There is nothing so stable as change.
Bob Dylan
Back in April of 2021, the business and entrepreneurship guru Sahil Bloom posted on Twitter a simple but profound observation.
The world wants you to be normal. Our systems and institutions are all designed to make it easy to be normal. Maintaining your distinctiveness is possible, but it will require effort — painful, constant, relentless effort. But stay the course. You’ll find it’s worth it.
Bloom sets himself up here as an enemy of the normal, of the comfortable, of the same-old-same-old, of the status quo as he advocates for individuals and organizations to lean into their distinctiveness in order to differentiate themselves from the herd.
My experience working in higher education exposed me to leaders who professed to do just that but instead did little to distinguish themselves or their institutions. They established entire offices devoted to communication and marketing and charged them with conveying the institutional brand to the world — a quixotic task given the sameness of so many colleges. I really felt for those marketing folks. These professionals would identify areas of potential differentiation only to have it all undermined by leaders who blanched at the perceived risk of actually being different. Sameness seems safer. Normality seems best.
I once worked for a college president veto a much-needed and innovative major with the absurd question, “why should we be the first?” Higher ed is pretty good at generating innovative ideas for others to execute, but as an industry seeking to improve its practice (educating students) and enhance its product (educated students), too often, higher ed is where innovation goes to die.
Many higher ed leaders, particularly but not exclusively at smaller schools, act as though they can simply continue to do the same-old-same-old and then add some secret sauce:
Our students! Our dorms! Our location! Our one popular major! Our sports fields! Our endowment! Our lazy river! Our parking garage!
In reality, their schools are pretty much alike, as evidenced by their largely interchangeable mission statements. I have seen exceptions, but they are, indeed, exceptional.
One school I worked at was located in an extremely impoverished part of the country and prided itself on giving opportunities to under-resourced kids. The only problem with that claim was that the graduation rate for the college was and is less than one-third. In other words, the opportunity offered was for masses of students to run up debt while there was not much opportunity to complete a degree. Frankly, from a financial standpoint, those students would be better off never attending college or attending one where success is more attainable.
The problem is, in my professional opinion, systemic and solvable. The college had and has a superb faculty and a staff of dedicated professionals as well as decent facilities — in other words, good bones. Nonetheless, instead of addressing the graduation rate with the sincerity and creativity it deserves, senior administrators largely dismissed it as “historical” when it came up at all. I learned it was best to never even mention the graduation rate or any other niggling challenge around the president, who grew surly whenever her fragile sense of contentment was threatened.
Instead of tackling problems, the leadership there opted for gimmicks, tweaks, half-measures, and one-offs that were supposed to reverse course but did little at all. Worse still, some of these ventures were well off-mission and therefore added no discernible (let alone measurable) value to the institution or its students.
Surfing
The major obstacle to overcoming the odds is never challenging them.
Price Pritchett
Smart leaders don’t go around generating gimmicks and certainly don’t ignore or dismiss systemic problems. If you are a leader and don’t at least try to address systems, you are no leader of any worth. You’re probably just a boss like the college presidents I have mentioned. Every systemic problem has a solution. It may not be easily accessible. It may even be out of reach, but it does exist.
The job of a leader is, first, to recognize its existence and, second, to prioritize putting a solution in place. Often doing so will require the abandonment of the status quo and involve some risk, and poor leaders are inherently risk adverse. True leaders, in contrast, are sensible about risk. Indeed, true leaders are curators of risk.
True leaders are not cowards and they’re not cowboys. Cowboys are, by definition, rugged individualists and therefore not good leaders. If you are a boss and regularly shoot from the hip, please just stop. You can put out an eye doing that!
Instead, good leaders are good surfers in that they know how to ride or surf the status quo in order to get ahead. And as everyone knows, you can’t surf very well if you’re wearing leather chaps and Western boots.
Most people think of the status quo as flat, featureless, and waveless. Drifting in the status quo, though, is like being caught up in a giant ocean swell. Everything seems just fine until you realize that the calm water you were enjoying is transforming into a massive breaker rising well over your head. In other words, if you are sure of anything, you can be sure of this: even the status quo entails risk.
There is no way to quell a roiling sea, so you must get above it, ride it out, catch that wave, and surf. Sure, you might wipe out, but then again, with some skill and confidence you could maintain your balance and propel toward new and exciting possibilities. And even if you do falter, you can get back up on that board again. Alternately, staying put while doggy-paddling for dear life in the expansive sea of the status quo, will all-but guarantee that you eventually will drown, that is if the sharks don’t get you first.
Normality Is Just Plain Normal
I think this is what Bloom is talking about when he advocates resisting the call to be normal. Normality, like the status quo, is a trap — a deceptively calm sea. As with that college with the abysmal graduation rate, maintaining the status quo, being normal, is tantamount to failure. In fact, if over one-third of your students do not graduate from your school in a timely fashion (and close to 50% don’t graduate from any school at all), you have already failed. The success of a college is measured by the quality of its student learning, not whether you manage to keep the doors open and the tuition dollars flowing.
Being different, doing different is hard. As Bloom says, “it will require effort — painful, constant, relentless effort.” Different is a challenge, the sort of challenge that real leaders run toward.
You have heard it said that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. Well, fiercely maintaining normality and the status quo in the face of abject, persistent, and systemic failure renders that insanity as something even more sinister. It’s akin to willful neglect. People get hurt as the institution fails. Those who seek reform, reset, and redirection are stifled, co-opted, or tossed away.
That’s worse than insane. It’s evil.
How can you learn to surf the status quo toward greatness? How can you learn to be a curator of risk and a champion of positive change?
You can resist and overcome the false calm of the status quo, and I can help. Click below for your free consultation.
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Surfing the Status Quo