A wedding is so much like the academic environment where everyone is putting on the act and believes deeply in their IQ that they are absolutely sure no one has them figured out at all. They meet and smile at each other when they truly can see through eachothers’ bragging and achievements. It is in this environment that we learn to accept eachothers’ lies and celebrate the masks. We congratulate each other on promotions we are sure we did not really deserve and pay respect to individuals we know for certain are missing ethics and values from within their construct.

The wedding dynamics are the exact same dynamics we use when we feel we are less that the academic position we were given. We dress up and act as though noone can read through our insecurities. Families in the wedding congratulate and bring up no questions or rhetorical feeling and demonstrate acceptance of those who will not see you again for the coming years…those who probably could not care less if you were the president of LaLa Land or just a dancer on the set of the movie.

It is all great and no one at the office will ever tell you how they actually see you… no one cares that much to say anything…. all until the wedding-Crashers arrive. They come into the team with energy that is foreign to the dynamics of the everyday office life. They demonstrate interest and enthusiasm and look you in the eye to read. They see your greatness and your weaknesses at the same time. They then make a conscious choice to ask… and pose inquiries that need diving to answer. To answer these questions you might need to do the dreaded reflection. You might have to look yourself in the mirror to understand and this is why you just hate them. You put guards at the door and tell them to take care of crashers. You make sure that everyone who enters the wedding is dressed for the purpose and falls under the “fitting model” that you are entirely believing in. You have them go through interviews and conformity tests before accepting them for the post…. You are simply keeping an eye open for crashers. Those who will disrupt your unique structure built on the social contract between people that even if you know you are being lied to…. put on the believing mask….no one wants to be asked..

Wedding crashers will go on to spread the fun and joy in the environment so long as you have not cornered them and tried to put them into a box. People look at them in amazement and want to understand how they have come into the day with such energy that is appealing to everyone but once they start labeling them, the crashers run. The wedding is not so fun anymore once they are gone…it goes back to being the normal uptight wedding with people lying to eachother in the open and not even regretting it.

Everyone looks around for the fun and the amazing people that brought in the joy…but these people are gone… They left with the first question posed at them…”what part of the family are you from?” These people run once you try to assign them a role in the large scheme of lies that has become the social norm. They have their own matrix of lies they function within….lies that are meant to bring up everyone’s spirit and make everyone feel great about themselves… Their lies are not self centred and hardly use the mirror as the benchmark. These people look for faith and power in other peoples’ eyes and it is this small discovery that helps them build a plan to recover the lost identity of those in the identical tuxedos.

The crashers are meant to be kept out of the team when really they are what the team needs the most. They are the mirror that wakes the team up and shows them that they are not tied to the front wagon, they can create by non conforming. They are the people who show real admire when something is worth admiring and those who ask the dreaded question when egos are driving the decision making.

The problem is that all our hiring criteria and all the criteria we place to choose people within our teams are criteria designed to keep these people out. We have become so accustomed to what we have achieved and what we believe is the best way, that we act like white blood cells when a crasher tries to enter our well set matrix. We are programmed to defend this matrix as a spider would his home. We attack and shut down on ourselves when we see dynamics that are on the other coast from ours and we ignite the fight mode. Once set on “fight”, our systems react and halt the process of information processing. We stop listening to understand and start listening to react.

These foreign bodies in our system are our only available competency check in an environment that has become too comfortable to question. We need to rethink the criteria that are announced and those that are not announced in choosing management in a team of of administration and players within a highly efficient team. Criteria have to allow for the crashers to do their job and raise question and along side ignite the fun. The more we keep the crashers out the less we get to feel the real thrill of achievement. Bring them in before the clock strikes 12 and all you have left is a farewell speech that only your gloomy mirrors will be listening to.

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You might try to forget them and act as though they no longer exist but, unfortunately they do and they have unsupervised access to your cheese. Every now and then you hear the squeaks of the wooden ceiling moving under their feet but you tell yourself that this is a sound to ignore. After all it is not an earthquake! You continue to keep your composure and pat yourself on the shoulder and remind yourself to see the big picture but the squeaks still haunt you in the night every now and then. They call on you to use the stairs and check the attic…. They wake you up in the middle of the night to check for those who crawl in the dark. You build your courage night after night till one day your legs take you up the stairs and you peak through the squeaking door. it is then that you realize that all your cheese is replaced with crumbs and giggle through the dark knocks you off your guard….. Have you just woken up? Really? Creatures of the dark have been munching through your integrity and composition for days and days and now you have nothing to sell.

