To see the origin of this post, go here. Today, I continue to lay out a positive vision for what I would like my community and nation to become.
I envision a community and a nation in which leaders (at all levels and in all kinds of institutions) lead by articulating the ends they believe the institution must pursue and then leading with an unwavering focus on those ends.
It is challenging to articulate ends. In my experience, it is harder still to stay focused on and true to them day to day.
Jacques Ellul, writing in the immediate post-World War II period, noted that for humanity, all had become means—and these means—these “techniques” (as he called them)—were and are prodigious. But, sadly, we deploy these means and hurtle headlong toward… nowhere.
I think there are several reasons for this.
First, it is risky to really nail down your “raison d’être,” really laying out the main focus of why you are doing what you are doing—who benefits, who or what will be prioritized, what success will look like, etc.
Sure, many of us go through strategic planning exercises. They can help lay out ends. However, they often do not go far enough in naming the structures and the systems of inequality and inequity that will constrain and condition our work. And so we trace out lofty ends with a deep suspicion about our ability to get there.
For ends statements to truly guide us, they must carry a weight of challenge that we fear we cannot bear. So, we fudge.
Perhaps we fear failure. Perhaps we fear accountability.
It is easier to be vague.
It is easier to slap some new verbs or trendier nouns on some tried and true plan than to really step back and ask, as Ellul would, “Yeah, but where are we GOING?”
I will be circumspect here, but throughout my career and in some of the most public leadership roles I have played, I have found a genuine dislike among other leaders with whom I worked to define the ends of our work.
It has happened far too often. Each time, it has left me feeling bereft, unmoored, and dissatisfied with my attempts to rally colleagues to go deeper and take a stand on our commitments.
Ellul’s comments demonstrate a second reason why we eschew ends. The means at our disposal are so glamorous. Everyone, myself included, is interested in “best practices.” We want/need results. We do not want to “reinvent the wheel.” We need to demonstrate action.
And so we find the shiny thing that is sure to help us succeed.
This may seem too harsh. After all, best practices often flow from a strong commitment to making sure actions translate into desired ends. I know that.
However, it is a very short step from adopting them because they lead to change, and adopting them because we need “do something.”
Communications departments love the shiny things: the new program, the easily digestible soundbite about how X will lead to Y (always in a strictly linear way), and the visuals that certain shiny things produce.
In my experience too many leaders take their marching orders from Communications. Harsh? True.
Finally, a third reason why means trump ends is because of money. How many dedicated leaders have succumbed to the need to chase a new revenue stream, a new donor, a new grant to keep the lights on.
I know the pressure is great. In today’s world, CEOs and EDs are hired to bring in the money.
The pursuit of financial sustainability is the true end of far too many organizations I have known. We nod at our ends-oriented mission, even as we mobilize the entire organization to pursue cash.
Am I speaking too harshly?
Pursuing means keeps us busy, it keeps us in work, it tantalizes financial supporters. But it quickly causes us to lose track of why we even exist. In the process, the structures that destroy lives and our planet stay in place.
Perhaps this is because somewhere there ARE leaders who are doggedly pursuing ends known only to and serving only themselves.
Traveling at the Speed of Bike 