Sunday, May 18, 2014

Reflection: Balancing Our Good to Great Stuff

The Achieving the Dream conference speakers, putting an academic spin on the Jim Collins management classic, Good to Great (2001), explained how pockets of innovation within an organization can lead to larger, organization-wide change, if a culture of intentional institutional redesign has been established. Too opaque? OK, let's quote Collins directly:

"Visionary companies make some of their best moves by experimentation, trial and error, opportunism, and -- quite literally -- accident. What looks in retrospect like brilliant foresight and preplanning was often the result of 'Let's just try a lot of stuff and keep what works.'"

In order to promote such a change culture, you need data to identify and evaluate innovative "stuff," leadership willing to allow stuff to bubble up from below, formal and informal communication promulgating and supporting stuff, and time for reflection about stuff... time for reflection?

The community college audience at the workshop sat a little straighter at this last requirement. Reflection? Didn't Collins, the guru of greatness now not later, say, "A culture of discipline ... is a principle of greatness." Doesn't this drive toward discipline imply moving, moving, moving? 24/7? Who, we asked ourselves while checking the room number for the next session, has time for reflection?

Apparently we should. The speakers said our rush toward innovation has to be balanced with reflection on the data, the goals, and the "stuff." While action to initiate change is encouraged, action for the sake of action becomes unanchored, and possibly counter-productive without planned moments of reflection. We as instructors know that students need moments of reflection to move new information from short term memory to long-term habits. You can't teach, teach, teach without pauses for learning. That's part of any sensible lesson plan. Why would we expect any less for our colleges?

Fortunately for most colleges, the traditional school calendar provides scheduled moments for reflection. Right now, our school has begun a two-week break between the Spring Term and Summer Term. The hallways are quiet without the flow of students walking between classes. Final papers are collected, grades recorded, and schedules set up for the next session. Christian colleges might use the down time to conduct spiritual retreats for staff, faculty, and leadership. That's a great idea to move reflection from an exterior process to an inner core change. Unfortunately, public colleges can't go that route, though they do strongly encourage us --wink wink nudge nudge -- to take time to plan and recharge.

During semester breaks, we need to consciously and methodically step back from classroom activities, regroup our resources, and refocus our thoughts on our shared and personal mission of student success. In a word, it's time to reflect. Quiet still moments of reflection balance the busyness of the innovative stuff we try during the semester. During reflection, the daily detritus is swept clear from our pathways, vistas are opened, and, to quote a fourth-century consultant, Chang Tsu, "the whole universe surrenders." He must have been a teacher reflecting on stuff too.

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