They taught us stakeholder mapping and analysis and this is what we tend to work on with every business idea we embark on. We focus on the HL group (High impact low interest) and we engage them in so many decisions and try to make them part of the team. We might work a little harder to focus on the LH group (Low impact and high interest) and we generate development plans for them and capacity building in hope that we might someday have enough faith in them to rely on them in tasks and actually expect performance. We keep an eye on the LL group who just don’t care and all you need from them is for them to let you be. But the problem is that we have so much faith in our team (the HH group) that we sometimes forget to check on them.

The market is an awful place a terrible place that is full of rivalry and a false sense of competition. In the market there are sales people who call out for their merchandise and others whose strategy is to burn down your inventory just to make sure their products are all there is to buy. We are taught to believe that successful people focus on their productivity and their target but we are not taught to keep track of the market actions that are fundamentally unethical and do not conform to any marketing theory you study and Harvard business school. The mice in the attic know well that there are Parmesan cheese worth every penny you pay for it and there is rotten cottage cheese made of stale milk. They kill for the the Parmesan and leave the attic drowned in outdated rolls of the least palatable cheese. They target your team and your HH group and map their insecurities. They ask rotten questions that raise negative feelings and leave them with an internal dialogue that crumbles their sense of security.

Good people are meant to be treated well and even when you think you do, there is always that person with the grudge who knows how to tap on and cultivate the sense of revolt in them. We were told to communicate openly with our teams but sometimes the team has a memory as short as that of a fish. They are impressionable and they become easy targets.

Unfortunately you cannot work in the kitchen alone and keep it clean and expect to bake a great pizza. A great pizza comes out of an Italian oven underneath an exceptionally clean attic… An attic where all the mice are in traps and all the cheese is fresh and edible. More time needs to be spent on luring out the mice and keeping your cheese clean and happy. Unfortunately this is how we as humans work and how we function in an open market when instead of scaling up our business we nibble on each others’ foundations. This just makes the laws of business a little different and questions related do not always find answers in Maslow’s Pyramid.

You need to defend your vision and keep mice away. If you cannot keep them out then keep them in….but trap them where they cannot reach your cheese and where they can hurt no one but themselves. Make sure your team sees them for what they truly are…. MICE. Make sure they can see the world through your eyes and hear the voices of alternate motives as they are meant to be. Make sure they receive on the same decibles and wave length as you and when you are sure that they do, give them something to fight for. Make sure they own and know that they own the business.

When they fight their war they might feel for you and know who you are to them. When they fight the war they will know that you are losing your health and time and family to defend their existence, they might just find reason enough to shut their ears when the noise becomes too loud.

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The way we perceive the organization has a great impact on the plan we set for any transformation. The challenge here is for anyone defying the status quo, be him a manager, leader or a team member. Leaders who instill innovation into their institutions and approach these structures with a vision are usually challenged by many off the radar issues that were not in the initial plan.

An alarming sign we see in our environment is people settling for mediocracy that does not equate to their potentials. Energy levels in institutions tend to drop when people function outside their comfort zones. We are social beings and the human interaction is by far the most important drive for a healthy functional day at work and when you see people retracting and refraining from actual meaningful engagement, this reflects a sense of mistrust and lack of empathy as once stated by one of our school Leaders during a discussion around organizational culture.

A root cause analysis that we did to understand the nature of the viscous cycle we live in had us moving in circles of endless blame on everything around us and every player in the environment. This just signifies a trap we all fall in when we try to think of a cause effect model to take a corrective action when it comes to unhealthy work place environments.

The circle needs to be broken and breaking it comes usually from the weakest point. Many articles speak about the role of management in creating the organizational culture and monitoring it where actually I would like to offer a different approach.

Thinking of this issue as a cycle offers some degree of empathy to everyone and assumes that everyone has the best intentions but maybe are trapped into an endless process of disappointment. Then it becomes a little easier to look for weak points in this cycle that can be broken; little initiatives that might help people recognize the potential of a coworker in a dysfunctional working relationship and thus empathize easier with them. Empathy is the core of all successful human interaction and since systems are alive and in a continuous process of change then they are nothing short of a living being that requires the same degree of empathetic nature.

Actions taken can be as simple as a work monitoring chart that gives employees a visual of how much work is being undertaken by different personnel and departments and maybe gives people a chance to appreciate each others’ contribution to the system. This is just a thought but I do encourage people to experiment. I do not believe that we need to bring in someone from the outside to help us understand the system we have lived in for years. We know it more than anyone. We just need to think small and stop trying to shatter existing relationships and constructs in a demolition fashion. Big changes start with the smallest steps.

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Early every year I make a projection into my yearly plan and highlight the deadlines, travel, commitments and every detail that is fixed and not subject to delay or extension. I have a general mind map that looks like a line with red areas that my brain generates around time zones. This line is not on a google calendar or my phone calendar, it is in my head. So in general my subconscious will be aching with feelings about a certain time of the year that sometimes have no clear justification to me. Sentences like “I know I cannot do the first week of September but I do not exactly know why” are the normal daily interaction from my side. I believe that I can do it all and capture the essence of everything without ever having to say no.

