The Tyranny of the Urgent
A couple of summers ago, Doris, my wife, and I were invited to a change-leadership conference for Ontario principals (neither of us are principals). We attended with 2 principals and 2 other teachers from the school where I teach. Something the two Harvard professors who were leading the conference said has stuck with me. They said that radical change only happens when there's an urgent need for it. They showed us a clip from the 1995 Ron Howard directed film Apollo 13. Something had just seriously malfunctioned on the mission's return trip to earth. The clip shows the astronauts and Houston doing some serious outside the box problem solving. There is a definite urgent need for change and, if you've seen the movie, you know they get the job done.
I've reflected on this in light of my experiences with organizations -- for the lack of a better word -- that have needed change. I teach at a highly academic school. If I had been teaching at my previous school, I think the question of the urgent need for change would have been more obvious. Fort Erie Secondary School (FESS) was a school full of kids struggling with everything from substance abuse to teen pregnancy to where their next meal was coming from. We were faced daily with the dire situations in which our students found themselves.
At my current school, Eden High School, however, nothing really seems urgent. We're always #1 or 2 in the grade 10 test of literacy. Universities have always looked favourably on our graduates who go on to do great post-secondary work. Kids, for the most part, come from seemingly stable, upper-class, two parent, church-going homes.
I'm wondering if this is a microcosmic picture of the need for change in the 3rd world. Pretty big analogous jump, I know. What I mean is, most of us lead comfortable Eden type lives and don't see an urgent need for change because of our comfort. Urgent need for change could exist if we had relationship problems or health problems or addictions, but I think in North America we're numb to the need for change because we self-medicate with materialism or media or substances to the point where we're "happy" and don't realize how desperate things really are or might be.
But I come back to the comparison. I don't want to minimize our problems, but whenever I think of the Eden-type problems of the people (myself included) in the circles that I'm in, they pale in comparison to the FESS type problems I described above. And if you compare the FESS type problems to 3rd world type problems...
I don't know. Maybe I'm looking at this all wrong. How would Jesus look at things? Would he say the rich man's problem was equal to the leper's problem? Or would he say, "Hey rich man, you think you have problems? Check out that demon-possessed blind guy over there who hasn't had a proper meal in 2 weeks."
This (rambling, I know) brings me to another point regarding urgency. I think sometimes "rich" organizations -- companies, public sector, churches -- in North America don't have a real/honest urgent need for change, so... they invent one!
I remember nearly 20 years ago, our then Mike Harris Conservative provincial government wanted to effect some change. Namely, they wanted to save some money in the private sector. So they went after teachers. The then education minister John Snobelen said that there was a crisis in our public schools that needed to be fixed. A memo leaked from the minister to his underlings where it was discovered that this was an invented crisis that would justify huge cost saving measures.
I don't think it's always a conscious decision to scam people by inventing a crisis. A few months ago I was watching religious television programming. This very tightly-run, focussed organization had a very singular vision. The message -- that came packaged in books, DVDs, magazine subscriptions which all equaled mega dollars for the organization -- was, not in so many words, that this was the only slice of Christendom that really understood what was going on in the world today. And that if you wanted to be on the right side when Jesus returned (which could be any day now! by the way) you should -- you got it -- buy the books, DVDs, magazine subscriptions or just send money because there was urgent need.
I'm going to wrap this up by saying, the only thing that's really urgent, in my humble opinion -- the only thing that's ever really been urgent -- is the need to fix humanity which is broken. And that could mean giving money so that the people in Guatemala have clean drinking water, talking to that recluse cousin who's living in some basement suffering from depression, or asking someone whom you've hurt for their forgiveness. I guess I'm saying that there are enough real (urgent) problems close and far, global and personal that need fixing without creating phantom ones.
I've reflected on this in light of my experiences with organizations -- for the lack of a better word -- that have needed change. I teach at a highly academic school. If I had been teaching at my previous school, I think the question of the urgent need for change would have been more obvious. Fort Erie Secondary School (FESS) was a school full of kids struggling with everything from substance abuse to teen pregnancy to where their next meal was coming from. We were faced daily with the dire situations in which our students found themselves.
At my current school, Eden High School, however, nothing really seems urgent. We're always #1 or 2 in the grade 10 test of literacy. Universities have always looked favourably on our graduates who go on to do great post-secondary work. Kids, for the most part, come from seemingly stable, upper-class, two parent, church-going homes.
I'm wondering if this is a microcosmic picture of the need for change in the 3rd world. Pretty big analogous jump, I know. What I mean is, most of us lead comfortable Eden type lives and don't see an urgent need for change because of our comfort. Urgent need for change could exist if we had relationship problems or health problems or addictions, but I think in North America we're numb to the need for change because we self-medicate with materialism or media or substances to the point where we're "happy" and don't realize how desperate things really are or might be.
But I come back to the comparison. I don't want to minimize our problems, but whenever I think of the Eden-type problems of the people (myself included) in the circles that I'm in, they pale in comparison to the FESS type problems I described above. And if you compare the FESS type problems to 3rd world type problems...
I don't know. Maybe I'm looking at this all wrong. How would Jesus look at things? Would he say the rich man's problem was equal to the leper's problem? Or would he say, "Hey rich man, you think you have problems? Check out that demon-possessed blind guy over there who hasn't had a proper meal in 2 weeks."
This (rambling, I know) brings me to another point regarding urgency. I think sometimes "rich" organizations -- companies, public sector, churches -- in North America don't have a real/honest urgent need for change, so... they invent one!
I remember nearly 20 years ago, our then Mike Harris Conservative provincial government wanted to effect some change. Namely, they wanted to save some money in the private sector. So they went after teachers. The then education minister John Snobelen said that there was a crisis in our public schools that needed to be fixed. A memo leaked from the minister to his underlings where it was discovered that this was an invented crisis that would justify huge cost saving measures.
I don't think it's always a conscious decision to scam people by inventing a crisis. A few months ago I was watching religious television programming. This very tightly-run, focussed organization had a very singular vision. The message -- that came packaged in books, DVDs, magazine subscriptions which all equaled mega dollars for the organization -- was, not in so many words, that this was the only slice of Christendom that really understood what was going on in the world today. And that if you wanted to be on the right side when Jesus returned (which could be any day now! by the way) you should -- you got it -- buy the books, DVDs, magazine subscriptions or just send money because there was urgent need.
I'm going to wrap this up by saying, the only thing that's really urgent, in my humble opinion -- the only thing that's ever really been urgent -- is the need to fix humanity which is broken. And that could mean giving money so that the people in Guatemala have clean drinking water, talking to that recluse cousin who's living in some basement suffering from depression, or asking someone whom you've hurt for their forgiveness. I guess I'm saying that there are enough real (urgent) problems close and far, global and personal that need fixing without creating phantom ones.
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