Self-Regulation in the Age of Distraction

I went to a workshop today. This is always a tricky thing to do in the middle of the day. While I was there, my mind (I am sure like everyone else’s) was flying around not only on the workshop but on the email threads I was following on the side, the phone calls I was receiving, and my own thoughts of the tyranny of the urgent back at the office. As I time-spliced my way through the session, I was again reminded of how we don’t really take the time to grapple with complex things that need our attention. The workshop was thoughtful, engaging and posed interesting questions. The questions posed were worthy of follow-up but how do we make that happen?

When I am at workshops I tend to scribble down random thoughts. These thoughts are sparked by something speakers say but often are completely in a different direction to the speaker’s main point. The topic today was technology, education and change.

As I listened, I scribbled the following notes on my pad of paper:

• What is the role of self-regulation in the daily life of a district-leader?
• If we believe self-regulation is important for children, do we believe it needs to be taught to adults?
• Are we entering a new age of innovation and creativity in education as a result of the tools that we are placing in the hands of children and the power of these tools to connect and create?
• What role does cloud storage play in the new way we look at mobile technology for students, teachers and district staff?
• What is my personal plan to connect (online and face to face) to those who work in schools in my district?
• If we believe that we can define a new set of skills that we should be teaching our children in a 21st Century Curriculum – then how are we teaching those skills to our incoming leaders?
• What role does this new skillset play in our hiring and support of new teachers and Questionsleaders?
• What does a hiring, development, evaluation, and succession plan look like as we head to the next decade?
• Are we using the right leadership competencies in hiring for the decade to come?

I often write notes like these above and then use the notes for future blog articles, presentations or simply for my own personal reading and professional development. But once again, I was reminded of how these thoughts were inspired by a presentation and I feel like I should actually do something with them. Now I will, and others will, head back to the office and the daily work and what will become of what I think are important ideas? Will they be pursued or will they simply fall off the end of the desk?

When I have thought about this in the past, I have felt that one should never attend a workshop unless you are willing to devote equal time post-workshop to grapple with what to do with the information you’ve received. I know of course it doubles the cost in terms of time but, on the other hand, we know that drive-by professional development doesn’t work for anyone. Unless you purposefully structure time to grapple collectively with material, formulate a plan for next steps, and then pursue that plan, then we all know the end result. When we are considering system change, the cost of no progress simply is too high.

What I decided to do today was to take my notes, do a blog post to see if anyone else has the same experience and then at the very least, the thoughts are down for the future and I can reference them again. I know that for me, the issue of taking the time to think of what a curriculum of self-regulation for adults might look like is the next step.

Perhaps as I found my own calm and focussed time to at least think of what happened today, it’s my first step in making plans for what’s next.

So, to pose a question for comments – for anyone who engages in pro-d in an ongoing way, what strategies do you use to devote time after workshops for a “what now” session or do you struggle with the same issue of finding time to follow-up?

Picking the hill on which to die – the fine art of de-escalation

Ever get in a battle with a 4 year old and you reach a point (very quickly) where you realize you’ve lost? That realization normally comes when you’ve taken a stance that you realize you can’t possibly uphold. The mind starts to spin with “how am I going to get out of this?” What about teenagers where you may say “you do that one more time and I’ll….” – you’ll what? In my role, I spend a lot of time helping people through tough situations. When things are at their breaking point, they sometimes head this way. In so many cases, I am reminded of how important it is to find ways to de-escalate a situation before it gets to the point of no return. Sometimes the road back is a lot longer than the road to get there. Here are some thoughts on strategies to avoid or de-escalate conflict in the public arena.

1)      Pick the hill on which to die. I won’t put listening as the first skill and advice as it truly is but…as you listen to situations, as you weigh core values, processes, the overall situation, you need to decide what your eventual stance will entail. As you weigh things, you have to decide if this is the hill on which you wish to die. This really is important as often people think that conflict is about power when it really isn’t. Conflict is about differing views, process, negotiation, compromise. It is hard work and it requires that each side normally must give something to the process. If your starting point is “I’m right” and they just need to know why I’m right…you are in for a long day. Picking the hill is about weighing core values. If the conflict is about a clash of core values and not process or procedure, as you begin you need to carefully think about how far you are willing to go to seek resolution. Values-based conflicts are among the most difficult to resolve.