A “NO” for me is an occurrence related only to time line overlap of activities. So I could accept a training assignment in Dubai that is designed for 4 days but then discover that I was invited to do a strategy meeting in USA from the fourth day onwards. This was no reason to pass on any of the two assignments but actually it was an invitation to cram the four-day assignment into three then travel over night from Dubai to USA to reach my destination 30 minutes before the executive meeting and manage to participate straight after the opening ceremony. I would look at people with sarcasm when they told me that I should learn to say NO. All until this week.

For the first time in my academic career I felt the trauma I had been putting myself through all my life. This year one of the time zones that signaled a red flag was July. From the beginning of the year I would feel butterflies in my stomach when I heard the name of the month. If you would have asked I would as usual say I do not know why but my subconscious was howling with terror and dreaded the very name of the month as if a premonition of a destructive experience.

It all started manifesting one week before July. A series of incompetencies that indicated a blurry perception of what was required of me. I knew my dates were approaching but for the first time I started double booking myself to deliverables and events. I found myself shifting my calendar for a whole week. People would remind me that I will be on a plane during that time. I would look at them in despair and question them in denial that my map was valid and i am still navigating based on its instructions and raised colored flags. It obviously was not the best available option. Information started blurring and details started drifting into unknowns.

With every unknown the pressure level rose. With every surprise, good or bad, my cortisol level shot up and all of a sudden my extrasystoles significantly multiplied from 1 per minute to one every three beats. With a fatigued cardiac muscle I started receiving a new gift of dropped beats that came after each extrasystole accompanied with loss of breath and chest pain. And all of a sudden I was experiencing a sense of near death and panic.

With chest pain, everything else disappears, the meeting I was late for, the ticket that had my name spelled incorrectly, the transit visa issue that I discovered by coincidence while boarding….. everything started to mean absolutely nothing. The sense of loss for not knowing the name of the hotel i was booked for disappeared in relation to the sense of loss associated with oxygen not flowing through my lungs.

Then a question struck me, Why am i here? Remembering the valuable question that we learned in stakeholder mapping and that we later started teaching in our version of the FAIMER fellowship; Whats in it for me?, I realized how my IQ had failed me miserably. For months I have been on auto-pilot with a setting on “yes” that never delivered itself to manual decision making as long as the time line accepted the booking.

When you are on auto-pilot many of the questions of intuition are not raised like “why” and “what for” and “what’s in it for me” and you find yourself acknowledging automated decisions that do not factorize your health or mental capacity and only base the go or no go on the vacancy on the time line.

Very important values are at risk and become treated like commodity including perception of everything around and interpretation of inputs to be able to develop a proper vision and a proper inference of the happenings that surround you daily. This is a protective effect against sudden adrenaline and cortisol surges that end up in a terrible anger lash. It is a simple capacity lost in a brain fogged with over work and depleted neurotransmitters.

Another function of the frontal cortex is depleted in the everlasting “run-away-train” adventure and this is the capacity to enjoy the achievements and celebrate accomplishments. This capacity is the daily capacity that keeps you going from day to day. The daily advantage you give yourself for being a high achiever and the pat on the shoulder you are accustomed to receive just before you surrender to the dark pitch you fall into when your head touches the pillow.

The vicious circle starts with the loss of proper judgement and the losses that are attributed to it. All strategic decisions start suffering and objectives start to blur. The lack of clear objectives is a determinant of failed execution and a pile of wasted time. So as once stated “busy is the new stupid”. All of a sudden all the stupidity in the environment around you becomes a normal occurrence and you unite with every stupid thought that crosses your mind and one morning you wake up with a depressed cortical function and a tethered IQ that gives you a step back to stand in line with all the rest of the so called humans you had always crucified as in intelligent.

For years my outcome was amazing, a training room lit up when i held the microphone, a passage i write would end up looking like a tango and I would demonstrate capacity to produce in style. Unfortunately to compliment the new “I am so stupid” brand I had achieved for myself, and as a direct relation to the inability to plan and reflect on plans, i found myself in the training room that was my once-up-on-a-time den with my hand shivering around the microphone and an incoherence and a Broca’s aphasia where words seamed like floating butterflies in a slowed down animation movie. With this incident came a revelation that creativity was also a chemical process that can be depleted and that anything that is not replenished actually runs out!!

A word of advice for my brothers and sisters out there who call themselves multitaskers and high achievers

Always keep your appointments in a WRITTEN calendar because just writing down the activity relieves a great part of the stress

Make sure that you have allocated time to plan for your activities in your calendar

Make sure you have allocated time to rest and touch base and reflect and stop assuming you are a robot

With every assigned task that you agree to take on ask yourself a set of questions:

Is it optional?

