ARTICLE

Time to think

Some years back, as a relatively new Principal, I was struggling with a Big Problem. What it was doesn’t matter now—truth be told I can’t remember—but I do remember that it was Big, Important and Difficult.

 

It was also binary; you got it right or wrong. No compromises to salve the anguish of coming down on one side or the other.

I trusted each of my two VPs implicitly, but for once they could not help. In fact, they added to the dilemma by having opposing views and predicting joy or disaster if I followed the other path. All my other standard devices—decision trees, changing perspectives, crystal ball—had failed and so I went for a walk and, being in Leeds at that point, I found myself in the Armouries. It did cross my mind that staff might question seeing me wandering into a museum in the middle of the day, but for some reason it seemed the right place to be. And there, staring vacantly at some medieval armour or some such relic, the answer came to me. Clear, certain, and irrefutable.

 

On the way back I realised something else. I was doing my job. I was paid to think, to lead, to scan, to ensure the organisation was best placed to deal with what came next and to be in the best possible state to meet those challenges.

I thought back to an earlier boss who once told me that there were ‘two types of leaders. Those who run around, busy, busy, busy, and those who sit with their feet on the desk ensuring others were busy—but always on the right things.’ He had his feet on the desk as he spoke…

 

To be clear, I never bought the whole of that message, but the essence is surely right. Thinking needs space and it needs time. You can’t do that running from meeting to meeting, crowding each day with as much doing as is possible and then heading home for a little more before bed. Zoom and Teams have compounded that pressure.

I have been told that this is the time we are in, that things have changed. That this is the new reality in a post pandemic world. I don’t buy that. I do accept that the pandemic brought a significant shift in ‘the way things work’, but it didn’t eliminate a basic point. Organisational leaders need time and space to think, to walk the job, to talk to staff, students and others, to assimilate the information and work out what It means.

 

After all, if the leadership isn’t doing that – who is?