2)      Enter the situation prepared to lose. Dealing with conflict certainly isn’t about winning or losing but often I feel that it can go that way for one side or the other. If you enter a situation prepared to realize that you or the institution may be wrong, then it’s a good starting point. Feeling that you come from a place of power, that people simply don’t understand the complexity of the situation and you need to help them understand is normally not a good starting place. If you aren’t willing to believe that you or the organization may not have got it right, then you really aren’t open to the possibility that they have a legitimate concern that you need to hear.

3)      Take your sail out of their wind. As you listen to the concern, don’t counter-argue. The first step is to truly understand their concern not to further establish a counterargument. Listen, then listen some more, then articulate back to them their concern in different language so that you show them that you get it. Show people that you truly understand their viewpoint, their concern and that you take it at face value.

4)     Don’t reaffirm things you don’t agree with. Sometimes, when I watch people listen to tough situations, they nod their head, they smile and they reaffirm the speaker to let them know that they are listening. Just a word of caution in that sometimes, people are telling you things that are not positive about your employees and they may not be accurately representing the scenario in its full context.  A nod, a smile and “yes” that you may have intended to be reaffirming that you are indeed listening can be taken as agreement that the employee has done the wrong thing or behaved inappropriately. As stated above, don’t counter and absolutely listen with interest but don’t lead people to believe that if they tell you someone did something inappropriate, that you agree with that. What you are affirming is that you understand, not that you agree. What you want to avoid is, for example, the potential for a parent dissatisfied with a principal’s decision going back to the principal and saying that they’ve met with district staff and the district agreed that the principal was wrong.

5)     Seek resolution that honours people’s concerns. Each side will have a point. Each side probably feels strongly about the role they played. Your job, in seeking resolution is to find an outcome where people know, most importantly, that you listened, you were fair, and you gave full weight to their concerns.

6)      Seek help when needed. No one knows it all. As you listen, as you form a resolution find a trusted colleague to bounce it off of. If you are unsure at all, seek help. This is the best thing you can do and as a colleague, there is actually a great feeling to have someone come and ask “what do you think about this” knowing that you get to give your unbridled feedback and then let them lead the way. People love to offer advice. It is valued. It is valuable. It honours others and makes you better. So want to know if you’ve got it right – just ask someone. Great colleagues are all around you.

7)      Delivery is everything. Facebook has a “Like” button but have you ever looked for the “Unlike” button? You get one shot at making an impression on people where they feel that they have been dealt with fairly or not. When you have a resolution or a decision, themanner in which you deliver it is of utmost importance. Your outcome should reflect that you heard what people had to say, you weighed the consequences, processes, and you’ve made a call. Deliver with care. Deliver as if you were the recipient.

8)      Make a call and act as if there is no higher level. – The worst outcome is no outcome. People come to you looking for help. A delay or a pushing up or off to another level really isn’t help at all. As a leader, you were hired to make a decision in a transparent and fair manner. You should be comfortable making a decision and standing behind it. Don’t suggest that it’s the best you can do and if they don’t like it they can appeal a higher level. There may be a time for that when you’ve done all you possibly can do but, you should act as if you are the highest level and you want an outcome that is final with people leaving feeling that they were dealt with fairly.

9)      The gut test, the front page test, the mom test. In homage to Rushworth Kidder, when you serve in the public, you need to be comfortable with whatever you’re doing being on the front page of the local paper. No one wants a headline that puts the district in bad light, but if you feel that the headline will be bad (“School Board Denies Education to Homeless Child”) then the situation probably requires a bunch more work. Not because you are afraid of the media – but because what is happening probably really isn’t the best you can do. If it doesn’t “feel” right, if it isn’t something you would be comfortable sharing with your mom as an example of good work, then it probably is a situation that requires more work. So when you make your final call, give it the test and see how it holds.

One of the great joys of working in service of the public is that you get to help people. Every day you can make a difference in people’s lives. Inserting yourself to help in situations of conflict can be rewarding and yet it can be tough as well. People call on you because they need your skill and expertise. They called because they want you to help. Hopefully, the above offer some points of reflection on how to wade through tough times.

So the next time someone comes to you with a problem. Listen with interest, clarify for them to show that you understand, seek a resolution that is honouring and test your result with a colleague. If it’s really tricky, ask yourself the mom test. Would she be proud of your work?