What is the added value will this task add to me or my project?

What will my business or me lose if this task is not accomplished?

Why do I REALLY want to take this task on?

Can I delegate it?

If not why?

If it is because you don’t trust the employees to do it, then ask yourself ( What stakeholder quadrant are they in? Are they really incompetent or are you micromanaging?)

If they are really incompetent ask your self (Is this the proper time to start exposing and training them?)

Always check in with yourself and ask yourself how you are doing… wait for an answer and make sure it does not come across as a lie.

Add to your schedule a personal time where you focus on your body, health looks and whatever makes your endorphins dance.

Make sure you look in the mirror every day and that you recognize the reflection in the mirror

Check in with your feelings every morning and make sure you have no slight degree of self pity and if you do then it is a red light that your plans do not include you

Multitasking is like juggling in a circus, its meant for clowns definitely not for lion master. When taming the lion the trainer is present and totally involved with the task at hand…. do not ever try taming a lion while juggling…

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In the movie, Louise a smart linguist with special skills exemplifies the value of communication in its raw form; communication that uses no smiley faces or emoticons to whittle down feelings and meanings. Louise saves the world and creates a new tomorrow with different meanings and values simply by listening to understand rather than listening to interpret. The difference between the two was made clear by Louise near the beginning of the movie when she was recruited to interpret a voice recording of the aliens who had invaded the earth. When she heard the recording she decided that she needed to physically communicate in order to interpret the meaning of the recordings. She threw this back on the fact that she did not know the language.

The idea of actual listening to analyze and design new constructs was made a necessity once she decided that she had no prior knowledge to build on. Previous knowledge and understandings is usually a baggage that we enter any conversation with. Sometimes we have understandings of motives or hidden agendas that shape the way we perceive spoken communication.

In the movie Louise entered this acquaintance with the extraterrestrial forces with no baggage at all. She opened a clean sheet and decided to formulate the relationship without preset boundaries or limitations. Louise entered the discussion with hope to find an answer to one question “Why are you here?” but instead she left with a whole new world of possibilities that defy nature as we know it and that challenge the core of the “known” with every open possibility to change it with a new “known”.

In our academic world we hold meetings, discussions and brain storming sessions just to check them off the box. How many times do any of these methods actually generate actual novelty? The time consumed to perform these events is basically time wasted in a fiasco that leads to no actual understanding or conciliation. With a claim that we already know each other well…. nothing new under the sun., we tend to limit any anticipation of fruitful contributions and it just so happens that nothing fruitful does emerge.

In a perfect introduction Louise asked for a written form of communication from the aliens just to get a new sensory stimulating form of communication that was not linear and did not believe in linear aspects of everything. Symbols that are based on the circular form with a variance in thickness of the lines, sizes and endings…. the end result is…forget what you already know about letters and communication…

Reflecting on our world of academia and the so called community health needs that we tend to identify in building our curricula, how many times do we actually approach a community with no prior assumptions overweighing the rationalization process? Listening is a skill that has levels of attainment and that not everyone masters at the same level. A skill, like any other skill needs practice and baseline knowledge. It all starts with the will to learn and the open mind that is ready to challenge all norms and media mandated perceptions.

We need to challenge norms that we believe are true like the concept of marginalization and inherent concepts about threats related to the escalating migrant situation in the world. It is imperative that voices of the communities are heard before problem definition rather than waiting to involve them when it is time to propose solutions. Problem definition in a correct manner are actually the starting point of changing the way we approach reform. Louise spent the whole movie diagnosing the situation and asking the “What” question, understanding that the answer to that single question entailed a communication that ensured that both language and understanding of the language are two separate yet integral aspects of the communication process… It is not important to learn to deliver a message only but it is equally important to teach the other party to decode your message.

As seen in Hollywood:

When Louise was asked why she needed to teach the aliens how to read she answered “Kangaroo”…. With a challenged story of captain cook who when first arrived to Australia asked the natives about that animal that hops around with its baby in a pocket, they answered “Kangaroo” and ever since then these creatures have been called Kangaroo when all that truly meant was “I don’t understand!”

I wonder how many kangaroos we are hosting in our current understanding of the health systems and the identified SDGs and health priorities.

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Not so long ago the whole organization was gathered around a priority and a plan that they called “THE strategic plan”. A lot of effort was exerted and people were asked to talk and views were gathered and the result was a piece of paper and a lot of jargon shoved on a shelf. A complete disconnection; value from motive and strategy from execution, was achieved after 2 long years of planning and an account minus xx USD.

