Can’t be Contained

Over the past…7 years, there has been much talk of “digital natives.”  Also known as Gen Y or the NetGen and broadly defined as those born after 1980 (though I like to think there are a few from, say, 1978 that, based on how that person was raised and interacted with technology, is more native than not), this generation has some pretty defined and different characteristics from previous ones.  Specifically, digital natives interact with technology not as tools, but as organic components of their daily lives.  24/7 access to data and media, constant connectivity, multitasking (a loaded term, I know), etc.  Completely different.

Gen Y would have entered college around 1998.  That’s a pretty big lag from around 2004 when I first heard the term coined at an Apple Executive Briefing on higher education, but there is always a gap between the arrival of a new “type” of student and shifts in pedagogy, curriculum, strategy, and perhaps even personnel in response.

I am purposely using quotes here and there because there is so much attention paid to how different digital natives are from their predecessors- Gen X or digital immigrants.  There is even sometimes fear about how to deal with such students, with terminology seemingly better suited to a safari trip than a web team meeting.

While at a dinner with friends of a friend the other night, all of whom were about 45 years of age, it occurred to me that the reverse is equally true – digital natives need to be considerate of their interactions and communications with digital immigrants.  If they are not, they will remain ignorant of some significant issues and may miscommunicate due to basic presumptions that can be easily dispelled.

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Last weekend was my 10 year college reunion.  I have to admit – I was really nervous leading up to the weekend.  A little, utterly irrational part of me kept thinking something along the lines of:

• I’ve never left the bay area
• I don’t work at a start up or one of the “flashy” name companies (Apple, Google, etc)
• I still work in higher ed (nothing wrong with that unto itself, but it’s what I’ve always done)

Along with these admittedly illogical concerns, reunions are always stressful events.  You always feel like you’re being judged and compare yourself with what others have done.  Who has advanced degrees, what kinds, who is doing what kind of work, and how I stack up under a variety of rubrics.  It’s almost like college football rankings – one poll has me ranked “85th,” another says I’m “193rd” and somehow I’m not even on the board on a third.

Now that I’ve gotten that self-esteem stuff out of the way, what was perhaps the most surprising aspect of reconnecting with classmates was that almost everyone was surprised that I honestly, truly wanted to know how and what they were doing.  If someone was a lawyer, I was curious about what kind of law he or she was practicing.  If working at a financial firm (Fidelity, etc), I was curious if he or she was managing a fund to some extent, doing analysis, or something in between.  I don’t know much about financial companies such as that and I want to know more.

People were truly surprised that I wanted to know things to that level of detail.  That I truly, honestly wanted to know, and enjoyed discovering that I went to school with someone that is now with the US District Attorney’s Office in New York, or that one of my freshman dorm mates is now working as a writer on his second television show.  I feel enriched having had a conversation with someone that graduated from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago and has gone onto work in the health care industry and had a different take on the whole debate (sidebar:  quick shout out to another friend that went to Booth, who should already know that I value that friendship).

What was interesting was that, after I poked a hole through that superficial layer of small talk and made it clear that I was truly interested, the person on the other end became interested in what I did, too.  And it felt good when I was asked about what kind of technology I was trying to implement at the law school (especially since it seemed about half of my entire class are now lawyers).  Or about how I really felt that business processes were important to academia – these were fellow former students, after all, reunited at the campus where we shared classrooms and listened to professors.

Maybe I’m not so boring after all.  I know for sure that I have some truly fascinating former classmates and dorm mates from college.

I have been a very frustrated blogger lately.

First, I haven’t been blogging lately at all, so that title might be in jeopardy.  Since one becomes a blogger by blogging, it is a title that one bestows upon one’s self by fiat, and…is therefore not much of a title.  So I am in jeopardy of losing a title which I give to myself by doing the act which is the basis of that title.

No wonder I don’t blog more.  I barely make sense and spend most of my time in my head…

The inspiration for this post is that I just caught up on about 7 posts by a friend of mine who is a GREAT blogger (she keeps it private and I respect her choice to control who accesses it.  Otherwise I’d link to it because it truly should be shared).  In fact, she is married to another GREAT blogger who is a great writer in general.  They are both funny, witty, and able to capture all of their personality and humor and everything else in their posts.

Meanwhile, I find myself overly serious in my posts, and fear that the few people that read this blog think I’m morose, obsessive, and taking myself way too seriously.  I’m all about complaining about the lack of strategic planning in academia, about how we need to fix things…in academia, or how co-workers and/or my work environment are challenging my professional mental stability via chaos, disorganization, and frustration.