Finally, often I hear that people need a resolution today/now – or they’re going to the media or government or lawyers or elsewhere. Rarely is it true that an immediate resolution is required. They might want a resolution today but it isn’t essential. Seeking a quick resolution is often also seeking a bad resolution process-wise.  My experience has taught me that in the vast majority of situations, you always have more time than you think you do. Take the time you need get it right. Spending time to get it right may be the most important thing you do as you work to a successful outcome. In the end, people will appreciate the time and care that you did invest in addressing their concern.

So the next time you see a toddler in a tantrum, watch a teenager up the ante when a parent doesn’t want them to do something, or you see two adults moving up the anger mountain, look for the strategies at play. Likely, with some of the above suggestions, you too can have success with the next opportunity to test your skills.

In the Midst of Greatness

• In The Midst Of Greatness

This podcast talks about daily life in our secodary schools and the inspiration we feel from working with students. While we watch many students go on to accomplish great things, there are stories of success everyday that fill those who work in schools with a sense of pride.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Transparency is more than handing out the spreadsheet – revisiting the Six Secrets

On a few of my posts I have reflected on good works in the past that seem to fly by. When the “next good book” on leadership or process comes out, we often simply turn our minds to new thoughts and trends in educational leadership or leadership in general. I tend to keep things around and reflect back on things that people wrote that really had an impact on me. Some works come to mind like Ernest Boyer’s In Search of Community or Ursula Franklin’s The Real World of Technology. Another book that is really a benchmark for me is Michael Fullan’s Six Secrets of Change. It is a benchmark because what he said about transparency really struck a chord. Transparency (Secret #5) is more than showing the numbers. It is more than handing out a spreadsheet or formula and saying there it is. Transparency is giving people the evidence and material that they need, and helping them see the meaning behind the numbers or words. Transparency isn’t about sharing the data. It’s about sharing the meaning and nuances behind the data. I want to share an example of what I believe transparency looks like and the benefits that can be gained.

Last year we used a new method to deal with staffing allotments at secondary. One of the things we did was take the staffing we held back to deal with last minute adjustments needed in September and we formed a very small working committee to hand out that staffing. One of our starting points was to hand out all the initial staffing allocations to all schools to everyone on the committee. This was a bit of a watershed moment as I’m not sure that everyone had seen everyone else’s staffing in the past. They may have but to hand out the excel spreadsheets seemed a bit of a new twist. In doing so we also asked any school asking for staffing to share their entire timetable structure so we could weigh requests. This small committee had a defined task – look at requests for staffing, look at timetables and needs, and hand out staffing – about half a million dollars worth overall. I share the above only for context but I want to talk about the benefits of doing this small activity – dealing with staffing allocations in a transparent way.

First, we worked as equals. Everyone brought their knowledge and experience to the table and everyone had value and insights to add to the issue at hand. Every decision we made really was by consensus.

Second, the schools sent their most knowledgeable timetable people to the table. In some cases, this meant vice-principals since they did most of the timetabling or were in the details enough to make a solid contribution. This gave me an opportunity to work closely with VP’s and get to know them more in detail and see their strengths and styles. It also meant that our Human Resources team who did secondary staffing was at the table with the schools so the conversations that normally were behind closed doors or 1:1 were now way more in the open as everyone sat and listened to HR’s needs and to school needs as well.

Third, we got to look at the whole district. HR brought all the data about school class size and composition and we were able to weigh requests from schools against their actual timetables and allotted staffing of the day.

In the end, we had a small group with a defined task. We had the information we needed and we had the expertise in the room to get the job done. The group met only a few times and, as promised, we gave out our half million dollars in staffing. However, really the whole goal of the exercise was to make staffing in September a little more transparent.

What does this type of transparency and process accomplish? Secret #3 is about the importance of capacity building. Working together with colleagues on a task that has impact really shows you what people offer, their expertise and allows you to get to know them. They, in turn, get to see the district picture and more context about the demands of balancing competing interests. Everyone gains and the system capacity grows.

Secret #1 is about valuing your colleagues and employees as much as your “clients.” Trusting people with a major decision like staffing is demonstrating such value. As you can imagine with staffing on the line, not only do these committee members want to do good work, but they also will be judged by their peers in the field to ensure that the work is fair and transparent. When you work by consensus on a clearly defined task, you show people that you value their contributions, expertise, and the meaning they bring to the table.