A plan on the shelf is a failed plan no matter how fancy the cover looks
An old story in a new cover with an update titled “Where did we go wrong last time?” It is chaotic that at the moment the strategy needs its own plan to be executed and no one is owning or wants to own it. This is just another complete failure in understanding the concept of planning and the importance of having a plan to implement. The only rescue line thrown in the water is the sense of urgency created by the word “audit” and even in response to that we prepare reports. So now our strategic plan has become a beautiful document that if given a voice will utter nothing less than the frustration of being a partner in the shadow who can do nothing but speak the truth to the mirror…. What a shame!

Let us find the gap as we are used to and sink in it without looking for a shore… It has now become our home and the home of any strategic plan we exert any effort on. Again what a shame! Now out of the comic book and into the comic life and let us just try to understand for once where we are and how it is we got here.

Our gap needs a gap analysis. I think the first issue we have to identify is the culture we live in inside our organizations. We, no doubt, believe in a one man act and it is HE who decides what it is that we deliver. Although we speak of teams and teamwork and say words like “dream team” yet all these teams are in a cycle of frustration. They have no final say at any level and the more teams we make the more centralized we become. This definitely looks like another trust issue but this time a real problem leaders find themselves in when they fail to decide on a strategy to adopt when they deal with opposing values. The net result is a ride in the dark and a complete separation from the once endorsed plan. It is a tedious task to operate teams for execution in an institution specially when it is large and has preset fixed beliefs. The problem is that leaders tend to think of this as a choice they have to make rather than a diversity to manage.

Many of the teams that we create are usually diverse and people are of different capacities, personality styles and priorities. A bird eye view on the dynamics in the institution shows a lot of unnecessary tension arising between people that could be easily diffused if people were valued properly and allocated in their own capacity zone. Utilizing all personnel is a virtue and knowing how to put them in their comfort zone is also an added value. This has to come with an understanding that we need all the people and we do not have to favor style over the other and that work styles are no more than opposing values that are extreme sometimes but are not on the good and bad category. Sometimes identifying pairs is the solution and making sure you work with all pairs in the best possible synergy.

Synergy means being able to shift your support and recognition smoothly between opposing sides of the spectrum making sure that you do not lose any of the existing capacities. It does not by any means refer to a methodology of having people bang heads against each other and work together despite conflicting views. “Polarity management” is a concept I was introduced to a long time ago through Cliff Kayser CEO of Polarity Partnerships and found in it a solution to the sense of chaos that we feel when managing people specially faculty who are by no means easy going. People come from different backgrounds and from different life experiences that makes them unpredictable and energy draining to deal with if your priority is to adapt and modify.

When you approach people with a degree of acceptance and inclusiveness you will find that no one needs to be changed, people need to be empowered and given authority to act and take the upper hand sometimes. The only highlight here is to make sure that upper hand is given when it is most handy. The approach is based on the concept that systems are in a continuous dynamic state. They are never in resting state even when you see them at rest.

I think teams that work together have to be homogeneous and aligned in vision and methodology. I really do not see the use of putting a team together that is ‘hybrid’ and diverse and having them storm and norm and form and waste the company’s time and energy. Group dynamics are so much simpler and easier to manage when people are in congruence from the very beginning. But what happens to diversity and richness and what different people can bring to the table?

The answer to me is clear…. nothing! They function as well in other areas where they can shine and work and not feel chain tied to others and start “norming”. The only catch is that they need to be empowered as well and the beauty of this is that no one feels debilitated or held back or pushed beyond their limits and no one is intimidated by anyone in the work place. The rest is the role of management to start getting people in as long as they are functional and delivering and no warning signs appear and like a chess game give more authority and power to people on the other aspects of the spectrum once they sense the warning signs kicking in.

Average is not good enough for anyone and no one is comfortable on a one size fits all policy. A policy that is tailored small enough for people to fit and big enough for people to grow is a promising scenario for potential growth. Let us always think of excellence and start giving people power to be who they want to be and save their energy for growth rather than for a storming that MIGHT sometimes lead to norming after the team energy or interest is drained.

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A faculty council is a whole day event unfortunately and it is by far the best opportunity to test your glandular system and make sure you have the correct amounts of hormones and are capable of flooding in all types of cocktails within the span of the meeting. Hormone cocktails are induced intentionally and sometimes without deliberation.

