Interview with Douglas Reeves

Excerpts from an interview with:
Douglas Reeves
Founder of The Leadership and Learning Center


First Job: Mowing lawns, weeding, painting at age 8; stock boy and
shoe salesman at age 15

Book list (current readings and want-to reads):
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Khaneman
Visible Learning for Teachers by John Hattie
Willpower by Baumeister 
Daniel Willingham has a new book coming out for 2012-- watch
for it. It's excellent and will challenge your thinking.

Leaders on Thinking: Best "thinker" you know? 
Douglas Reeves: John Hattie 

L on T: Why? 

Douglas: He has devoted decades to building the largest educational research data base in history-- more than 250 million students and more than 900 meta-analyses. He equally values local action research by teachers. He is passionately committed to helping teachers and leaders have an impact on student achievement.

L on T: How do you reflect on your decisions, thinking, etc.? Do you have a process, place, time?
 
Douglas: I have. In the words of Peters and Waterman, a "bias for action."  As a result, I have a visceral aversion to five year plans and the pretensions of strategic planning, but prefer to focus on what I can do today to have an immediate impact.  Keynes was right when he said, "In the long term, we're all dead."

L on T: Other than time, what roadblocks keep you from reflecting?  

Douglas: It's not just time-- it's unplugged time, focused time. I also over-commit, pursuing an exhaustive and exhausting lists of projects and tasks.  

L on T: Are you a productive multi-tasker? Do you think multi-tasking distracts you from thinking effectively? Reflecting?  

Douglas: There is no such thing as multi-tasking (see another fine book, The Myth of Multi-Tasking).           Even multi-taskers who think that they are effective (most of today's teens and college students) are demonstrably wrong. Stanford research is definitive on this point, concluding "Multi-taskers are lousy at everything." Interestingly, even when students were confronted with the evidence that multi-tasking hurt their productivity and reasoning abilities, they persisted in believing that they were excellent multi-taskers. Of course, there is "the exception that tests the rule" and for me that is listening to unabridged books on tape while I run long distances. It's the only way I can devote the time to biography, history, music and non-professional reading.

L on T: Do you have specific personal goals? Organizational goals? Can you share a goal and its action plan?

Douglas: I set specific goals every year, devoting the last week of the year to this task and to reflection on the previous year's goals achieved and not achieved. I've done this every year for the past 32 years and track which percentage of each area I achieve. It's revealing -- and often embarrassing -- to compare my values to my accomplishments. I use the same seven goal categories every year:  health, relationships, service, learning, research and writing, financial independence and leadership/entrepreneurship.  I also create a master reading and writing list and hold myself accountable for major projects (writing a book, running a marathon) and small but important tasks (calling my Mom every Friday, time with family, dinner with old friends). I keep the list on my desk and review it at least monthly.

 L on T: What is the role of technology in your thinking? Does it help or get in your way of thinking? Does it help you learn and reflect? How do you use it?

Douglas: Technology is the ballpoint pen of the 21st Century, nothing more. It saves time and it's better than filling inkwells, but when Lazlo Brio invented the ballpoint pen in 1935, no school system in the world established a Director of Ballpoint Pens or prided themselves of their "one ballpoint per child" initiative.  They knew that thinking, reasoning and hard work by students, teachers and leaders was the key and it remains so in the 21st Century. The billions of dollars spent on technology -- often unused -- and
 not invested in human capital is an intellectual embarrassment. Of course, I write those words on a laptop, one of several computers I own, and would be at sea without my iPad, iPod, iPhone and Blackberry -- yes, I have all four. But I also write personal thank-you notes with a fountain pen, just as a reminder of the place of technology in life.

L on T: Do you use any specific strategies to collaborate with others?
 
Douglas: I'm a raving fan of GoToWebinar.com. So all those things I said about technology in the previous paragraph? Never mind. I've used this excellent (and cheap for me, free for my collaborators) tool to work with colleagues and students around the world. That said, there is no substitute for face
to face meetings to brainstorm, reflect, challenge and commit.

L on T: Complete this sentence: I use to think __________, now I think ___________.
 
Douglas: Thanks for that-- it's precisely what I am challenging audiences to do now. In fact, if leaders cannot complete this sentence, then they cannot--without hypocrisy--expect teachers to change practices. Three quick examples: I used to think that Learning Styles theory was true. Now, thanks to Daniel Willingham and John Hattie, I know that it is not. I used to think that Multiple Intelligences theory was true. Now, thanks to the brilliant and self-effacing Howard Gardner, I know that it is not. At least not (as many people know who read only the cover of Gardner's books but not the contents) merchandise and implement theory. I used to think that buy-in was necessary for effective systemic change, but now I know that that behavior precedes belief. People do not act because of buy-in, but act even when they do not buy-in--willing to test a hypothesis.  

 L on T: Is your thinking better than it was 10 years ago, Why?  

Douglas: Part of it is age-- I'm less impulsive and more willing to consider contrary evidence. I'm less
strident and full of myself and more willing to engage in self-doubt. Part of it is research. Daniel Khaneman's brilliant work shows that even Nobel Prize-winning scholars make some pretty boneheaded mistakes, and if he can admit them, then so should the rest of us. We can engage in what he calls "System 2"-- thinking deliberately, slowly and analytically and doubting our gut instincts.

L on T: Is decision making always about making choices between two conflicting options?  

Douglas: No. Often "both/and" thinking is better than "either/or" thinking. However, some choices, such as how we spend our time, are zero-sum games. Every minute devoted to one choice is a minute not devoted to another.

L on T: Have you ever made a bad decision or suffered from poor thinking? Why do you think it happened?  

Douglas: Hundreds of times, including decisions about people, finances, diet, exercise, research and writing. Almost always, the cause was my conviction that I was right in a hunch and that later events would prove the accuracy of my premature conclusions. Even when the evidence turned against me, I would persist. I'm better at it now than 20 years ago, but it's a battle to ask, "What might be wrong in your reasoning?"  

 L on T: It has been said that, "There is no good thinking without action-- it might as well as of not happened." What is your reaction to that statement?  

Douglas: It is true. Actions matter. But the statement should also be reversed: there are no good actions without thinking.

 L on T: How do you think differently from others? 

Douglas: I'm a plodder in a field of very smart people-- most all of them with much greater intellectual ability than me. But what I lack in raw intelligence I've tried to make up for in work ethic. That's not always enough, and all it takes to put me in my place is a sentence from Jacques Barzun that is elegant, challenging, and simple. Tom Peters, when he had just emerged as leader in organizational theory in
the early 1980's, told me, "I don't think you're smarter than anyone else, but I do think that you can make mistakes faster." That was prescient.  

L on T: If someone asked you to teach them what you have learned thus far in your life about thinking, what would you say?  

Douglas: "Would you make a better decision if you waited 24 hours?" That rule would avoid a good deal of grief for many people. That said, a commitment to avoiding mistakes is a prescription for paralysis. Sometimes one must, as Luther said, "sin boldly"-- take the risk, make the decision and live with the consequences, learning from mistakes along the way.

 L on T: Do you think the position a person holds in an organization affects/influences his/her thinking? Should it?  

Douglas: Leaders and other people in high visibility positions are surrounded by people telling them that they are right-- even brilliant. The higher one's position, the more one needs a "Nathan," the person who told King David he was wrong. Conversely, people at lower levels of hierarchy sometimes get the message that they are always wrong or unable to make decisions without approval. That's a good way to kill the creativity and energy in any organization.