Wayne’s Blog

A lady or gentleman is one who considers the rights of others before her or his own feelings and the feelings of others before her or his own rights.

Focus!  I’ve got lots of shortcomings, problems and weaknesses but focus… or more precisely, the lack of focus… may be my biggest.   I want to be great at so many things, know so much, and do so much that my lack of being able to control my focus may make me less than adequate at everything.

I think it was Confusious who said (it was somebody really really old and wise I’m sure) “If you chase two rabbits, both will escape.”  Think about that in actuality.  If you’re running along there right behind a couple rabbits, fully intent on having both for supper, what are you going to do when they split and go in opposite directions?  If you maintain the intent to catch both, will you?

Being an old Redneck and hunter, I like hunting analogies.  The one I use all the time to talk about focus is “shotgunning.”  Shotgunning means to try to hit all the targets at once, which usually results in you missing all the targets completely, even if you’re really shooting a shotgun.  The only way to successfully hit any single target is to focus on it and it alone, yes, even if you’re really shooting a shotgun!

So, the only way to be great at anything is by focusing on it.  Even if you’re naturally talented, you won’t be great without focus.  Michael Jordan focused on basketball, Jeff Gordon on racing, and Donny Gay on bull riding.  They were all talented, but we would have never heard of them if they hadn’t focused.  And, for those of us who have no talent or intelligence, we have to have laser focus… or we’ll miss everything!

This bears repeating.  I’m trying to concrete this thought in my brain.  It’s gleamed from Seth Godin in Tribes.

The key point in making mistakes, failing, or just simply being wrong about something is not avoiding making a mistake, or avoiding failure, or simply avoiding being wrong… no, the key to mistakes, failure or being wrong is not being afraid to make mistakes, or failing, or being wrong.

So, go on and make mistakes, fail, and be wrong.  Learn from them.

Resistance to change.  Though we talk about this issue in management classes all the time, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it since the announcement of the restructuring of LSUS.  The faculty wasn’t told about the restructuring beforehand and many were (and still are) mortified and mad that they would not be consulted on such a massive issue.

I’ve maintained a positive outlook on it, mostly because I’m an internal locus of control kind of person, very self-reliant, an entrepreneurial type, and I’ve always seen the opportunity in disasters.  I’ve always been comfortable with, and even excited by, great disasters like storms or whatever.   The LSUS event is the same, lots of folks just seem focused on how they’ve been wronged, when I’m excited about a new direction… good or bad, right or wrong, it doesn’t really matter.  All that matters to me is the excitement of change, growth, and the thrill of creating something new… a new LSUS hopefully.

I’ve maintained that the faculty were not consulted for several really good reasons.  First off, it was not a faculty decision, it was a strategic decision made at the executive level where strategic decisions are made (and we’re business professors in a college of business supposedly teaching this very thing!).  Second, being a non-academic type, a simple Redneck country boy in academia, I’ve long said that the best way to kill a good idea is to put it in front of a committee made up of higher education people.  To go even further, if you want to get rid of your most innovative people, the change agents, make them run their ideas by an academic committee.  Change agents won’t be around long.   

Now, some things really do need to go through committees (though I can’t really think of any right now), but never ever innovative cutting edge ideas.  Committees are rigid and stifling at least and produce a vanilla product at best (if a product is ever produced in the first place).  Committees are extremely time consuming and in today’s fast changing world, thinking about an idea too long, which is the essence of a committee decision, may be the easiest way to kill it.  Also, committees are expensive not just in lost ideas, but even in monetary and productivity costs as well. 

However, I think the main reason faculty were not consulted about the reorganization is because academicians are the most resistant to change bunch of folks I’ve ever been associated with.

I had figured out why I think that’s so, and then the other day I saw my explanation supported by someone else in a book I’m reading.  Jeff Herman, who has been in the publishing business for over 20 years, said that industry is also very resistant to change.  His explanation was something like this:  we all start out as explorers and many (maybe most) end up as experts (academia is loaded with experts).  When we’re starting out, we begin as an explorer and gradually (imperceptibly) transition into experts over time… especially the highly educated I think. 

He went on to say (with my comments in parentheses): “Explorers keep moving, looking touching, consuming, and discovering.  Experts stand still and cultivate their crops.  Each harvest is likely to follow the same template as the ones before, though the goal is to expand the bounty by making better use of the available resources (increase productivity by specializing).  A responsible farmer does not leave his land; he roots himself into the soil with every seed he sows, and conjures the earth’s power to make food out of dirt, water and light.” (Ever known an old farmer?  Try telling an old farmer how to grow better corn or watermelons or pigs or whatever and you’ll find out right quick what the definition of resistance to change is!  Believe me, I know.  Are old professors anything like old farmers?)

“Without experts we’d all be nomads like our pre-historic ancestors.  No steady homes; no security; no nuclear families; no settlements; no growers of wheat and barley, and no commerce between them.  To this day, we would be herds of two-legged entities chasing after herds of the four-legged kind.  But without the explorers our cars would have square tires.  Without the explorers we might have nothing.  In fact, we might be nothing.  The experts probably held their ground as the fury of serial floods, droughts and ice ages swatted them into oblivion (resistance to change!).  To the contrary, the explorers instinctively shrugged off what was left behind, and discovered the future; our future.  And that’s still what they do every day.”  Jeff Herman from Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, & Literary Agents.

I liken the idea of explorers and experts to how we all are in our jobs.  When we first start everything’s new and exciting, we’re growing and expanding.  We’re explorers.  Over time, we become experts and we eventually find ourselves standing still, specializing in our field (field of knowledge in academia).  Our plates are full and we’re good at what we do, we’re experts!  We know what works and what doesn’t. 

That’s what I like about the way the Methodist church does their pastors.  No matter what, pastors have to change churches occasionally just to keep the explorer alive. 

LSUS has a lot of experts.  They’re all spectacular at what they do.  The university has some of the greatest professors I’ve ever had the pleasure to know.  I would put my colleagues up against any other university’s professors on earth.

Though I have to say that the biggest experts we have at LSUS are not faculty.  If we’re going to make LSUS into a new university, those sure enough experts have got to go or those of us down where the rubber meets the road, us change agent explorers, won’t be around for long.