Interview with Mark Putnam

Excerpts from an interview with:
Mark Putnam
President of Central College, Pella, IA

Dr. Putnam is president of Central College, a four-year liberal arts college affiliated with the Reformed Church in America. Mark has more than 28 years of higher education experience. He maintains a blog, Mark: my words, at http://blogs.central.edu/president/.

L on T: How do you reflect on your decisions, thinking, etc.? 

Mark: I do this continually in a self-reflective process. I have always enjoyed my own thought process and have continued to analyze how I think. Reflection is not about a place or time, it is more a state of mind. It can sometime be difficult to shut down.

L on T: What strategies do you use in your thinking?

Mark: My talent is breaking down complex situations into manageable pieces. To do this, I tend to throw out questions to various people to add pieces to the conversation. This begins to create patterns to play with in the mind.

L on T: How do utilize collaboration in your thinking?

Mark: You must create interdependence in a leadership team where their primary responsibility is to each other. I know we are getting there when people understand how I think. Collaboration is not a method, it is about developing a relationship.

L on T: What distracts people from reaching their goals?

Mark: I am concerned that goals can lead to a means-end reversal. The process can become the end product. I am more committed to the long-term impact of a decision. Goals should project intent and drive energy down a pathway. There should be clear intent but some goals can lead to false precision.

L on T: How do you find collaborative partners who make your thinking better rather than just agreeing with you?
 

Mark: You can’t be sure until you go outside your immediate world. Look for people who can push ideas around. It helps to create resources that can be developed over years. These conversations can become simulations that help to work through issues.

L on T: What makes the difference between being perceived as open minded vs. indecisive?

Mark: You have to demonstrate intellectual flexibility and avoid rigidity. I need to facilitate tension not resolve it.

L on T: Can you tell me about a time when you changed your mind about something and why you did so?

Mark: I use to believe that execution of process could always work until I saw it fail. You cannot execute your way past apathy and disfunction. The key is to ask the right questions. This enables people to elevate the discourse. If the questions are good, the results will be also.

L on T: What makes the best thinkers in your field?

Mark: Precision of thought that can be communicated with clarity and precision while being aligned with humility.

L on T: How do you decide if your organization can handle another initiative? How do you know when it would be too much?

Mark: Organizations need to be involved in two things. They need to be concerned with getting healthy as an organization and planning for the future. When I arrived at Central College, we eliminated six organizational units right away and two more in the next year. If you use governance to supplant management, your organization will crumble. Eliminating some of these other things is how you help move toward organizational health.

L on T: What has been the tipping point for you and you organization for acting? 

Mark: I work from the four frames of Bollman and Deal. Those are structural, human resource, political and symbolic. Most complex decisions involve all four frames. Most people start with the structural when the symbolic may be a bigger deal. Most complex situations will require concurrent management of all frames.

L on T: Can there be too much focus on obtaining buy-in before action. How do you decide when it is time to make the call and dive in?

Mark: When the time horizon is short you must accelerate the symbolic and political frames. Get to the key people, build a critical mass and name the nature of the opposition.

L on T: How would you complete this statement?  I used to think _____, but now I

think _____. 

Mark: I used to think organizations were about tasks and execution but now I think it is about relationships.

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.

Learning How to Think Differently

There are various ways to dissect what thinking differently means. I would like to suggest three strategies to begin improving your individual and/or organization’s ability to think differently.

FedEx Day

A popular concept is “FedEx Day” – because you have to deliver something overnight. The Australian software company Atlassian's  “FedEx Day” sets 1 1/2 days per quater aside for developers to work on whatever they want with a focus towards their products. Atlassian’s “FedEx Day” has a fairly open format where developers can do whatever they want as long as they can relate it to their products. They start after lunch on a Thursday and work until 4pm Friday when ideas are presented to everyone.

The goals of “FedEx” are:

   · Foster creativity. Atlassian hires smart people and wants to tap that brain-power.

   · Scratch itches. Every developer has something that bugs them about their products or something they'd like to see done differently.

   · Spike. Often, radical ideas don't get traction because it’s not understood how they'd work or what benefit they'd provide.

   · Have fun. Progams like “FedEx” make Atlassian a fun place to work.

Role-Play or Debates

This strategy encourages and even forces participants to make associations and connections across different ideas when they don’t naturally emerge. You can have different members of a team assume the persona of someone from another company – perhaps one of your competitors. Or assign two members of your team to debate the merits of a proposal or idea so the entire team can see the proposal from a different point-of-view.

Idea Generator App - http://startupideagenerator.com/

The Idea Generator comes in a smart phone and iPad app. The smart phone app randomly combines three words together when you shake your phone. Shake it again and three more random words appear. The randomness allows people to see words and ideas together they would normally not associate related or connected. For a non-tech version, you can create your own idea generator by putting the components of different ideas and solutions you’re working with onto scraps of paper and randomly pair the scraps together into as many combinations as desired.

Thinking differently doesn’t come easily to everyone but everyone can be better at it. It is hard work and can wear you out. Researchers have indicated that 60% to 80% of adults find the task of thinking differently uncomfortable and exhausting. Like physical fitness, thinking differently requires active repetition, time and effort in order to improve your brain-muscles.

Interview with Jason Glass

Excerpts from an interview with:
Jason Glass
Director of the Iowa Department of Education

Jason began his career in education by teaching at the high school and university levels in Kentucky. He worked for the Colorado Department of Education and served as vice president of Qualistar Early Learning in Denver, CO. He was the Director of Human Resources for Eagle County Schools in CO as well. Jason was with Battelle for Kids as Senior Director of Human Capital, before joining the Iowa Department of Education. He has a BA and MA from the University of Kentucky and a Doctorate from Seton Hall University.

L on T: Who are the best thinkers you know?

Jason Glass: Malcom Gladwell, Seth Godin.

L on T: What/who influences your thinking?
Jason: Writers Chip and Dan Heath, national policy thinking. I seek out people who have different points of view than my own.

L on T: How do you think long-term when long-term thinking seems so difficult to achieve?

Jason: There are so many distractions. Crises are distractions. You have to clear the distraction and get back to the plan.

 L on T: Do you spend time reflecting on your personal and professional growth in a structured manner?

Jason: Yes, I have had training as a reflective educator. I don't have a formal process but I am constantly reflecting. Everything has a consequence. Reflecting is about how to improve and get it better.

L on T: What is the biggest waste of time/energy/resources in your organization? How do you stop these things?

Jason: Meetings without purpose, travel time and prep time. To overcome these obstacles you have to build a team and trust the team members to do the necessary work.

L on T: What is your process for determining where your organization is going? How do you know when you get there?

Jason: The department is a tool, not an end to itself.  Hygiene and required items don't make world class schools, policy makes world class schools. Policy is the driver and the legislative session is the metric. We will know when we are there--when Iowa school's are world class.

L on T: Fill in the blanks. I used to think ____________, now I think ______________.

Jason: I used to think in terms of black and white, from an ideological point of view with logical decisions. Now I think in terms of Venn diagrams, blended models. Less and less ideologically and more pragmatic about how to get the goal accomplished.

L on T: Was there a time when you thought you had thought clearly about an issue, made a great decision and then found out your thinking was way off base?

Jason: Several times. It always seems to be when I think unilaterally and don't separate the emotional aspects of the decision. Also I try and avoid making the big decisions in the heat of battle, by using the time we have to get a better perspective.

L on T: What do you like best about being a leader? What do you like least?

Jason: I like policy thinking and the process of making a thorny decision. I least like minutia and logistical details.

L on T: Any books you would recommend reading?

Jason: Leadership on the Line.