An item often forgotten on the meeting agenda “Test our glandular system capacity”

The powerful dopamine fills your system and the room with every discussed agenda item that leaves you with a cliff hanger…. and the minutes would most probably say: “Ask prof…….what was decided”. This happens when a discussion is initiated regarding interdepartmental matters that need a decision. Examples for this are many and the exhaustive list would be an unfair exhibit at this point of time. Let me dig out a recent one; A new department being initiated out of the womb of another long established department. This is the beautiful incidence when we decide that we have become so good at developing degrees and programs that we decide to take them away from the host department and build a new department on the program shoulders. But then it just so happens that everyone just wants a seat on the Titanic. Departments start claiming their rights to be a part of the new born department and they want their “share” of the newly found success. and then the energy in the room is elevated. Silent people decide that silence is a treason to their departments and it is that they must speak now or forever keep their silence. This is the kind of debate that ends in “So can we please move on?” and people in the room are left in a dopamine rush waiting earnestly for episode two…

The Beautiful Oxytocin that sends the room into a silence and eyes are hung in one direction with the announcement of the monthly deaths among faculty and a question that everyone thinks of and makes sure it is not heard “when will we just be a name on the monthly list…I wonder”. This hormone just gushes through veins when the department chair decides to say a word or two within in tribute of a certain faculty who killed himself at work and was the kindest and most passionate about his patients and who was an amazing teacher leaving behind students and shoes that will be very difficult to fill.

Endorphins kick in when you start getting non stop beeps on your silent phone telling and when you answer through messaging receive the dreaded response that there will be an urgent meeting back to back with this one and that back in your office and that your dedicated secretary thought it would be wise to get you prepared while you were still glued to the first meeting. this is when you start laughing alone and people around you might realize the surge of happiness that has just come over you for no good reason. Sometimes the psychiatrists in the room would raise an eyebrow in intrigue and this will then put the happy hormone to rest once and for all. It is good to be happy but it is not worth losing your academic reputation over it.

Just as you start thinking that the day will be happily over with the beautiful hormone cocktail you just received another cocktail kicks in with a fair amount of adrenalin and cortisol shooting down the back of your neck and being fair natured start demonstrating a good deal of facial congestion and shallow breathing. This arrives in time to let you go to make sure that you waste the rest of your day dealing with the migraine and the shooting blood pressure. Of course you can try to breathe and look for your so-called diaphragm to regulate your breathing but the truth is, you are taken by surprise when you hear that your name is mentioned for encroaching on other peoples’ responsibilities and work and that you are told to “take it easy” ” You do not have to be doing everything”. Once you receive your meeting allowance of adrenaline-cortisol mixture you are in no mood to be rational. The whole world seams to be attacking you and it is time to fight back. Make sure you leave the room feeling in attacking mode and stay with that feeling for the rest of the day… Take care you do have another meeting back to back with this. But this is another story..

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In a matter of 10 years we woke up to find ourselves stuck on a ranking scale and a rating system that had us focusing on narrow angle issue like “How many Nobel Prize winners do we have” and “what is the research ratio per faculty” and the funniest of all “how many international faculty do we host on our campus”. What a challenge!

The funny thing is that no matter how many times we are told that we have to create our competitive advantage we CANNOT ever see it as a priority. And how could we… it is NOT in the standards. Now let us reflect on where we were not so far back when university professors were leaders of innovation and had student followers who looked up to them as they would with heroes of the Game of Thrones.

Only back then, universities had not yet met the Wicked Witch of the West with her business oriented wand. It was only years later that we could look in the mirror to see the spell she cast on us. Although the claim was that this spell would make us unique and probably marry the prince, but one look in the mirror was enough to see… we were all turned to the same size green frog that is just like any other frog in any other pond.

Being a consumer as we all are at the moment puts some degree of responsibility on us to choose properly what we consume. But in this “deal” unfortunately we were not given a choice. I wonder where all the values of “autonomy” and “Human Rights” went when we this happened. I also wonder where the values of individuality and the right to be who you want to be disappeared. But then as universities we are asked to compete and run a race that we did not choose on a path that does not even suit us and at the finish line give all the winnings to “non profit” bodies like THE, QS, Prometrics and so many others who are thriving on “standards” that we were led to believe represent “Excellence”.

We teach people the value of diversity but then we try to adapt ourselves to non diverse metrics. So instead of continuing to grow into a unique model, we started shifting course and focusing on filling the imaginary gap that we were shown. Instead of focusing on an outstanding student experience and human values that come with it, we started adapting ways to “cheat” the system that cheated us and doing amazing things like self citation and looking for expats of our own country and give them one month contracts during their summer vacation when they are back home and then list them among international faculty. Cheating right? Can you even blame universities? It is a war and a race and an unhealthy competition and the opposite of everything we try to teach our students.

If we truly believe in globalization then it is time to stop trying to adapt everything to your own beliefs. Every situation is different and every zone has different needs and priorities. Isn’t that what we were taught? The problem is that even those who set those standards can see this problem and instead of taking a step back, they spend more resources on “adapting” the standards. What a joke! Reminds me of the famous Alice when in wonderland discovered that her size was not “standard” and started adapting and we end up with the famous picture of a beautiful giant caged in a “standard” size house and the only remedy is to drink the magic potion and shrink as we have been doing for years. We were just cheated into believing that this will get us recognized. It is just another bad product commercial that we fell for. And although we all know that the energy we are spending in trying to fit for the standards is energy we are wasting and that could have been used to create exponential growth into possibility, yet we cannot blame anyone. We are part of this fiasco and we contributed the moment we agreed that education is a business.

