All about assholes

It’s always, always, always better to be a nice person than an ass. 
You will make mistakes at home and on the job. So keep this in mind: People will forgive your mistakes if you are generally a nice person; they never forget them if you behave like an ass. from Machines Are the Easy Part; People Are the Hard Part. Illustration by Brady Johnson

Asshole is one of those words like bullshit that, while rude, is sufficiently descriptive and exact to be useful.  My copy of Robert I. Sutton's smart little book The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't came in the mail yesterday. When I sat down with it I meant to only read the dust jacket but wound up nearly finishing it.

Based on an earlier article in the Harvard Business Review, Stanford professor Sutton defines an asshole as a person who meets these criteria:

Test One: After talking to the alleged asshole, does the "target" feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energized, or belittled by the person? In particular, does the target feel worse about him or herself?
Test Two: Does the alleged asshole aim his or her venom at people who are less powerful than at those people who are more powerful? 

While Sutton suggests we can all be temporary assholes, he singles out the chronic and "flaming" assholes as not just unpleasant to work with, but actually damaging to a company's bottom line. He even provides a TCA (Total Cost of Asshole) formula to determine what an asshole might be costing an organization.

 While Sutton's observations and examples come from the business world, those of us in education can also learn from this  book. At least I know I have worked with assholes and have probably acted like one more often than I would like to admit. I would even argue that the "no asshole rule" - that assholes will simply not be tolerated as part of the organizational culture - is even more important in schools than in businesses. The damage that assholes can do to kids is greater and more long-lasting than that they can do to adults. Period.

One piece of advice about disagreements Sutton shares comes from the University of Michigan's Karl Weick: "Fight as if you are right; listen as if you are wrong."  Something as a blogger - writer, reader and responder - I need to remember a little better.

Do you have an asshole story that has a happy ending? 

The Accidental Leader

Leadership is getting someone to do what they don't want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve. Tom Landry

Miguel Guhlin over Around the Corner wants to start a new meme: “What are 7 qualities we don't know about you that help you be a leader?”  and tagged me as one of seven district level administrators. I’ve mulled this one over for a few days.

I have some issues with the term “leader.” It’s been bandied about way too much and has lost much of its meaning. Being a leader assumes one has followers, and heaven help anyone who follows me since I am usually quite lost. Our current crop of public, political leaders, I am sorry to say, don’t exhibit many qualities with which I wish to be associated.

I don’t know what I can really add that won’t sound cliché, so I will come at this a little differently. These are some of the things accidental leaders, people who don’t set out to direct anyone, do that still makes them worthy of being followed. I can’t claim to have a one of these attributes, but they are qualities of people I have liked as a boss or coworker and do my best to emulate.

1. When asked if something could be done, I like people who say, “Anything's possible." After discussion it might not be practical or advisable, but an idea to my kind of leader always starts out as possible. I admire people who are all about helping other accomplish what they want to accomplish.

2. I respect those folks who show respect for everyone. I like the “leader” who shows as much interest in his foot soldiers and he does his generals. People are people are people and all have value – and not just as employees. This also means being transparent about how decisions are made, giving people credit for having enough brains to understand things like making policies, developing budgets, and having their own visions.

3. I genuinely appreciate anyone who accepts responsibility, takes blame, and shares credit. Too many people shirk the responsibility, shift the blame and take the credit. These people are also known as jackasses. Or too often political partisans.

4. I admire considered risk-takers. They think things through, but don’t need to know all the answers before trying something. They might well live by Theodore Rothke’s line “I learn by going where I have to go.”  Plus they know when to cut their losses if they get unanticipated consequences.

5. My deepest admiration goes to those who can actually turn vision into practice. There seem to be ten educational architects for every educational carpenter in this world. Ask me, the carpenters, who can actually take the blueprint and make it stand against the wind, are not only leaders, but even heroes. I think I liked it best when leaders are actually sitting on the horse at the front of their armies.
    
6. Those folks I like working with have a sense of humor. Especially about themselves. (If everyone else is laughing at you, you may as well join in.)

7. I like anyone with a highly developed sense of perspective. Knowing what hills are worth dying on and which aren’t. These folks who know it is usually not worth spending hundreds of hours trying to write a mission statement no one reads anyway. These are bosses who recognize that families are more important as jobs. People in authority know that the best rule is to sometimes break a rule. Coworkers who know most mistakes are not fatal and there are few things that you can do that will actually get you kicked off the planet.

One of the ironies of being in a “positional” leadership role – a director, a manager, a supervisor – is that one quickly finds out how little power one actually has. Ordering a thing to be done or a philosophy to be believed is usually about as productive as ordering a two-year-old to eat his peas – you might eventually get the peas in the kid, but the mess will be so bad, you’ll wonder why you started the process. Even “positional” leaders soon find they can lead best by example, with humility, and with common sense.

If this is a meme that interests any of the Blue Skunk readers, please consider yourself nominated to continue it. Passing on these memes make me feel about as guilty as telling a telemarketer the names of other people who might be interested in their product. People do it, I suppose, but does that make it right?

 

Transparent budgets

It's budget time for 2007-08 in my district and I am making the rounds. This week and next I will be taking my eight page draft budget proposal to the elementary principals' meeting, the secondary principals' meeting, the district media/technology advisory committee, the media specialists' meeting and the district curriculum council - almost every meeting at which stale coffee and  rolls are served and I can get people to listen.

 Actually it is not difficult to get people's attention when money is involved, and as sums go, a fairly hefty amount at that. Add the mystery of technology to intrigue that always surrounds budgeting and  most groups become rapt and often confused.

You also have the players whose motto is: "Never pay for something out of your budget you can get somebody else to pay for." I'm not bad at that game myself. My (unexpressed) belief is that it morally reprehensible to let others spend money I could bettter spend myself.

Though with the support and encouragement of our ex-business manager superintendent, I've always worked for transparency when it comes to technology funding in the district. No secret funds. No special deals. No off-shore bank accounts. I take pride in knowing how every dollar is spent every year in my department, on what and why. If anyone wants to go through all the purchase orders, I have copies and, given half a day or so, I would be happy to explain what each and every expenditure was about. This is a habit I picked up as a school library media specialist. I quickly realized that I was one of the very, very few people in my building who actually had discretionary funds (and discretionary time) and therefore need to be uber-accountable if I was not to be viewed with suspicion.

The transparent budget requires that one listen to others as well. At one meeting this week I heard that there may be a greater need for tech training for new staff than I had been aware of, so a budget adjustment will be in order, mostly likely shifting some money from hardware to staff development.  It's why the proposal clearly says "draft" and shows a committment to shared goal setting, shared planning, and shared decision-making. I don't really expect huge changes in this proposal, but the ones that will be made will make it better. I'm convinced.

Transparent budgts also go a long way in helping people be more understanding when certain tech needs can't be met. "But remember, we shifted money from line x to line y last spring." Oh, yeah, I forgot. 

Too often we in technology use the wizard mentality to get or keep power - knowing those mysterious things no one else does in otder to keep others dependent on us. Problem is that it is sort of lonely in the wizard's cave. Demystifying technology - including technology budgets - is the smarter move - for both the school and the tech director.