On the general subject of staff's desire, willingness, etc to do their
best or take on high aspirations even in the face of management's low
expectations, it appears to me that we need some definitive data. I do
not know that we can get it. We can all remember anecdotes about
situations in which some people made a substantive difference, or tried to
do their best, and so forth. However, this is not definitive about
everyone. These need to be understood to be anecdotes, and not definitive
statements about the human condition.
Let me tell you another anecdote. My daughter came home from her first
year at college, a very highly rated liberal arts college. She complained
that she was not getting what she wanted. She was very clear that she
wanted to learn to think more critically and clearly, and she wanted to
learn to write and articulate better. She felt she was making progress in
both these arenas, but it was by and large on her own with almost no
really valuable input from faculty.
The interesting point is that when she asked her student friends how they
were doing, they were doing just fine. When she then told them how she
felt, they said oh, yeah, they felt like they were getting less than they
wanted, but they accepted it, and were no longer -- perhaps never were --
surprised. They had, in fact, lowered their expectations.
My guess is that if we could conduct this same experiment among larger
groups of people, we would find that most people would give up their
aspirations or expectations in the face of passive or active resistance
from those in charge. We would also find that the same people would regain
their aspirations in the face of even modest encouragement from those in
charge.
However, not many people would keep their aspirations in the face of that
resistance. We see this in schools as well. On the other hand, those
that keep their aspirations will have an inordinately large impact. These
are the ones that provide us the anecdotes that I described in the
beginning.
--Rol Fessenden LL Bean, Inc. 76234.3636@compuserve.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>