We’re firmly ensconced in the heat of summer, and I’ve been trying to think cool thoughts. It seems like the perfect occasion to dust off a blog draft I wrote in February about snow days. A bit of winter in July!
In anticipation of a forecasted storm, my son’s school district called another snow day. This was the first week of February, and by my count, we were nearly out, with nearly half of snow season still left to get through! Personally, I greatly appreciated the prioritization of safety. And making the decision proactively gave the parents, caretakers, and teachers plenty of time to plan for the unexpected day off. That was smart.
But part of me couldn’t help but wonder: are we getting too soft? I grew up in this area, and I recall snow days being much rarer than they are today, despite snowfall levels dropping since then. Of course, memory is fallible, but I do believe they’re much quicker to call snow days than when I was a kid. (Yes, maybe I’m a bit jealous). As stated, the safety of my son is paramount. But if I followed that to its most extreme conclusion, I’d be keeping him home nearly every day between December and April! We have to accept at least some risk.
So, was the decision to call a snow day smart or soft?
Maybe it’s both.
Leaders are constantly managing polarities of energy, choices, and decisions. As Barry Johnson writes in his seminal Polarity Management, polarities are different from problems to be solved. The problem-solving outlook is black and white: something is wrong, and we have to fix it. Polarity management, on the other hand, is not so concerned with right and wrong. This outlook recognizes that all paths have advantages and drawbacks. In the case of the snow day conundrum, there are multiple polarities, chief among them the need to keep the students safe and the need to deliver a proper education. There is no right or wrong answer to this polarity; good leadership is in effectively managing it.
Unfortunately for me, the leaders at my school when I was a child were not polarity-managers, but problem-solvers. I happen to know this because I can recall my high school principal, Mr. Hall, delivering a stern lecturing to me on “good decision making.” I can’t remember what I’d done wrong, but I’d certainly done something. Using the very example of deciding to call a snow day or not (he very rarely did), Mr. Hall told me how he “solved” the snow day “problem”: on days when snow was predicted, he would rise before dawn and arrive at school 3 or 4 hours before the buses were dispatched to their pick-up routes. If he made it, “we all could make it,” was his rationale. Part of me was in awe of his confidence and bravado, but even as a child I saw the flaws in his process. What if the weather worsened between his arrival and ours? What if the road was navigable in his sedan but dangerous for unwieldy buses?
More to the point, he was oversimplifying a situation by convincing himself that he was solving a problem. In doing so, he excused himself from considering the multiple variables at play, and declined to entertain alternatives. Thinking the problem was solved, he shut the book and opened the school.
Of course, Mr. Hall was motivated by noble aims. My small rural school had an abnormally high drop-out rate, and he had a lot of pressure on him to get kids to class. But he took some serious risks with our safety to solve this problem, rather than attempting to balance the various polarities at play.
Honestly, I liked being in school despite not being the best student. My son likes being in school too, but I’m glad he didn’t have to go on that day; the roads were gnarly. Polarity management is not in choosing to be soft or choosing to be smart, but in deliberately balancing those two values. The more that leaders consider multiple variables in their decision making, the more complete, creative, and cohesive their decisions will be.
Complete thinking comes from the ability to take on as many perspectives and variables as are known, and playing out the scenarios for their benefits and drawbacks.
Creative thinking allows hidden or new thoughts to emerge.
Cohesive thinking results in the best outcomes for the majority of the most important priorities.
As leaders, I ask you to consider the 3C’s of Complete, Creative and Cohesive in all your decision making. And if you want to learn to think of decisions in terms of polarity management rather than problem solving, send me an email at [email protected].
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