But the real intent of this post is about transparency. I have learned over the years that transparency is often thought of as sharing the “stuff” (whatever the stuff is) and I don’t actually believe that is transparency. I’ve seen (and probably handed out) enough 6 point font spreadsheets to know that really if you don’t take the time to explain to people what you’re giving them, it really isn’t transparency.

In the examples I’ve shared, I’ve used formula-based information and numbers. But transparency is also about the nuances behind any information you share. When you explain concepts that have taken years to evolve and are adjusted to local context, they require a little time and detail. Most often, the person sharing the information knows the time-tested questions that went into shaping things the way they are. It would be the most unusual situation where a complex topic simply is “solved” on the spot once and forever more it is unchanged. Things evolve, things take time. Complex topics require the history and context that goes with the spreadsheet or handout.

In the end, transparency is about who you are as a leader. It requires work to communicate well and to help people understand the meaning behind the words and, in some cases, numbers. Transparency is about openness of intent, it’s about openness of mind to new possibilities. In short, being transparent in your leadership practices will not only make you a better leader, it will make everyone around you better as well.

So the next time you’re dealing with a difficult topic or something that took years to evolve. If it took you two years to build the spreadsheet or guidelines, it’s probably worth half an hour to explain. It will be time well spent.

What exactly is trust and how do leaders earn it?

Trust – the firm belief in the reliability, truth,
or ability of someone or something.

Oxford English Dictionary

When we talk about leadership, often we hear about trust. But when do we really talk about what do people mean by trust? Is it trust in an individual, a group, a direction or an organization? One thing we do know for sure is that when there is no trust, there is not likely to be effective leadership. Schools are organizations built on human interactions and relationships. If those relationships aren’t built on a foundation of trust, likely little innovation will take place when educational change is considered.

As a leader, first and foremost you can earn trust by demonstrating reliability. Reliability is about engaging in a task and following through. “Closing the loop” on items for which you have assumed responsibility. It can also mean reliability in terms of just being there. People gain trust over time when you simply listen with openness to what people need and respond with sincerity. People need to trust that someone will listen and that someone will attempt to make a difference.

Reliability in actions needs to be followed up with reliability in the messages you communicate. The ability to speak with consistency and clarity will engender trust. People need to be able to trust in the messages they hear. That trust is not only in hearing consistency but in hearing that you can take complex issues and form them into a structure that makes sense for people. Leaders are often in a privileged position in that they have much more information about rationales behind large scale innovations and directions. It is the leader’s responsibility to take that additional information and to weave it together in a simplified clear version that can be enacted by those are trusted with implementation. This messaging really needs to demonstrate that you not only understand the messaging that people need, but you understand what implementation looks like in schools with all their human complexity.

Finally, trust is earned through your own competency and by showing people that you have the ability to follow through on the actions you pursue. Competency, in a recent Harvard Review was described as having three components:

• Technical knowledge – This is the “what you need to do” aspect of leadership and management. Knowing the technical aspects of the work. In school leadership, you need to know about curriculum, assessment, the school act, regulations, orders, and management aspects of the job. Budgets, staffing, and the myriad of routine details that it takes to run a school.
• Operational knowledge – taking “what you need to do” above and translating it to “how are you going to do it?” This is the leadership imperative of understanding leadership, change, and how to mobilize your staff to accomplish the task ahead.
• Political knowledge – this refers to the getting things accomplished in the political environment of the workplace. The article does not mean “politics” as in democracy and government, but politics as in the network of relationships that exist in any organization. Political knowledge is how you exercise influence in the workplace and as a leader, you are expected to be skilled in motivating, inspiring and leading people.

Earning the trust of your colleagues is a complex and time consuming task. You need to demonstrate that you are reliable in actions and in words. You need to show your competency with a combination of technical, operational and political knowledge. You need to demonstrate that you not only actually talk the talk, but you walk the walk. You need to show that despite all your skills in the above, you are not perfect by any stretch and you need to tap into the skills of those in your organization. You need to collaborate with others to help sharpen decisions and to move forward in the implementation of change. This final aspect includes the importance of transparency.

Transparency is about revealing the rationale behind your decisions. Talk to people, show them your thinking and ask questions of people within the organization as you pursue change. The questions you ask will show your technical, operational and political knowledge of leadership and tasks ahead. Don’t try to be an expert on all issues. No matter what, there are always people around you who know more than you do. When you show your interest in other people’s knowledge and expertise and you value that, your trust and influence within the organization will grow.