Time to reflect and ask ourselves what true excellence means to us and to our students and to the market they will work in and what is more to the patients they serve. It is time to start thinking value and impact and stop trying to make these terms fit the already existing dysfunctional model.

The post “Gap Analysis”​ and the Spell that Was Cast on Academia appeared first on Prof. Samar A. Ahmed.

Before we jump into the lessons learned, let me go over my last 48 hours with you. The story of my past two days is the story of a series of new advert events. Events I have never been exposed to and triggers I never learned to deal with. Because I believe that reflection is the mother of all learning, I am here to reflect and trigger your reflections as well.

Friday morning, after a long worried uninformed week of trying to reach my colleague Dr. A to check on his new medical condition that has been his cause of agony for no longer than a month, finally i got a call. The long awaited voice of Dr. A. on the other side was a relief that he was still capable of communicating over his illness. He was diagnosed a week ago with a brain tumor that looked query in the imagery and upon neurological consultation, the neurosurgeon, a brilliant young surgeon whom the whole world runs between his fingers when he is in the OR, had advised Dr. A to move quickly.

The young neurosurgeon has a concept in life by which he lives and practices. He treats every patient like he was his brother. Any decision he makes he quietly assesses against his hidden scale and makes sure he is within the standards. Dr. W our neurosurgeon and friend and support when needed, thus referred Dr. T to another colleague who was as he put it “specialized in this kind of lesion specifically”. Because Dr. W was planned to travel that week and this kind of surgery needs supervision in the post operative, he found it a better choice to refer his patient and make sure he understood that waiting was not a choice (Communication lesson 1).

Dr. A, now a patient for the first time, began adopting the natural patient behavior of fear and denial. He started withdrawing and opening his ears to advise and recommendations. He was looking to hear what he wanted to hear and the roller coaster started… Friends, family, colleagues, students all started taking the charge that Dr. A was intentionally giving away. He was hailed with advice and recommendations that in most times was contradictory. Forgetting that he was advised against waiting, he drowned in a sea of uncertainty that was enhanced by the claims of patient death on the table that he heard when he brought up names of nearly all doctors he sought the opinion of (Communication lesson 2).

It was not until that morning call on that Friday and after a whole week of disorientation and stunted decision making that I realized how incompetent I had been in estimating the patient’s capacity to make an informed decision. I was so blind that it took a confession from Dr. A’s side that he is feeling disoriented and that he does not feel he has the capacity to make a decision and that this was a progressive loss of cerebral capacity. Feeling like a fool, it all started adding up. This is a patient who is treated as an expert when his brain functions are deteriorating. Although surrounded by white coats as friends none of us actually realized the incapacitation he was approaching. That is not the only problem, we were not the only spectators, the whole family was too. These were people who lived their whole lives drawing on advice from him as a doctor and even when he was suffering they still expected him to make decisions (Communication lesson 3)

What was said on the phone call was erased the day after and out of pride I still failed to convey to people around him that someone needs to overtake this decision making the process. Having dictated his plan for the day on his family and close friend who flew in specially to take care of him, he dragged every one on a physically debilitating trip to take another physician opinion. Needless to say, this day lost in the life time of his management ended abruptly with a disturbing level of consciousness, hemiplegia, and aphasia. The decision maker who dragged the educated and the responsible people around him to the other side of the country against all logic, was carried back to the hospital in an agitated coma ending up in the exact same place and with the exact same surgeon he was referred to by Dr. W one whole week ago. The only difference was that he was not put on the surgery list. He was rushed under the knife through the emergency room (Communication lesson 4).

“A life saved, but so many more can be if we can just learn a few lessons”.

Communication lesson 1

Make sure the patient who understands the scope of his illness and who understands the urgency, is fit to make the decision alone. Having directed him to the need to move quickly and to the consequences of the delay, a follow up with his parents or wife would have been necessary to prevent important issues from falling out of a sick brain’s memory, like the need to be admitted straight away.

Communication lesson 2

When you want to help a patient with advice, make sure you know all the details. Giving advice on truncated information might result in a catastrophe.

Communication lesson 3

Every patient was at one time competent and capable of making his own decisions. Take care not to have an over expectation for the patient’s capacity that is built on your prior knowledge of who he is. A physician is just a patient when he under the spell of a disease.

Communication Lesson 4

…When planning an intervention with the patient as a group of caregivers we need to communicate openly and allow for the transfer of information between you. Dr. A lost a whole day in the lifetime of his condition which was already very critical, to an unnecessary re-consultation that ended up in an intracranial hemorrhage that could have been dodged given a good communication of his capacity.

