The Danger of Living on an Island

Does your organization claim to be “world class?” If the answer is yes, we have two important words to share:  Be careful.

One of our clients was a newly appointed school leader who described joining an institution that considered itself world-class in every way. She reported being struck positively---at least initially---by the consistency of the culture of pride she encountered. Unfortunately, as she got to know the institution better, her initial response turned into uneasiness. 

In addition to the omnipresent “we are world class,” mantra, our client described a pattern of institutional insularity: for example, administrators rarely belonged to professional associations, or attended meetings with their peers outside of the institution. Instead, they turned to each other for advice and, especially, for affirmation on any initiatives they considered launching. This in-culture review limited useful critical feedback. Of course, that made sense: without any kind of outside measurement and enveloped in a self-congratulatory ethos, new ideas nearly always got not only a thumbs up, but frequently a gold star or two. 

Our client faced a difficult dilemma. On the one hand, she was hired with the understanding that she would both nurture and strengthen the reputation of the organization; on the other hand, she knew that unless she encouraged the enterprise to grow and change, its true positioning in the real world would diminish. In continuing to hold onto its distorted self-perception, the organization was handicapping itself. Could she lead the school in shaking free of this impediment and help it make the needed changes to accurately deserve a “world class” description? 

Clearly, the school’s insularity enabled its remarkably consistent belief set. And there is no denying that that insularity had a seeming upside: there was much about the on-campus and school community perception that the school was “world class” that was appealing to those inside the circle. Once that belief set had been established, it was perpetuated by the institution’s systems and norms. With very limited employee turnover, the organization made relatively few external hires; this precluded the normative leavening effect of the regular introduction of new, potentially diverse, viewpoints. The rare newcomer who did enter the system quickly learned that the “world class” title was a core component of a tightly woven, consistent culture and that questioning that status would be the equivalent of declaring that the emperor had no clothes. 

The power of this dynamic was formidable. Being tied to the notion that “we are already world class” became a huge obstacle to change. It precluded embracing efforts to innovate on any significant level. It very effectively silenced the most logical source of the information from which the organization would have benefitted---external benchmarking. 

Failure to recognize the gap between where the school truly was and what was genuinely “world class”—and to take the requisite actions to close that gap—meant that the most critical work our client needed to take on was to help this institution adjust its culture from “we are world class” to “we are constantly redefining, pursuing and delivering a world class education.” 

Resting on your laurels; not paying attention to context or industry change will guarantee either self-satisfaction or denial and sets the enterprise up for failure. If the organization lives within the mindset that it is the best of its category, then it holds the shared belief that success should be guaranteed. But if that is an inaccurate self-perception, the market will correct that mistake by voting with its feet, and going elsewhere. Alternatively, when your approach to success is an ongoing response to change, leveraging new energy that brings in new ideas, and leaders who want true best-in-class performance to be their guide, the enterprise will deserve—and gain-- a place at the front of the market.

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Here’s what SmarterWisdom recommended & our client’s response:

We advised the leader to begin by helping the institution untangle this dysfunctional knot a thread or two at a time.  This would scale the change effort into smaller pieces that the enterprise could digest, engender less reactive resistance than a wide-scale change initiative and, hopefully, keep our client successful in her role. Our approach began with efforts to increase the number of outside perspectives brought into the organization. This was tackled through structural changes that included encouraging the hiring of outside individuals to fill open staff and faculty roles. To make it less threatening to those who were already in place, we used several creative solutions including one of our favorites: Letting the structure do the heavy lifting. For example, when entry or mid-level staff vacancies occurred, our client encouraged their replacement with newly created two-year terminal positions to ensure a continual flow of new hires into the organization. This made sense to current employees, as the dilemma of competing for advancement in a relatively small organization was already of concern to those in place. She also connected with graduate schools in the area to engage interns from their programs at no cost to the institution. This appealed to managers and department teams who were eager to have additional resources to share the work. Measures such as these slowly but steadily increased the number of individuals speaking about the ways other organizations operated. Our client was no longer the only voice referencing what good efforts outside of the school looked like, and this diffusion minimized the problem of her being the sole agent of change and singular target for organizational resistance.

Our client encouraged attendance at conferences and professional meetings by earmarking funding for school employees to join local professional associations and attend conferences: these awards were then publicly celebrated within the institution. Slowly and steadily, information from outside the organization became a normative part of the school’s conversation. 

We were also aware that, in making these changes, we did not want to “throw the baby out with the bath water.” Our new school leader genuinely appreciated the value of the community feeling pride in its organization’s capabilities and status, but we wanted the school to avoid those perceptions standing in the way of its evolving and improving. One strategy that worked well in this case involved helping the institution re-define what it means to be world class. Using a learning organization model, our client seized on opportunities to point out that organizations that survive and thrive are those that can learn to adapt to their surroundings. She regularly articulated how being an organization dedicated to learning is connected to holding a learning organization mindset and, through her programs and policies, regularly underscored the need to bring external context into the list of considerations for “world class” status.  

Moving in this direction was not always easy, but our client found a few like-minded colleagues who shared her observations, and they provided much-needed support for her work. She also needed to acknowledge the benefits of holding the “world class” mindset: while it can be a kind of limiting self-satisfaction, it also creates security and safety for employees by allowing them to perceive that they are doing the right things. And much of what they are doing may need to be retained; not everything requires total reinvention. 

In our example, this leader was new to the institution, and therefore was uniquely able both to find a way to de-construct and re-define where things stood, and also educate employees about the necessity for on-going flexibility and growth—in other words, the healthy development all enterprises need. By minimizing resistance and recognizing their incremental achievements, she was able to encourage building on the success they experienced to move things forward to an even greater level of performance. Knowing the elements of a world class organization, through external measurements and benchmarking, helped the institution gain a tighter footing in the broader educational market. We all run the risk of closing ourselves off or living on an island—perhaps especially during this time of self-isolation, so assume that status with caution. Danger lurks in the safety of the narrow perspective that being sealed-off promotes, and that positioning sets in motion mechanisms that can significantly harm your organization.

 

 

 

 

 

                                          

 

 

 

 


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