What I’ve Learned This Year – 2011

Since this is the season of celebrating traditions, I’ll continue the one I began in 2007 in the spirit of being a life-long learner. This started out as a “Three Things” article, based on research that shows the average individual can only hold three things in mind at the same time, but some can hold four (http://www.livescience.com/2493-mind-limit-4.html. Accessed 20151228).

But realizing that’s average, and average is not the expectation of the parents today’s faith-based schools serve, we need to move to at least five. That fifth element is what Dr. Peter Senge found completes the system. His landmark text, “The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of The Learning Organization,” (http://www.amazon.com/The-Fifth-Discipline-Practice-Organization/dp/0553456342) is a “must-read” for today’s organizations attempting to solve complex problems.

If your school is experiencing complex problems, then here’s your reading assignment.

Also notice that the five things listed below are not numbered. Numbering makes our mind automatically think that “Number One” is the most important thing, or where a process should start. In reality, ALL things need to work together to create an overarching learning, goal, or target.

No Matter How Much You Achieve This Year, More Will Be Expected Next Year – If your goal was to raise $100,000 in funds this past year, and you raised $120,000, your goal for next year won’t be $110,000…it will be $130,000. Similarly, if your goal was to raise $100,000 in funds this past year, and you only raised $97,000, you may be put on a warning, and have a higher percentage of a goal to achieve. Additionally, in order to do that, resources, may be taken away from you. If you’re finding that you’re expected to bring in more with fewer opportunities, then welcome to the world of sales, or, as I like to call it, “Business Advancement.” That’ll will be something you may hear about in the future. As fundraising evolved into development which has evolved into advancement, transactional sales has evolved into relationship sales which is on the brink of its next phase, since it’s just not about “sales” anymore. Just like institutional advancement is “all about everything,” that shift is coming to the for-profit world, as “service” starts to change from “personal” to “technological.”

No One Wants Anything That’s More Complex; Everyone’s Looking For Simple Solutions (Which Don’t Exist) – H. L. Mencken has been credited with saying, “For every complex problem, there’s an answer which is clear, simple, and wrong.” I’ve always thought of those three elements as needing to be considered together. Just like a carbohydrate that carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms, being proffered a “clear and simple” solution which provides clarity and simplicity is, well, clear and simple, wrong. Complex problems require a reframing of the problem. It’s just like the guy that goes into a hardware store and wants to buy a drill. Then he’s overwhelmed with the number of drills he sees, so he asks for help, and the store employee asks if he’s looking for a 1/4″ or 3/8″ drill, a hammerdrill, or perhaps a cordless or corded tool, and, did he have a particular brand in mind? Now, the customer is even more confused, because needs to put a screw anchor into a wall to secure a free-standing piece of furniture. This is where reframing the question is necessary – the customer doesn’t “need” a drill; he needs to make a hole.

Anticipation (the Next Iteration of Immediacy) Is Now the Expectation – Last year, one of the learnings was that today’s parents, today’s board leadership, and some school administrators want answers and action, and therefore, expect results NOW. After all, since most productivity experts are advocating to set aside times of the day to work on emails, the new “immediacy” communication channel is the text message. A notification tone for your mobile device can be dedicated to a text message, rather than having the same notification as an incoming phone call or an email that’s been received. Just like Pavlov’s dog, we can be trained to ignore the phone call (since we have voice mail) and the email (since we’ve set a time of day to deal with it), but react immediately to the text “ding.” And just as technology keeps improving, parents are now expecting you to anticipate their expectations. This is in line with the Wayne Gretzky quote: “Good hockey players go to where the puck is; I go to where the puck is going to be.” Watch – anticipating the needs of your customers will be one of next big trends of the coming year.

While We Need to Keep Five Things In Mind at Once, Everyone Wants To Do 2 Things at Once – Last year, I mention that we need to keep five things in mind simultaneously, and then stated our cognitive brains can only do one thing at a time. Multi-tasking is just proof of how fast the brain works, in that it change unbelievably quickly to focus on something different – but it then takes time to REfocus on what we were previously doing. And doing more and more can seem like we’re doing more things simultaneously, but the mind changes and advances so quickly that it just “seems” like we’re doing many things at once. Further, there are other parts of our brain that keep systems functioning so we don’t have to think about them, like our breathing and heartbeat. But when we want to calm down, we can focus on our breathing, become conscious of deeper and slower breaths, and then let the automaticity return once acceptable levels of respiration have been re-established.

Not only can we not focus on many things at once with our cognitive mind, it’s also next to impossible to “do” two things or more at once in the psychomotor domain. There is no possible way to “focus” on doing five, four, three, or even two things at once since something will be missed, and that something might be an important something (like turning the water off in the kitchen sink to fill it to wash dishes when a phone call from a distressed child is received). Further, when something important is missed, the mind will “fill in” what was missed with something that it thinks should be there, based on experiences and other stored information. It’s how we remember things that never happened.

I’ll use a practical example as an illustration. Many faith-based schools today are looking to both cut expenses as well as plan for the future of their school. A plan can be developed to do both things, but if the plan was based on demographic projections and past trends and didn’t take into consideration the thoughts of the current customers (read, parents) because incoming students are coming from more and more financially-challenged families, or the donors that support the school with contributions because new contributors aren’t as generous, then the plan could fail since a required influx of cash may require increasing expenditures for consulting services, someone to own advancement and enrollment processes, and if a loan is necessary, then the long-term loan service costs would be important to consider, and doing so may require even more expenses to be cut.

If You Need to CHOOSE Between Enrollment and Development, Choose Enrollment – For those who find it difficult to think systemically, and want to know, at least, what’s the first step, it’s building enrollment. Going after funds first is like building the roof of a structure first. Generating funds requires success stories, and if enrollment is on a declining trend, you can’t market your school by saying “We need money so that more students can afford our tuition.” The first thing school leadership will be told by their board or donors (or both) is to reduce the tuition to attract more students – and that’s the start of the downward vortex. The bottom line is that you need to have the right constructs in place to support upward momentum, just like a mitral valve in the body’s circulatory system.

Let’s once again remember to change our thinking – from linear to systems, and rather than searching for a solution, let’s reframe the problem. Rather than focusing on “What has this world come to? ” this year, ” let’s change the order of those words and focus on “What has come to this world” this season.

May the Incarnation of the Savior of the World bring us peace in 2012.

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