Two Years is the New Five Years

When we observe budgeting and planning in higher education, it is apparent that the horizon in a “flatter world” comes upon us more quickly. Our external and increasingly our internal environments change with greater frequency, requiring greater agility in order to meet the needs of our students, our employees, and our institutions. While we used to think of short-term as one year, medium-term as three years, and long-term as five years, calendar compression creates a timeline where six months is considered short-term, one year is medium-term, and two years is long-term.

Individual career expectations have changed as well. Our parents and grandparents had a much different view of longevity with their employers than their children and grandchildren. Employees used to anticipate that they could conceivably work for the same employer for their entire work life. It was not uncommon to live in the same town where you grew up and for a son to work in the same place (employer and location) as his father. Now employees consider two to five years as a reasonable length of time to commit to their employers and employers are grateful to have employees stay productively engaged for two to five years. While these expectations don’t apply to all employers, employees, or situations, attitudes have changed to adapt to new realities.

Note that “son” and “father” are used here to highlight a parallel change in the expectations of gender in the workforce. While staying at home may have been common decades ago, now the doors are wide open for either gender to make choices on either staying at home or moving into the work place, and often choosing to move in and out of both fields in the same 2-5 year time range. Perhaps as a result of longer life expectancies, perhaps as a result of a more transient nature of primary personal relationships, or both, there is at least the impression that most of us must be prepared at some point in our lives to support ourselves. Individuals are discovering that their personal timelines (and definitions of short and long term) are compressed and that they have as much need for agility as the institutions for which they work.

How did this happen? Over the past couple of decades, while grandchildren were teaching their grandparents how to set the time on their VCRs (that’s video cassette recorders for the millenials), technology and a universal soaring of expectations have “suddenly” morphed two years into the new five years. In the meantime, VCRs have been replaced by DVRs (that’s digital video recorders for the baby boomers) the same way that Netflix has become the new Blockbuster. Further, given that we can now get thousands of songs and other media on a device the size of a postage stamp, technology and consumer expectations will demand that DVRs, Netflix, and many other things, people, and organizations are reinvented (again) to be sustainable – two years may be too long and five years…well, five years is history.

Managing Change: Acute Versus Chronic Pain

As children, we learn much about managing change (insert pain) and promoting success (insert healing) from our parents and our own lived experience, whether our childhood aches are physical or emotional, or both. When our family, friends, and caregivers prepare us for pain, we learn that change hurts; we learn that truth hurts; we learn that “nobody gets out without hurting.” When our family, friends, and caregivers prepare us for healing during our times of need, we learn that “time heals all wounds;” we learn that “if it doesn’t kill you, it will make you stronger;” we learn that scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue.

So now that we’re prepared for the pain (it hurts us more than it hurts them) and we know what to expect when we’re healed (scar tissue and a little cosmetic surgery), how do we get ourselves from the pain through the healing? Well, we also learn from those closest to us that if we quickly expose our wounds to oxygen (the world at large), our wounds will heal faster; we learn that acute pain is better than chronic pain; we learn that bandages should be removed swiftly in order to avoid prolonging the pain. By shortening the time for feeling pain, we allow more time for healing and it begins sooner rather than later. But more importantly, we also know that before the bandages are yanked from us like our own skin, we’ll get that kiss on the forehead (reassurance) and afterward, we’ll get ice cream (reward) or something with an equal amount of sugar.

With our expectation of continuous improvement in the present and the promise of healing (insert success) in the future, we must anticipate and understand that it only follows pain (insert change). If we accept that change is constant in our work and personal lives and we accept that change often comes with some discomfort or pain, then managing change well becomes a critical component of creating a successful and happy future. Success is longer lasting and we are able to reap the benefits sooner rather than later. However, for those of us responsible for managing change (and we all are at some professional or personal level), the management of change must include those elements of reassurance and reward. And while change may be chronic, the pain associated with it doesn’t have to be. Just as chronic pain is exhausting, chronic healing and chronic success is exhilarating.

So remember – Reassurance, execution, reward; Kiss on the forehead, rip off the bandages, ice cream.

Out of Africa

Paraphrasing from my departure blog, I asked “If I can connect technologically from anywhere in the world, shouldn’t I also be able to disconnect from anywhere?” “Shouldn’t I be able to reflect and renew from the comfort of my own home?” The answer is absolutely; it’s a matter of choice. I learned that I can be sans Blackberry, email, cell phone, internet, and calendar, and survive quite nicely. I also learned that the Blackberry, email, cell phone, internet, calendar, and even the people I work with can survive quite nicely without me.

Further, the place (work) seems to (almost) run more smoothly when I am away - perhaps because I'm not in it, so I don't feel the "excitement" of the daily activity. Or perhaps because the people left in charge do most of the real work anyway and quickly rise as leaders to deal with issues surrounding any (and all) given situation(s). In reality, their competence is what gave me the freedom/permission/mandate to get away and vacate. As part of my gratitude for their good work, I would like to thank Sri Renganathan for contributing as a “guest blogger” and for challenging us to increase our awareness by seeing and thinking from the perspective of others.

What other lessons did I learn? Speaking of perspective, I learned that the backdrop of old legacies in post-apartheid South Africa is permeated with a profound lack of bitterness about the past and a profound hopefulness for the future. Their slogan – South Africa: Alive with Possibility – says it all. The country seems to have most recently rallied around preparations for hosting the 2010 Soccer World Cup – this gives them something to look forward to…together. There’s a lesson.

Back from the other end of our rather large "flat world," I learned that if the world actually is flat, it must have two sides. I know this now (or have at least deduced it) since the seasons are reversed between Africa and North America and I had the great good fortune to witness it.

I learned that whether you are on the top or bottom of a flat globe, sunrises and sunsets are beautiful, the animal world is a majestic kingdom, and human beings have more in common than not – they are kind, generous, and fabulous.

I learned that life is good. Live it.

Click here if you wish to view a few pictures from the trip.