The way in which you handle yourself in an organization and the ways in which you work with and influence others really is how you define yourself as a leader. Note that in none of the above explanation did we talk of authority. Leadership is about influencing others through relationships. The more you believe that leadership is about exerting power as a result of position, the more you will end up working toward becoming a manager and not a leader.

If you believe that leadership is about influence, then that influence follows from people trusting in you. Through your actions, you will earn trust and in turn will acquire followers who will help you achieve the goals you wish to pursue.

It is often said that managers have subordinates while leaders have followers. If you really want to be an effective leader, that journey begins by demonstrating your technical, operational and political expertise in a transparent manner. Embrace those with whom your work, tap into their knowledge and work within your teams.

It does work and it can be tremendously rewarding for all involved.

Trust me.

What are you willing to declare you are responsible for and what does that have to do with policy?

I was in Starbucks the other day. As I went to grab the milk, I discovered that not only was the first steel jug empty, but so was the second, third and fourth. As I carried the four empty canisters to the counter to ask for more, I thought about why no one had taken the responsibility to simply inform the barista that we were out of milk.

Throughout my career in education, I have often reflected on exactly what people are, or are not, willing to declare that they are responsible for. I was also reminded of this thought recently when forums we are having on poverty have asked the question “would you be willing to declare that you are responsible for a child who is not your own?”

Accepting personal responsibility for many things can be risky and overwhelming. It can also be tremendously rewarding. The overwhelming part is to see the extent of the need and the sometimes chasm of the gap between those who have and those who have not. The reward can be in a smile, a glimmer, a glance, an extended hand from those who truly appreciate what you have given in sometimes such a small way. The risk/reward example reminds me of John Maxwell’s quote “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

In education, every day I see people who have devoted their lives to accepting responsibility for improving the life chances of each child. I am surrounded by them. In many cases, not only have they taken the risk of committing their lives to such a noble pursuit, but they do it knowing that they cannot possibly do it all. However, they do what they can, in the ways that they know how. If they choose to see it, they know that they are making a difference every day.

The flip side of accepting responsibility is the abdication of responsibility. Sometimes, I feel that when we ask large, bureaucratic organizations about how we do things, we are pointed to policy. As a district leader, unless policy is carefully and thoughtfully written, it can actually provide a window for people to abdicate their responsibility for doing what is right. “Well, we don’t do that, there’s a district policy.”

Policy and practice should be about what we can do, and how to do what’s right rather than a set of prescriptions or rules about the boundaries in which we work. Policy is critical, policy is important, but we cannot let policy be driven by worst practice so that we surround ourselves by rules that don’t support our work, communities, employees or students.

As district leaders and as educators, we are responsible. It’s what we signed up for. The work we do, on a daily basis, must be about making a difference in the life chances of each child and whether it’s in our daily interactions with people or in the policies we write, the humanity and common sense of a greater right must come through. We must be can-do organizations.

So the next time you are faced with a difficult task or dilemma, as yourself, “what exactly am I willing to declare that I am responsible for here?” It can be an enlightening moment of reflection and can tell you a lot about who you are and what keeps you going on a day to day basis. And the next time you’re in Starbucks and use all the milk, pass the canister to the barista. After all, it’s the responsible thing to do.

Learning Standards – Is Time the Ultimate Measure?

When I was in electronics engineering we had a physics class devoted to a discussion of time. “The irreversible ordering of physical events” was the definition I remember. Recently, I participated in a discussion about curriculum standards and I left wondering about the role that time plays in our definition of learning standards. As a district leader in BC, one of the pieces of legislation I have referred to most often has been the School Calendar Regulation. I continue to wonder what the Regulation may look like if we are to embrace personalized learning and the promise of more flexibility.

The Calendar Regulation defines the very fabric of instruction in schools and, in many ways, defines the “box” in which we live and learn. For example, a board must not offer less than 4.75 hours multiplied by the minimum days of instruction in grades 1-7 and 5.15 hours in grades 8-12. Every time-bound aspect of the daily operation of a school is defined including exam days and what activities constitute instruction and non-instruction. There is flexibility in the adoption of local calendars, but the Regulation has more often than not been used as a recipe for how to build a school day, month, and year according to a strict set of rules.