Taking charge of someone’s life is an amazingly hard thing for anyone to do. But taking charge comes with its own responsibilities to perceive and assess and make informed decisions.

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As humans we are empathetic and we have the virtues of other animals in the animal kingdom who strive basically to BELONG to a tribe or herd. It is in our common nature to connect and become a part of a network. We embody the structures we see around us and long for a constellation to pull us close and not have to shine alone. Although we act as though we are independent beings and we strive to be acknowledged as individuals, however, we always revert back to our support groups for mental and psychological well-being.

This is why we connect instantaneously with stories that are woven and presented to us a reflection of, or at least a remote glimpse of, any aspect of our human experience. Talent shows have evolved over the past 5-10 years from purely competitive shows were polarization is the general sense you get all through the show to a humanistic party where cocktails of human emotions are presented for you all through the show. You live an hour or two in complete detachment from your life and find yourself immersed in other people’s passions, struggles, successes, rejections and so much more. You are intentionally connected to people rather than contestants with numbers. Such a transformation from where we were to where we are now! It all happened so slowly that we did not even realize it to ask why…

We are in a large market place where every merchandise is on sale and the display is crowded with goods of all sorts. Being competitive is no longer easy and it takes so much more than just an ad with pretty models lip-synching to your favourite song. Now to sell, you have to offer something and be capable of creating a transformation. You have to be able to address the limbic system and arouse memories of feelings of happiness, fulfillment, or amusement. So, while we think we are watching a talent show we are actually buying what they are selling us…. This is life and it is surely our lives that we can either choose to live and understand or just become uninformed consumers and take the ride.

Knowing all this and looking around in this open market we live in, I cannot help but wonder why we are not taught marketing skills as educators and as educational administrators. To learn to sell visions, values and buy-in would make our lives so much easier. In our universities, we struggle to lay out a strategy to help direct our actions and achievements yet we end up carrying the strategy on our shoulders in despair like leftover merchandise that no one wants to buy. We end up working for the strategy and we might even add a line in our to do list “check on that lonely strategy to see if it still has pulse.”

If we were taught to sell we would be able to sell this strategy and make sure that everyone in the institute has a degree of relevance or attachment to it. If this strategy was a contestant on the “University’s Got Talent ” show we would have been able to sell it. We could have created a story and told it and taken people for a ride. We could have promised them A SHOW where all emotions are on the loose. Learning to strategize is one skill but learning to tell the story of “Our University’s WHY” is another story altogether.

When Kodi came up on the America’s Got Talent stage he brought his story with him… Story of disease that brought no hope with it, story of a mother’s love and undivided attention, story of passion being found and a story of passion healing the impossible, story of the unexpected. Kodi brought with him a story of embracing the impossible and a life worth living no matter what…. In short, he embodied hope.

The story everyone wants to hear is a story where there is a hero, a knot and a happy ending. Sometimes villain stories are fun as well so make sure to have a villain in your story somewhere…

Your story becomes the story everyone will tell each other to make it worth listening to. Your story will probably become a determinant of your university culture so make it ethical and adherent to your announced values. Ready? Now weave the story….

Tell a tale of people who founded the university…despite all odds. People who built it brick by brick. Tell us more about those people and how amazing they were on a personal level. Tell us more about their political stands or their values…now stop….let us imagine them and leave us wanting to meet them.

Now tell us about your university…. how it was built, why it was built and how it started as a place that guided farmers to learn more about their produce and started with a vision to bring information to those who could not pursue it… tell us how it started off as a palace and tell us how till this moment the elevator in the building is working on rope technology…how the glass is from the 18th century…tell us how unique it is and make us want to go and see it…make us smell the floor lining and paint a vivid picture in our head.

Now tell us how that vision has helped shape the educator you are or the administrator you are…show us how that legacy has travelled generations down to you…. But do not forget to tell us more about the wicked witch and her plans to transform this legacy to something tasteless and meaningless…. make us understand the value you are fighting for and the war you are in..

Now its time…take the stage….have people wait for your success and live it and tear up once you have said your final verse…. make them wait for you to wrap up with all the mixed emotions your story put them through. Ready….hear the applause and see the tears…. people will share your story as if it is their own…simply because it told a part of their story on their behalf… It gave them something to relate to and a sense of relief that someone out there spoke their truth… Make sure everyone can find themselves somewhere in your story….bring them home….

Now you are ready… Your university is alive. It is in love, under threat, aspiring, successful and just ready to meet the prince and get the transformational kiss…

Now everyone will want to witness this transformation…they are already a part of it. They were with you when the idea was designed, when the first brick was laid, when the first honor award was taken, when you were defending your legacy…. They will be with you now to celebrate.

The post University’s Got Talent …. Not the Show appeared first on Prof. Samar A. Ahmed.