Making Changes-Technical and Adaptive
I have a confession to make. As I write this, there are more than 2,200 emails in my diocesan inbox, some needing answers, others needing filing, still others deleting. This is not a ploy for sympathy. It is embarassing. Clearly, my ways of doing this job are not working and I am making some changes. I write this because you may be facing a similar problem and so my dilemma and how I am facing it may prove useful to share.
I struggle every single day to return phone messages and almost never succeed as while I am on one call, new messages stack up. The same happens with emails. Take a meeting and they proliferate. Not junk emails, but actual correspondence from across the Diocese. Most of it needs a brief acknowledgement. Some needs a longer response. Still others need action of some kind.
Driving across the Diocese to a meeting last week, Bishop Benhase and I had a chance to talk this through. I am convinced that my job is doable, but that I am spending more time on what is urgent to others or urgent for me and spend much less time on what is important to others and even less on what is important to me. Day by day, I let myself be overcome by events. Clearly a change is needed if I am to find balance and even make my way to email inbox zero.
The Bishop helped me to see that I need both technical and adaptive changes. He was referencing the work of Ronald Heifitz and Marty Linsky who distinguished between technical solutions and adaptive challenges in leadership (yes, we talk like this while driving georgia backroads). Getting this right matters as one should not try adaptive change, which a technical solution will solve the problem, nor will a technical fix create adaptive change when that is needed. Adaptive change involoves a change of heart and mind and not just a change in the way one goes about a task.
The technical solutions I was already working on. I have turned off the volume on the computer so I don’t hear when emails arrive and so get distracted by what has just arrived. I have created folders to gather emails on a given event or project (which is a large reason why my inbox stays full as I keep them handy while working on a task). I have also created folders for “reply today” and “reply this week” so that if I don’t get to something immediately, I can see what needs doing before I leave for the day or the week.
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But those technical fixes don’t in and of themselves make the biggest change needed, which is within me. This is where adaptive change comes and it requires me to assess my values and behaviors and to experiment with ways to do things differently. This is perfect as a Lenten discipline as when I am getting so bogged down by quick replies to each email that comes through without thought to what matters most, I end up looking something like Lucille Ball did when she worked in the candy factory on I Love Lucy and she couldn’t keep up with the conveyor belt. This sort of frenetic activity does not speak well to the faith that is in me.
So this Lent, I am setting priorities and working on changes both technical and adaptive as I seek to work smarter, rather than harder, as your Canon. If I get it right, I will be assisting more congregations with being the Body of Christ in their communities. If I get it wrong, I will be bogged down in a beaurocratic morass and will spend less and less time on that which is important to you or me. So change is needed, and I am working on making those changes both technical and adaptive.
How about you? Where do you need to seek technical solutions and where do you need to make adaptive changes?
The Rev. Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary
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