Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 08:07:14 -0800
To: tomorrows-professor@lists.Stanford.EDU
From: Rick Reis 
 
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"Meetings proliferate; the working day expands; time gets shorter. So 
much time is spent processing information, solving problems and 
meeting deadlines that there is none left in which to think."
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		      TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR(SM) LISTSERV
		"desk-top faculty development, one hundred times a year"
	           STANFORD UNIVERSITY LEARNING LABORATORY (SLL)
	                                  http://sll.stanford.edu/

		   Note: Previous Listserv postings can be found at:
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Folks:

Some kinds of thinking and some kinds of leadership just can't be 
rushed as noted in this profound excerpt from  Chapter Seven, The 
Hare and the Tortoise,  in Leading in a Culture of Change, by Michael 
Fullan, JOSSEY-BASS, A Wiley Company, San Francisco Copyright 
by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jossey-Bass is a registered trademark of 
John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Reprinted with permission. 


Regards,
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT:  Policing the Classroom

			   Tomorrow's Teaching and Learning

	         ----------------------------- 833 words 
------------------------------

				SLOW KNOWING

When talking about leading on the edge of chaos, it may seem odd to 
say that what Claxton (1997) calls slow knowing becomes more 
important than less.  Claxton provides the reason: "Recent scientific 
evidence shows convincingly that the more patient, less deliberate 
modes are particularly suited to making sense of situations that are 
intricate, shadowy or ill defined" (p.3).

In other words, under conditions of complex, nonlinear evolution, we 
need more slow knowing.  "Hair brained" is about chasing relentless 
innovation; "tortoise mind" is about absorbing disturbances and 
drawing out new patterns.  Entirely consistent with our previous 
chapter, Claxton (1997, p.214) observes:

	Those who try to manage nations and corporations- ministers 
and executives of all
	persuasions- may be panicked by the escalating complexity of 
the situations they are
	attempting to control into assuming that time is the one 
thing they have not got.  Their
	fallacy is to suppose that the faster things are changing, 
the faster and more earnestly
	one has to think.  Under this kind of pressure [they] may be 
driven to adopt one shallow
	nostrum, one fashionable idea after another, each turning out 
to have promised more than
	it was capable of delivering.  Businesses are re-engineered, 
hierarchies are flattened,
	organizations try to turn themselves into learning 
organizations, companies become
	"virtual."  Meetings proliferate; the working day expands; 
time gets shorter.  So much
	time is spent processing information, solving problems and 
meeting deadlines that there is
	none left in which to think. 
	
 Even "intuitive thinking" 
itself can easily become yet another
	fad that fails- because the underlying mindset hasn't changed [p.214].


In referring to "hard cases" (situations of complexity), Claxton 
says, "One needs to be able to soak up experience of complex domains- 
such as human relationships- through one's pores, and to extract 
subtle, contingent patters that are latent within it.  And to do that 
one needs to be able to attend to a whole range of situations 
patiently without comprehension; to resist the temptation to 
foreclose on what that experience may have to teach" (1997, p. 192).


Claxton talks about the poet John Keats's reference to "negative 
capability," which is the capacity to "cultivate the ability to wait- 
to remain attentive in the face of incomprehension" 

(1997, p. 174). 
In my lexicon, remaining attentive is to have moral purpose; 
incomprehension is to respect the complexities of situations that do 
not have easy answers.  Claxton continues, "To wait in this kind of 
way requires a kind of inner security; the confidence that one may 
lose clarity and control without losing one's self.  Keats's 
description of negative capability came in a letter to one of his 
brothers, following an evening spent in discussion with his friend 
Charles Dilke- a man who, as Keats put it, could not 'feel he had a 
personal identity unless he had made up his mind about everything'" 
(p. 174).

Beware of leaders who are always sure of themselves.
  Effective 
leaders listen attentively- you can almost hear them listening. 
Ineffective leaders make up their minds prematurely and, by 
definition, listen less thereafter.  I recall a high-ranking civil 
servant who said about this boss, "His problem is that he is so 
bright that he stops listening as soon as he has understood the 
point." Not a very good way to build relationships or to pick up 
ideas that you might have missed.


Paradoxically, slow knowing doesn't have to take a long time.  It is 
more of a disposition that can be "acquired and practiced" (Claxton, 
1997, p. 214).  Again, effective leaders seem to understand this. 
They see the bigger picture; they don't panic when things go wrong in 
the early stages of a major change initiative.  It is not so much 
that they take their time, but rather that they know it takes time 
for things to gel.  If they are attentive to the five leadership 
capacities in this book, they know things are happening all the time, 
even when there is not closure.  In a sense, they take as much time 
as the situation will allow, and do not rush to conclusions in order 
to appear decisive.

To get this good itself requires time.  Conger and Benjamin (1999, p. 
262) 
suggest a ten-year rule of thumb "as the threshold time for 
individuals  to attain the status of expert." 

 But we all know the 
difference between ten years of experience and one year of experience 
ten times over.  Therefore, the experience must be intensive and must 
constantly cultivate the capacity to hone one's moral purpose and 
knowledge of nonlinear change process, to build relationships with 
diverse groups, to build knowledge, and to strive for coherence. Most 
organizations do not function in a manner that provides these kinds 
of learning experiences- just the opposite in some ways: they teach 
people to get better at a bad game (Block 1987).  And, as tempting as 
it is to try, we have also learned that it is not sufficient to 
package this knowledge and try to teach it.  For many reasons, it 
must be learned in context.

Claxton, G. (1997). Hare brained and tortoise mind. London: Fourth Estate.