Have you ever wished 'they' would just be quiet? It's amazing how little can be said in fifteen minutes. You can get the feeling that something else--maybe a lot else--is going on, the longer it takes to "answer" the question and the less seems to be said. More words can be more information--or not.
As a citizen, I've had my comments limited to the proverbial 3 minutes. I've also wished that officials would limit their own comments. As a candidate, my speech is still limited during debates, interviews and in my literature. It's good pratice.
As a citizen working on becoming an official, I'm thinking about effective speech and courtesy. Official silence can be a good time to listen.
Rhubarb is up. I mean both the edible kind and the civic kind.
For eating, take off the poisonous leaves, chop the stalks, add sugar and make pie, cake, compote and syrup. It's a classic rite of Spring.
The other rhubarbs are the quarrels of the Spring political season. Take the poisonous barbs out of these rhubarbs and you have the makings of useful deliberation.
Let's keep our cool so we can have a rhubarb and eat it, too.
Comment posted to Mulhern's Reading for Leading blog:
Words like ‘shift’ and ‘transform’ are good for “de-learning” what might not be effective or sufficient anymore. How often have I heard “We tried that [10 or 15] years ago and it didn’t work.” Well, what have we tried recently? Why keep beating our heads against the masonry? It’s no fun (it hurts!), and I don’t think we have the time to waste our energy, or wait for change and solutions to climb the hierarchy. To paraphrase, at every level, we are the change. (B. Obama)
Here are some examples. Washtenaw Sheriff Clayton is leading a transformation of his department by engaging those on the front lines of human services and justice. The shift in thinking is beginning to yield results.
Grass roots environmental activism got Ann Arbor city officials to stop providing plastic-bottled water at public meetings, since award-winning city water is always available. It was a shift in thinking that cut costs and increases awareness of the environment at every meeting.
The de facto obsolete idea of “building our way out of congestion” has fallen to new standards like “four lanes to three” that make local roads more efficient and promote safe alternative transportation, at the same time that funds to expand the roadways have all but dried up. Shifting our thinking about transportation also connects to health management, land use, density and sustainability.
As a candidate for County Commissioner, biking and walking streets I don’t often go down, I’m looking forward to more shifts like these.
And let's not confuse "de-learning" with "destruction". The shift-andtransformation part of learning (or leading) doesn't just tear away the status quo, it opens gates to imagination and great results. We hear a lot about the benefits of entrepreneurship. In these basic terms of everyday leadership, trying something that might work under very changed circumstances, we get more progress for everyone.
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