School's out – We can "Cheat" now!
Peter de Jager is a provocative Speaker, Writer and Consultant. His primary focus in on how we manage change, technology and the future.
In addition to speaking at conferences worldwide, he also writes monthly columns for CIO Magazine and Computerworld Canada.
His goal is always to question what we think is so, and in so doing perhaps open up new opportunities.
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For me, school was a great experience. Lot's of good learning, good friends and great teachers. I was born in South Africa, grew up in Ireland and finished my formal education in Canada. That nomadic background exposed me to a variety of teaching methods, each of which did their absolute best (without any noticeable success) to engrain a specific code of behaviour into my brain.
I understand the reasons behind their enforcement of this bad habit, but when we become adults this teaching becomes a tremendous handicap. That persistent code of behaviour was, and still is; 'Don't Cheat' - 'Solve the problem'/'Answer the question' yourself. Rely on what you know; don't cheat by looking at your neighbour's work. Rely on your memory; don't cheat by resorting to your notes.
When your objective as a teacher is to impart knowledge to students, then it makes perfect sense to test what they as individuals have learned. In the real world however, the daily test is not just "What do we know?" but it is also, and perhaps more importantly, "What can we achieve?" or "What can we make happen?"
For large, well defined projects we know instinctively that if we rely on our skills and our skills alone, then we won't accomplish very much. As an example, I write this column monthly, but I obviously don't have the skills/resources to distribute it to 45,000 readers. The good folks at Municipal World do that for me.
The problem becomes more visible when it is not so obvious that we are out of our depth. Watch the behaviour of a typical new manager for several months as they stumble from one new experience and failure to another, and count how many times they ask for assistance. You won't need more than the fingers of one hand to keep track of their requests. As a new manager our rational seems to be, "I've seen what managers do, therefore I should know how to do this myself." Asking for help is perceived as either a form of cheating or an indication that we're not management material.
You can see the same behaviour in microcosm in any seminar with groups of people solving the same problem concurrently. Each group will typically, though not always, insist on solving the problem on their own. They will seldom, if ever, wander the room collecting ideas from their peers. Sometimes one group will solve the problem, and the others will refuse to either 'copy' the solution or attempt to learn from it, they are determined to demonstrate they can solve it on their own. This happens even when the instructor has done their best to create a non-competitive atmosphere.
The early schooling of don't cheat "contains" a legitimate ethical component. Taking someone's idea and passing it off as our own is a form of stealing. Even with that in mind, if your goal is to achieve 'X', there is nothing wrong with receiving ideas from others, giving attribution to those ideas and accomplishing the goal.
The vast majority of real world assignments state "Do this", they do not command that you "Do this on your own".
With this in mind, when do we decide to ignore past teachers and "Cheat"? Four instances come to mind;
When we lack resources -
This is the easiest to identify, and in terms of any school initiated “ego” issues, the least threatening. There’s no suggestion in this situation that we lack the ability to perform the task; we merely lack the resources to get the task done on time. Getting temporary help to a simple solution is a common activity.
When we need confirmation -
This is a slightly more difficult strategy to embrace. Coming up with any solution to a problem is an achievement and one we often like to protect. It takes a peculiar form of courage to hand the same problem to someone else and ask what they think the solution is. Why bring the quality of our work, into question? The answer is (or at least should be) obvious. If we are tasked with fixing a problem, then we are really being asked to find the best solution, not merely the first one we come across.
When we need a new Perspective -
Despite the old joke about consultants being hired to borrow out watch to tell us the time, there is a huge benefit in an outsider’s perspective. Robbie Burns said it best long ago when he wished for the power “to see ourselves as other’s see us.”
Being too close to the problem is a common enough ailment. It is especially difficult to recognize if we’re so close to the problem that we’re actually the cause of it. Admitting to ourselves that this might be the case is almost impossible; we are, after all, blind to it.
When we need additional Expertise –
There are times when we just know that we don’t have enough expertise available to even begin to solve the problem. Calling for help, regardless of what the teachers taught us, is only common sense. In this situation, it’s time to “Cheat” with all our might.
Always attempting to re-invent the wheel is wasted of effort… we must find shoulders to stand upon in order to reach new heights.
© 2005,
Peter de Jager – Peter is passionate about change, how it affects both
individuals and organizations and allows them to grow and prosper. To contact him, and
host internal seminars on Change Management visit www.technobility.com
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