what’s wrong with acc
and how to fix it
Matthew’s previous
post in this series
Just after I defended my dissertation and was pronounced a doctor, I went to visit my mom. At one point in the afternoon, I overheard her talking with her long-time friend.
Friend: Well, Matthew got his doctorate — now he’s a doctor! You must be proud.
Mom: Yeah, well, I guess.
Friend: Aren’t you proud? That’s such an accomplishment!
Mom: Well, yeah, he’s a doctor, but not the kind of doctor that can do anybody any good.
Maybe a philosophy doctor it’s not the kind that can do this institution any good either, but it’s not gonna stop me from trying.
I’ve listened for many years to complaints and stories and whining and bitching here at ACC, much of it colorful and most still relevant. Looking at this material for diagnostic signs and symptoms, I’ve tried to analyze what I see and hear, and ask: When we take them seriously, what do the signs point to about the dynamics and dysfunction of our institution? And I have identified three interlocking patterns that, I think, give us opportunities for growth and renewal, if we have the will.
And we should: ACC has great untapped potential for excellence, and what we do here transforms lives — including ours. We can do better. If you hear someone say ACC is doing just fine as it is and this is all squeak from a squeaky wheel, pur your money on this: That’s someone who’s benefitting from the status quo.
In the previous three posts, I’ve grouped dysfunctional patterns under headings: mission, trust, and intention. These patterns yield explanations:
- We obviously have a mission, but we aren’t centered on or driven by that mission. In our institutional culture, decision-process rises, trust decreases (especially between the top and the bottom), and people respond by establishing local eddies of trust to reinforce their own unit’s work, with the result that structures and processes are naturally but unintentionally fragmented — and the result is a drifting warehouse full of meticulously packed boxes.
- Or we could say that a pervasive lack of trust among the leaders of the institution has led to high-level decision-making that fragments operations so as to maintain better control over those functions and operations, with the result that mission becomes a function of altitude.
- Or we could say that, as we’ve grown larger, unintended institutional fragmentation has led to the need to push decision-making higher to maintain some degree of order and mission-focus, with the result that trust has decreased and “the administration” has come to see itself as the primary driver of the mission.
Which “explanation” you prefer is probably a matter of temperament and role. If you’re a “middle manager” who tends toward an optimistic appraisal of trust, for instance, you’ll probably opt to lament fragmentation as ACC’s “problem”, a problem that leads to a lack of trust — but without recognizing that lack of trust is itself an adequate motivation for establishing and maintaining fragmentation for the sake of control.
I’m not going to endorse one line of causation and hang a prescription on it. Instead, let’s consider the possibility that ACC’s problems result from the interaction of these large-scale patterns in a system — which should come as no surprise, given the fact that we’re diagnosing a living organization/organism. Any prescription must therefore be as systemic as the diagnosis.
I don’t want to be misunderstood: If it appears to you that I am anti something or someone, it is because I am pro something: I’m in favor of a healthy institution pursuing its mission in a way that is inclusive and purposive. And it’s a basic fact that you cannot take a stand for something without taking a stand against whatever it is that drowns out what you stand for. We talk endlessly about making ACC welcoming and supportive for students — and I’ve never been quiet in my support of that goal. But isn’t it time ACC became a place where we belong, too? If I sound like an anti, it’s because I believe we can do better. But I will not pull punches on what’s in the way of excellence.
I’m not bashing college policy; we need policy for guidance and codification, but we need policy that is mission-centered and that induces confidence by equipping people and the institution for their work. And we need leaders committed to following that sort of policy.
I’m not bashing people pursuing individual or group interests; we need people to look after the well-being of their functional unit and its place in the mission. But lobbying for special interests must always be seen for what it is: Something is not inherently mission-driven just because one of us stands up and says it in a meeting.
I’m not rejecting stable institutional processes and procedures, as if the institution could be a never-ending town-hall consensus-building flux. Rather, I’m rejecting the idea that every process or structure that looks good in isolation turns out to be mission-centered or confidence-inducing just because we can implement it.
And I’m certainly not rejecting our mission or values statements. On the contrary, what I’m saying is simply this: If we don’t live our mission in our daily work, if we don’t guide our decisions by those values, then we don’t really hold those values or mission. Good marketing, maybe; but no substance.
I contend that it doesn’t take grand sweeping gestures, or a complete re-organization, or even intensive psychotherapy. It takes adopting a shared conceptual tool and applying it across the whole institution. Let’s talk mission-making.
Mission-making is rooted in the mission of the organization and pursues wholeness of purpose among the parts. Mission-making actively seeks confidence-inducing relationships, structures, and processes. Mission-making exists in the eye not of the unit but of those the unit serves. Mission-making happens not just in momentous events or activities like an annual planning process or a once-every-five years revision of our mission statement: Mission-making happens in your individual, daily work, every single day.
Let me illustrate.
What did you do in the last hour that other people experienced as confidence-inducing? In your last interaction with a dissatisfied “customer,” did you decide to hear what they told you as a symptom, or did you smile and wave and write them off as a squeaky wheel? Did you choose to make the mission real in your decisions and actions?
Think about the last meeting you attended: Did you hold people to an expectation of decision-making grounded in our instructional mission? Did you speak up when you saw people acting for their own interests rather than the interests of stakeholders in that mission? Did you ask — out loud — how the decision creates a place of purpose and belonging for all of us?
Now think about all the time you’ve spent in activities allegedly promoting cohesion and teamwork: Servant leadership, Cheese-Moving, Out of Control Excellence, Three Cs, endless climate surveys. . . . Did anyone follow up and make lasting structural changes with the explicit goal of inducing confidence in the institution? How far up the food chain does willingness to change actually go, when it comes to fragmentation of structures and processes? Has anyone ever apologized to you for trying to sell you the explanation that worse service is actually better service? Has anyone asked you how your work would be affected by their decision-making in some corner of the institution?
Mission-Making
For any person, decision, structure, process, unit, office — anything in the institution, ask this question: Is this a mission-maker? This question has two parts that cannot be separated:
Does your work support the core mission of the institution? The problem here is that, like the supply officer, we can rationalize anything in connection to the mission as an abstract statement and not an article of living faith. The antidote to rationalizing our own interests as mission-making is to focus on other mission makers in the institution.
Does your work equip and empower the mission makers you serve? If you can answer yes to both questions — and if your answer stands up when other people hear you say it — then you’re most likely furthering the mission, inducing confidence, and keeping our house in order. You are a mission maker.
Mission-making is equally a litmus test for structures and processes. Next time you see someone slap yet another planning or decision process on top of existing processes, ask (out loud) whether this additional process is mission-making — with mission, trust, and intention in full view. Asking may reveal that we’re actually impeding the mission rather than equipping and empowering mission-making throughout the institution.
This is my prescription for ACC, as a philosophy doctor: Mission-making — not as a slogan or a “check-in” or a team-building exercise or communication gimmick, but as an operational test of whether we’re living out and living up to the values we claim to live by.
- Embrace the core mission of this institution and define your role around making that mission real in the world.
- Get clearly in mind what mission-making looks like: the goals, the values, the practices, the behaviors that induce confidence, both in people and in institutional structures and processes.
- Challenge leaders to be intentional about structures and processes that unify us around our mission and promote trust throughout the institution.
It’s better to strive for excellence knowing we will fall short than embrace mediocrity and pretend. We can do better.
