Range
I was taking drivers training the summer I turned seventeen. After one session, I told my father something I learned that I had found particularly interesting.
"If a car is approaching with only one headlight visible near the middle of the road, we were taught to assume that the light was on the passenger side of the car and that the vehicle was straddling the centerline."
I cannot recall my father's exact words, but his response indicated he would not make such an assumption. At the time, I could not understand why something so obvious in terms of driver safety would be beyond his comprehension.
I was approaching the unknowns of the circumstance with an abundance of caution. Although my father was not given to acting cavalierly, his perspective was shaped by more than thirty years of experience behind the wheel. During that time he had seen many cars with only one headlight. He had never seen one of them driving down the middle of the road, it seems.
It would be erroneous to conclude that the opposite of an abundance of caution is always a surfeit of foolhardiness. This might be the case in certain life-or-death pursuits. In many others, however, we draw upon personal resources that will enable us to overcome any inclination toward timidity or reticence.
Whether in management, leadership, or life, our response to circumstances we encounter is a function of the breadth of our experience, the depth of our knowledge, our skillfulness, and our confidence. Together, these constitute our range, the upper and lower limits of our comfort in any given arena within which we are working.
In my work over the last week, I was required to offer an opinion on a question involving prior restraint of protected speech, take a complaint from an angry citizen alleging a police officer's dereliction of duty, and discuss with another unit of government an approach to analyzing workflow. I am required, in every assignment as an interim city manager, to enter into the work with the expectation that I will be facing unknowns. I can do none of these things if I am overly cautious in taking them on. I must trust my range as a manager. Moreover, I must see each new experience as an opportunity to further extend my range.
It is to be expected that I can confidently draw on more than forty years of local government executive experience and that this experience will serve me well on nearly every occasion. The salient question is how I went about enlarging my range in the first place. No one starts out confident although some might be less cautious than others. How does one learn to push against personal boundaries?
Most of us, I suspect, are naturally inclined to test waters before we jump in with both feet. This seems like a good approach if one wishes to contribute to the continuation of the species. There are some, however, who must be warned to look before they leap. Is that always the best advice? Perhaps the leapers have an advantage over the testers, at least occasionally.
There is an exercise I use sometimes when facilitating strategic planning exercises with local governments that provides some insight into an organization's tolerance for risk. Some have a greater appetite for risk than others. Individuals working for an organization that is risk averse might be disinclined to leap before they look. Those who stick to their comfort zones are less likely to think outside the box. Before throwing caution to the wind, they will want to stick up a finger to determine in which direction it is blowing.
Here is the challenge we face. On the one hand, we are admonished to look before we leap, which is pretty good advice much of the time. On the other hand, we are told that fortune favors the bold. That's the problem with aphorisms; you can usually find one that supports whatever position you wish to take on an issue.
The solution to this dilemma is to leave pithy sayings behind and deal with the practical matter of how one should behave if one wishes to expand one's range.
I imagine that people who become tightrope walkers start out with the rope quite to the ground. They probably fall and pick up a few bruises while learning the ropes. (That's not where the expression comes from but I couldn't resist.) At that height, they are unlikely to break an arm or a leg. Over time, the rope is placed higher and higher in the air.
Most of the time, that's the same approach we all take. We find our limits and push a little beyond them. We practice, developing skill and confidence at the same time. We make mistakes, correct them, and learn from them. Whatever the field of endeavor, we gradually extend our range.
When I first began my professional career, I was a terrible public speaker. I was nervous. I relied too heavily facts and figures. I tried to say too much and I said it in uninteresting ways. I pity the people who politely endured my early efforts. Still, I kept at it. I really had no choice. When you're a city manager, people will insist that you show up to talk to them from time to time. I improved with each opportunity. Now I welcome the occasions when I am asked to address a group. I rarely recite facts and figures. I tell stories and share ideas.
To be truthful, I was not a very good city manager when I first began although I didn't realize it at the time. I made mistakes. I kept at it and I figured out how to do it well most of the time. I increased my range.
When we have acquired enough skill, knowledge, experience, and confidence, we might be willing to take a leap into the unknown. At such times, it's best if there is a safety net below us in case we fall. If there isn't, what we risk might be limited to a bit of embarrassment and a blot on our reputation. Embarrassments fade over time and blots can be removed.
If the worst occurs, if we fall, we will still have expended our range. At such times, while we treat our wounds, we can find solace in the wisdom of Theodore Roosevelt:
It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.