 When I lived in Abilene in the early 80’s, I was wandering through a store and saw a Speak and Math on display. Both the Speak and Math and the Speak and Spell still exist but they were new then and certainly nothing I had used growing up. As I stopped to look at the display, I was surprised by a feeling of sadness. It took me a minute or two to sort out why this unexpected response to a toy I had never used. I realized I was sad because it meant kids could now do their math drills on their own. They wouldn’t be spending time with a parent drilling with flashcards as I had. Now I didn’t love running flash cards, but this moment of sadness made me realize I had valued that time with my father.
I’m sure we were doing sitting there painfully working through math flashcards because in my third grade year, I brought home a C on my report card for the first time. I was very nervous walking home with that card. My parents expected good grades from me. When I showed them the card, their response was mild. They were, of course, disappointed, but instead of berating me, they asked if I had given my best effort. When I said I had, they were satisfied, simply encouraging me to keep working on it.
I’ve always appreciated that moderate response, but looking back on it I can see there was a result beyond the flash card drills. I understand that they gave me permission to make Cs in math. (So hard to know what to do as a parent, isn’t it?) From then on, math was always my lowest grade and I wasn’t nearly as stressed by the next C.
Would it have been better for my parents to push me, to end with me achieving better grades, but highly stressed? I have to say I don’t think so. I’m achievement oriented enough that I still wanted to make good grades, there was simply some pressure off when it came to math. I knew sufficient math to do well enough to get into college and grad school and I can understand budgets at work. It seems like my parents and I might have found the right balance.
These memories came to mind when I was thinking about last week’s newsletter. We know so much more than when I was in elementary and high school about learning, internal and external motivations, and the power and weakness of grades as a measurement tool. Yet, grades are still our primary measurement of success and failure in the academic arena. Literal grades in the classroom and metaphorical grades in so much of our work only now we call it assessment.
In many types of organizations, we do assessment and measurement in ways that would have been unheard of when I began my career. And we know the adage that what gets measured is what matters. But what about the opposite? Are we actually measuring what is important? Which loops me back to last week’s idea of doing B work and to this week’s monthly goal check-in. I certainly wasn’t advocating for earning metaphorical Bs on all our work last week. As I said, I’m achievement oriented and I always want, and try, to do my best work. As a leader and supervisor, I want to encourage good work and create environments that make it possible. But, I do think there are times to let some things go and put all one’s energy into something else that’s more important. I’m not saying there was any strategy in my behavior at age eight when I quit worrying about math, but it is true that my verbal scores could always counterbalance my math scores on those college exams. And because I like to “do well” on my monthly score sheet, I do better at keeping moving on some of these items when things are busy than I would if I wasn’t keeping count. So today’s questions are: 1) What are you counting (metaphorically or literally) and 2) Are you counting things that count, things that are important to you or to your organization? If not, what changes can you make?
Take care,
Gage |