To top things off, I don’t blog enough – even about these serious topics – to get anyone to really notice.  I’ve got a draft about the next steps of “edupunking” my law school that has been sitting there for weeks.  If I can’t be funny, at least I can write things of substance.  But if I only write such things every 3-4 weeks, then who is going to notice?

So…the conundrum is that I’m a blogger that rarely blogs.  I’m a (hopefully) funny guy that is always serious when writing.  And one of the ways I want to set myself apart from others in my field is by way of my great, sagacious and insightful writing about academia…but I don’t do much writing.

blurg.

Some things have bad timing.  A critical decision, an important meeting, a message that must be sent, a mission that must be clarified.  Rarely is there a good time for such things.

But we do not get to choose the timing of when we must do that which is our responsibility.  That which is the right thing, at that moment.  We do not get to choose when we need to be firm or decisive.  We do not get to choose when we need to be that person, that messenger, that leader.

What we can choose is whether to actually rise to meet that need and be that person.  Or whether we choose to slide down the slippery slope to mediocrity and ineffectiveness.

This rather grandiose start springs forth from recent thoughts I’ve had about being a manager and, I hope, a leader.  It is indeed a very steep and well-greased slope that a manager faces every day, every week, and certainly from month to month when the easy way is so close, so present, and so, so tantalizing.  That meeting can wait.  We should do this or that only when all the right indicators (and one always chooses one too many indicators) are in alignment.  So many excuses.  But being a good manager means, among many, many other things, riding the edge of that slippery slope, seeing it for what it is, being able to measure its grade…and steering clear of it.

A manager is always a manager.  A leader – and managers are not the same as leaders, and while I am in fact a manager, I can only claim to be a leader if I also claim to have motivated followers, and I’m not sure I’m there yet – must always be visible and sending that message that is clear, concise, and stirs others to attention.  They are very different roles, but management and leadership are both needed.  And once taken, cannot be relinquished, taken for granted, or handled lightly.

I am a manager.  And timing is not my friend lately.  But timing is irrelevant.   I do not get to choose when to deal with HR issues vs. spend time innovating vs. having weekly staff meetings vs. making presentations to hundreds of people on ground-breaking ideas.  I do not get to choose when to be visionary, and when to simply keep my goals in sight and my team in play.  The practical and the idealistic must always be within my domain, yet I do not always have the luxury to choose when I the former will overwhelm the latter.

This balancing act, and avoiding the slippery slope, is perhaps the hardest part of any manager that has broad ambitions of moving up and perhaps attaining leadership roles.  If you are on the slope, then you will always be losing some followers.  At some level, you just decide which followers you are willing to lose, because the reality is that there are multiple slopes, and any decision one makes is going to at least put one’s foot onto that decline.  But until that point, the slope is all danger, and no gain.

Right now, I’m lucky because the slope is obvious.  But it is steep, and even the path around it is indeed very slick and littered with poor decisions, many of which do not in fact lead from each other.  One can get onto that slope via 10 small bad decisions or a single moment of cowardice.

And so timing is irrelevant.  Management and commitment are not.  Management doesn’t listen to the clock.

I just came back from a concert.  Where someone committed suicide.  He leapt from the building that serves as the backdrop to the stage, landing just feet away from the lead of The Swell Season.

I thought i should spend time thinking about this before posting.  Before writing.  But this post is about my reactions, my thoughts, what I saw.  It’s about the here and right now (which is about 2 hours after the actual suicide, as we were instructed to stay in the venue for a while to let the ambulance through, then got stuck in parking lot traffic, then got a flat tire).

I found myself laughing and singing along with Glen Hansard as he made fun of one of his bandmates just when a quick flutter of darkness slammed into the stage.

I listened to the gasp, then the slight screams.  I could almost feel the sense of general terrified confusion.

I watched people crying, hugged by their significant others.  I watched others just sit and smoke.  I watched yet others chit chat on the side.  I listened to an usher gather random theories from people that weren’t any closer to the stage than I was (and I wasn’t close) and turn them into “the facts as she knew them.”

I watched them do CPR on a man that just fell about 40 feet down and at least 20 feet out (meaning it was a jump, not a fall).  I knew that he was nearly if not definitely dead.  I saw the body seconds after they had stopped and pulled a blanket over.

I noticed that I didn’t really feel anything in particular.

I don’t know.