Alongside the Regulation, are the guiding foundations for the development of curricula in our province. The principles of learning are:

• Learning requires the active participation of the student.
• Students learn in a variety of ways and at different rates.
• Learning is both an individual and social process.

I have often referred to the principles of learning as very strong foundations and they ring true regardless of the future in education. How can you argue with learning requiring active participation (engagement), occurring in varying ways and rates (personalized), and being both individual and social (collaborative)? These principles are strong and will stand the test of time.

As we move toward a more personalized version of learning, I hope that we strongly consider our concepts of time that we devote to learning. We know that learning is not linear. We know that developing one uniform set of standards for a non-uniform student population will simply result in many students not fitting the mold. According to the Regulation, grade 1 in 2010/11 should take 878.75 hours (185 days x 4.75 hours/days) to complete. As social beings, we need structure and the Regulation certainly gives us that. But how does the legislated concept of structure fit with our evolving concepts of learning?

When I was a secondary principal, our staff had a lengthy conversation about student attendance and achievement. Some staff members held strong feelings that students who missed a certain number of classes should be removed from a course. Our first step was to analyze the attendance for all students in the school. What we found was that many of our lowest attendance rates in classes were from students who were exceptionally busy but academically strong. These were the volleyball, basketball and every other sport players who were involved in student council and many other things. The difference was that their absences were “excused” and others were not. One of our top academic students missed about 30% of classes in some courses. I then gathered these students together as I was curious about their story of the value of attending class. These students drew a compelling vision of how they managed their time, their learning and managed to do it all quite well. Their stories changed our entire conversations as a staff about how we viewed attendance. We moved from talking about attendance to talking about engagement.

Attendance does matter. Unlike the above students, I am also acutely aware of those students for whom attendance isn’t a carefully managed event and they simply fade away and we lose them. The key to student attendance is having them being actively engaged in relevant, meaningful learning. Learning that challenges our brightest and supports those who struggle. Just like our students, teachers need time. They need time to do their best, time to collaborate, time to reflect.

As we move forward with our conversations and examples of personalized learning, I hope that these discussions are interlaced with an understanding of how time “fits” with what we do. Time is, in many ways, the ultimate standard. Hopefully, as our conversations continue, we’ll see more alignment between learning occurring in varying ways and different rates and the ways in which we use legislation to help define structures that support such learning. All we have to do to get it right is to take the time we need.

Critical Friends – who are they and what role do they play?

When I have principals or other school-based leaders who come asking advice, I often ask them, “who are your critical friends at school?” In my experience, having a range of people to run things by not only makes your decision making sharper,  it can provide you with the much needed perspective of those who surround you and work at all levels in an organization. Working with critical friends can sharpen decisions and refine communications.

One of the most important things in establishing critical friends is that you have to be able to create a culture of trust. A culture that develops not just trustworthiness, but trustfulness. I appreciate how these differing concepts are described by Rushworth Kidder. Kidder states that someone who is trustworty, does what they say they will do. They are more than just words, they are action-oriented in that if they tell you that they will follow through, then they will indeed. Trustworthiness is gained over time by following through with integrity. In the other realm is trustfulness. Someone who is trustful has confidence in others. They believe in the ability and skills of the ones who are given a task. They have an inherent belief that others are good and they trust in people.

Critical friends are people who you can ask for their perspective on a concept, decision, analysis, and then trust that they will tell you honestly what they think. They will tell you the truth as they see it in an effort to refine or shape your thinking. In return, their feedback is taken at face-value and no matter what is said, it is honoured as a valued perspective. They’ve given you exactly what you were seeking, a perspective that you may or may not be right in your approach and that there is another equally valid way to view the world. Now your task is to incorporate their feedback in your new plans and to thank them for their input and honesty.

Sometimes, with difficult tasks, you simply have a “gut feeling” that something may not go well or things may turn a specific direction. Stopping a critical friend and asking for their perspective may reaffirm your worries or may put them to rest.

I imagine that at, or near the top, of most organizational needs is a desire to have clear, consistent and effective communication. Part of seeking such communication is finding out who your critical friends are and using them as touchstones for messaging, decisions, and potential outcomes. In your organization, if you don’t have at least a few people who you can call critical friends, then you are missing a chance to make your decision making and communication processes as strong as they can be.