Let's not be average

What the hey! Contentious Introvert has become a dumping ground for any piece of prose that I've cobbled together at some point along the way. Ergo, I've pasted in, below, the FULL TEXT of an essay written for the Augsburg Echo, our local campus newspaper. I emphasize "full text." In their effort to make this piece fit into exactly two columns of newsprint, the editors decided to axe a few phrases and sentences--most notably, they didn't print the quotation that OPENS the piece! So, when reading it in the student newspaper, there's a reference to that quotation in the first paragraph--but there ain't no quotation! Some people must have thought that I was a little loopy--who is "Ledru-Rollin," they must have wondered. At least here, on my own blog, I can make sure that the 2 or 3 people who read this in the next 20 years will at least have the correct version. Ah, the sweet smell? taste? of vindication.

"LET'S NOT BE AVERAGE"

David Lapakko
Dept. of Communication Studies

“There go the people. I must follow them for I am their leader.” - Alexandre Ledru-Rollin

Contrary to popular belief, leadership is not all that it is cracked up to be. Yes, it has its perks, but the life of a leader can be both lonely and frustrating. It’s lonely because you can feel that no one understands you, yet you are responsible for things, and people think that you can make even more things happen because “you’re in charge.” And it’s frustrating because leaders are not as powerful as they would like to be; as Ledru-Rollin indicates, often you can only take people as far as they are willing to go. (I might like to assign six books and eight major papers in each of my courses, but that simply wouldn’t fly!)

Enter President Pribbenow. I don’t know that he feels especially lonely, but I’m sure he can feel the limits to his power. Heading up any organization is a bit like piloting a giant iceberg—you hope to nudge it a bit in the right direction, but the iceberg can be very obstinate. Yet in the midst of all this, people must try to lead. In that sense, I do not envy our President; he has a job that is inherently challenging.

Part of leadership is providing a vision, a mission, a set of goals. In a March “all hands” meeting held in the chapel, President Pribbenow tried to lay out such a vision. It was perhaps a bit much to process in a mere 30 minutes, but his PowerPoint presentation tried very hard to explain where the college is and where he wants it to be many years from now.

However, the President’s audience was not necessarily fixated on what the campus might look like in the year 2020; it’s probably good that it was on his mind, but it wasn’t on theirs. The concerns of faculty and staff are at the moment much more immediate. People have lost their jobs. Other people worry that they might lose theirs. Others sense that the “corporate” mindset has so overtaken more humane approaches to organizing that Augsburg will never be the same. And for a college that should be celebrating “abundance” (a popular word these days), it’s not clear how we are going to find enough money to construct a new science building, much less all the other buildings that are dreamt about in the future. These are the concerns of people on campus right here and now.

In his presentation, the President made more than one reference to his vision that Augsburg should be “nimble and entrepreneurial.” Don’t get me wrong, nimble is good. Entrepreneurial is good. But this is modern corporate business lingo; it’s not geared toward human relations. I can assure you that no one who feels happy and proud to work at Augsburg is going to say, “I love my job because we are so nimble and entrepreneurial.”

To his credit, the President does seem to realize that there are some fairly normal and inevitable tensions on campus, and disagreements about certain decisions—most notably, the decision to keep the college open between Christmas and New Year’s. And, he claims to be hearing and even listening to these concerns. The problem, however, is that listening can seem a little hollow if you aren’t prepared to do something meaningful in response. Near as I can tell, the President’s stance seems to be, “I am listening to you, and I respect your concerns, but I disagree with you, and so that’s that.”

In the case of our staff people, I believe that the President missed a great opportunity to score a few precious points. If he had started the March all-hands meeting with an announcement that he had re-considered the decision to keep the college open the last week of December, many might have felt even a bit triumphant. Symbolically, such a move would say to them, “I really do listen, and I really do care, and I am even willing to tacitly concede that I didn’t make the most appropriate decision.” In the end, no member of any community wants or expects their leaders to be perfect. What they expect—especially at a small Christian school where “caritas” is supposed to be more than a funny Latin word—is a culture and a climate that truly supports and celebrates the people who are here. “Nimble” and “entrepreneurial” can’t be the rallying cry, even if they are both virtues from a corporate perspective.

For me, what can and does make Augsburg special has nothing to do with being entrepreneurial. It may seem inconsequential, but I feel most proud of this place when I consider the individual people who are here. For example, as many of us know, there is a gregarious fellow who eats in the dining commons every day but is neither a student nor an employee; that he is welcome here makes me proud. Among our students is a woman who was actually willing to donate a portion of her liver to a total stranger; that makes me proud. In our copy center is a woman who will perform amazing 55-word stories for you on command; I’m proud to know her, too. In the end, it all comes down to people--not blueprints, floor plans, or an array of PowerPoint slides.

The modern organizational world—including Augsburg’s--is quite friendly on a superficial level, but underneath it all is a sort of dehumanization and dysfunction that can be so suppressed that we hardly realize it is there. Rather than trying to merely reflect the standard practices of the corporate world, Augsburg, as an educational institution grounded in the liberal arts and the Christian church, has the opportunity to create an organizational culture and climate that can rise above the rest. What we want is for people to feel privileged to even be in this environment—to feel that they are the luckiest employees on the planet. That’s a lofty goal, but one that is worth pursuing, right along with tons of money to build the new science building; the two goals are not necessarily incompatible.

I would also remind the President that when it comes to “human resources,” we have a lot of them on this campus, and they can potentially be very helpful to him and to the college. We have our Enormous Cash Cow, the Department of Business Administration, staffed with many people who have considerable business acumen. We have an MBA program and an MAL program that prepare graduate students for leadership in the 21st century; people on this campus teach about leadership and management every single day. And (dare I say it?) we have a Department of Communication Studies that devotes itself to the construction and interpretation of symbols and messages, whether those messages are one-to-one, one-to-many, verbal or nonverbal, written, oral, or electronic. Although many on campus already feel burdened in their work, they would also be flattered to be invited to come to the table and share their perspectives on issues facing the college. Obviously, nobody has all the answers, nor even necessarily the same answers, but we have helpful resources right here on campus.

Leadership is seldom easy. Augsburg’s leadership over the years has hardly been inept or mean-spirited. But now and in the past, I am keenly aware of what is possible, and I don’t want the college to settle for what’s “normal.” If you want to talk “vocation,” one part of our vocation should be to feel a calling to transform our world of work and let that transformation be a model for others to admire and to emulate.