In reading some of the blogs, I think it was Todd’s I was stuck by the idea of traditions holding an organization back. I never really gave thought to that. The phrase “That is the way we have always done it” can have some real stuck in the mud impacts. Right now in our department we are seriously looking at budget cuts and are also seriously looking at programmatic cuts. Some traditions might not fit with the vision of why we do what we do and might need to be put on hold or cut forever.
It is interesting to me that we have been talking about trimming the tree of programs since many of our staff are over-tired and burnt out. We have been having this conversation for the past 3 years. Not until the budget cuts came along have we actually gotten buy-in from people. Not sure, right now, how this fits into leadership, but it seems that we, as the leaders, did not have the nerve to step up and say we are cutting things. Not until we had money pulled from us do we have the ability to obtain buy-in from the staff we lead. We are a very collaborative decision making unit and want input from all. But sometimes, as the decision making group, we struggle with making the tough, maybe unpopular decisions.
Having a happy staff is important, but to what end? We talk about looking out for our young professionals and saving them from themselves with burn-out and over investment/involvement… then how can we learn to lead a little different. Is this a tradition, potentially an unhealthy one, that we are steered/driven by the young and energetic and have a hard time saying “No”? (Don’t get me wrong, I work in one of the best housing programs in the country, and have great leadership, just curious how this evolved). What we do good totally outweighs where we struggle… but I feel this could be an area that we could do a little better at.
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