Recently, I have been fortunate to keynote at a large virtual conference for adult educators, literacy professionals, and people working to improve re-entry from incarceration. That presentation was followed soon after by a chance to speak to an all-college professional development day as a keynote as well. Feedback was positive and of course, I enjoy this work to grow our discussion (hint, hint, I'd love to work with your group too:)). Learning happens in reflection, and I have been reflecting on both presentations, and there are a few takeaways I think are worth sharing. I've always thought you will know your change efforts are actually happening when you see some discomfort in folks, and even meet resistance on occasion. To me this means you are generally working in the gray areas of what we do, which in my opinion is where discomfort and progress usually happen.
I was asked a question at the keynote yesterday about how to work with people who think some #povertyinformed work falls outside the guidelines they are bound to. My initial answer is always that professionals get paid to be in the gray area of policy. If policies were perfect, we could simply run our organizations by flowchart, no professionals needed. And in the gray area, if your focus is #studentsuccess, your choices will lean that way. I always point to the work at Amarillo College and their mantra of "Love your students more than your policies." But in a large group, I was not sure my answer was very satisfying. I think the question behind the question was how do you get people in power to live in those gray areas, which is complicated work. Systems are designed to generate the exact results they yield and changing them often requires gray area work. And depending on your level of positional power, it can seem impossible to do. But here are two real life examples of ways it might happen.
In my first two weeks at MSC Southeast I was approached by the assistant director of financial aid, an extraordinary woman named Pam. She told me she was working with a student who was being prevented from registering because they had debt from a prior term. But, of course, without registering they couldn't access their financial aid to clear up their debt. It is a Catch-22 I suspect many in higher education are familiar with. Pam was beholden to the policy and the current interpretation. Financial aid staff understand policy better than most. She also knew that separating the student from the college was a lousy way to help a student to the finish line, so she looked for gray. She caught the new VP (yours truly) and told him the story. She had a hunch it would bother him. She was right, and my question was "well, who can make an exception to that?" She smiled and told me the Vice President certainly had that power, and I told her to go do it. The student returned and the only real consequence was the new VP got a small scolding from the CFO about resource management, but the student went on.
The other place I saw use of an ally to find gray area was working with my registrar at the same college, a very student-centered woman named Holly. Now a registrar may be even more bound by policy than my friends in financial aid. So much of the job is making sure processes work and the processes don't interfere with student success as best you can. I always joke, I'm not entirely sure what a registrar does, but I know it's important, and this registrar was exceptional. She is competent, serious, and very student focused. People would see her as black and white, but in reality, she had a very similar gray area strategy to Pam. Holly would bring me decisions she "had" to make that she clearly was pained by. I may have been imagining the smile when she would say "unless you overrule me" but I like to think it was there. The takeaway for the person who asked me the question yesterday would simply to be a good enough observer to find your allies in power when you need to stretch the boundaries of policies that aren't achieving what they should.
In many ways, it was the presentation from the week before at the virtual conference, which has stayed in my head more so than the gray area discussion. My theme that day was about trying to create collective impact in the kind of work the people at the conference do. I chose to talk about the power of systems, because the people they serve are often trying to use systems not designed for them and their circumstances. Mid-presentation, I had a slide that said, "The system will fight back." I argued systems will revert to their norms, almost seeking homeostasis. It is a remarkable phenomenon because it is ingrained and insidious. It is insidious because people don't see it. The system represents the norm, and choices outside the norm seem suspect. I told a couple of stories as examples. The second one was intended to be a little provocative. Essentially, it was about me inviting a partner agency into the department I led at the time without running it through all the college channels. I was a veteran dean with a track record of success at the time, and I decided to assume I controlled what happened within my own space. I was never very rebellious, but this one seemed worth asking for forgiveness (if needed), rather than seeking permission, which was complicated and would delay or prevent critical work. At most, it was calculated risk, but I did share with the group how the system fought back a year later when a remodel effort began. even with a track record of benefitting students, I had to work hard to maintain what I had started. And there was pushback on whether rent should be charged even after I left the college, which seemed crazy to me. It probably took longer to read the story that it took to tell it, and I moved on to the other 30 minutes of my talk.
So, imagine my surprise when we had time for questions and feedback at the end of the session, and among the very positive comments, the most powerful person in the room also offered some feedback. This was someone who represented control at a system level. Their feedback was about being troubled by that particular story. They felt the approach could have led to large negative consequences and said they wished I had used proper channels instead of using some of my political capital in this calculated risk. This is someone I know, like, and respect, so I was not upset by them, but I immediately started getting text messages and private chat messages saying things like "Oh my god, the system is literally fighting back in real time." It was a perfect illustration of a person with good intentions being pulled back to the homeostasis of a system. It was couched in worst case scenario concerns, which is also an indicator of a system resisting change.
In the moment, I said perhaps I would do things differently now. In reality, after reflection, I would do exactly what I did. It is the bias for action I ask for at every #povertyinformed workshop. Their reaction was surprisingly strong, and inadvertently the best possible example of a system fighting back on behalf of itself. Our systems support the middle of bell curves, as you would expect them too. For those of us who are advocating for people on the ends of the curve, it will always be key to walk into and nudge others into productive gray areas. And you should brace yourself that one of the strongest indicators of trying to drive meaningful change is the resistance of whatever system you are trying to improve. Find your allies, become comfortable with discomfort, and know you are likely on a productive track. In this framework, resistance is your measure you are actually doing something.