is four years enough to figure that out? In plenty of cases, sure it is. In others, no chance. My thought is this: the more you learn about a place the more you can impact it and, over time, appreciate, adjust and nuance your relationship with it. That there is a reward inherent with local knowledge - an intimacy that rewards us with the opportunity to offer and satisfy more of our best selves.

Finally, Goldsworthy says this: "I have tried to pitch my life so that I make the best use of my time and energy. Perfection in every work is not the aim. I prefer works that are fashioned by the compromises forced upon me by nature, whether it be an incoming tide, the end of a day, thawing snow, shrivelling leaves or the deadline of my own lifetime."

His acknowledgement of the compromises that are present in all endeavors is so significant. There is no perfect. There is only the best possible "right here, right now." I happen to practice my vocation inside an organization and we all know that organizations are wrought with compromise. The best ones are led by people who make the right compromises work for the most people to get some important work done. David Whyte has written that "there is no organization large enough for even one human soul" and yet it is within organizations that so much of human progress has been made possible. Go figure.

There is a powerful "and" emerging in all of this. A sweet spot that is about both constancy and change. After all, cycles wouldn't be cycles if we didn't know they'd be coming around again.

Four Years

Here's a pattern I recently noticed about my life:

Four years of high school. Fun. Social. Involved in everything. Interested in leadership and performance of all kinds (choral music, student body president). Not so much academic discipline.

Four years of college. Fun-ish. Social. Involved in too much. Interested in leadership and performance of all kinds (choral music, fraternity president). Burnout. Not so much academic discipline.

Four years in first job. (I did hold another job immediately after college but it was only a 1-year gig and to spend anytime describing it would mess up my pattern, right?) I was a fundraiser for my alma mater. I really liked being on campus. I really didn't know anything about fundraising.

Four years of career "wandering." This is the point at which I left the University environment in favor of...nothing. Just left. Sort of a "find my calling" exercise that resulted in a string of additional fundraising jobs - the arts, human service, education - only to finally realize that I wasn't any good, nor did I wish to be, at asking people for money. This is also the period in which I joined a start-up in an account development role (a.k.a sales) which is, shockingly, an awful lot like fundraising. YOU ACTUALLY HAVE TO ASK THE CUSTOMER TO DO SOMETHING like, say, BUY YOUR PRODUCT. I didn't like that very much.

Four years at next job. Now this is where it gets fun. I was laid off from the start-up. Not much of a surprise since I didn't much care for the sales part. However, within a week I had an interview with a leadership development consulting firm doing, you guessed it, account development (a.k.a. sales). [Quick tangent: I am fascinated at how certain types of professional organizations use "account development" as a euphemism for "sales," like sales is dirty and we're too good for that. Curious.] Now, I know you're thinking I should have learned my lesson but, alas, I was finally in a field, if not a role, in which I was actually REALLY interested - hooray! And, I was successful at morphing the job into one that allowed me to present, teach, facilitate and coach, the stuff I really wanted to do, or so I had recently discovered. (Not a complete surprise when one reviews the high school/college interest in performance/leadership development but that was too obvious for me to latch onto at the time.)

(Almost) Four years in current job. OK, so I take all of that great facilitation and coaching experience and I land a great role with responsibility to formalize leadership development, primarily through professional coaching, in an industry leading organization. Pretty sweet deal. And it's been the best learning experience of my life. And, as of August 1, I'll be in the job four years.

Like I said, I recently noticed this pattern.