From a Friend
January 21, 2009 
7 Comments
While this comic is funny because it’s extreme, anyone who has ever attempted to advance a new idea or finally implement an old one is familiar with “pushback” – an ingrown resistance to change based on a lack of information, personal assumptions, or both.
Among older, heavily experienced community figures in Spokane, I’ve occasionally observed a most dangerous form of pushback. It goes something like this:
In all the decades I’ve toiled away on my issue I’ve made what feels like little progress. All these years I’ve spent my energy just barely “holding the line”. I don’t want to admit that I’ve become a comfortable part of that which I originally sought to reform, and now I’m convinced that this succumbing is inevitable for everyone. If I tried and failed, you are foolish to even try in the first place. Let me share with you my superior wisdom on the intractability of the issues, let me discourage you from showing me up in the fight.
-Spokane Old Guard
This attitude that warns us away from imagining the future we want should be recognized for what it is, and be disarmed. This tendency is one of the many reasons it is important to seek out the perspective of young people in community planning processes. Have you encountered pushback before? How do you know when it should be heeded, and when it should be ignored?
About the Author
i would argue that the majority of my profession engages in that attitude towards most of us who leave our respective design schools young and idealistic.
Perhaps if all of us youngish architectural types and friends came together… but then again, considering that what we do these days hemmed in by the “demands of the market” i sometimes rather cynically think it would be more productive for us to wait for the economy to completely collapse then start over.
Preferably in the schools, educating our kids about design and the arts in general and going from there.
“So what you’re saying is you’ve given up?” That is my response to folks who come at me with any kind of cynicism. As the president of a minor corporation I embrace failure as the best learning tool available to me and feel sorry for anyone in the old guard who has reached the point were simply holding the line is good enough.
Keep ruffling feathers Spovangelist!
PS I was forced to change my name under the new administration.
In my work I am constantly on both sides of this situation. Every year I get knee jerk reactions to our legislation and other efforts from people who work in local governments or organizations that I thought were aligned with our issues. If I give up and don’t give them time to digest and adjust to new ideas, I might as well quit my job. People can only take on so much, so fast.
Within my own movement I am working on legislation that we would have laughed at 3 years ago due to its political infeasibility. But nothing can stop an idea whose time has come. You just never know when it is going to.
There is a lot of self deception that plays into this
First there is the “I”m the first person to ever think of this, and I am sure no one has ever tried it before.” syndrome,
Then there is the “I’ve got this great idea and I’m not willing to spearhead the effort so I am going to bring it to the person who I think should spearhead the effort–they’re not busy!”
But really it is more about timing. If you approach someone in the middle of their project, day, campaign, with an idea that is totally sideways from it, you can’t even call it push back when people don’t drop everything to work on your idea. Its a natural need to stay focused.
People should be open minded to new ideas, and new tactics. And one should always keep their eye on the horizon for the next great idea. But we are only human, and the last thing people who have built a giant coalition around something that they are halfway through can do is change course without major planning. We sometimes expect super-human head space from people entrenched in their work. But these people didn’t get there by giving up the first time someone rebuffed their idea, they know, as well as you, that that attitude won’t get you anywhere and you wouldn’t learn anything if they just dropped everything and did it for you.
I’ve encountered the “I am the master of this issue” attitude before, and I have also disappointed people when they come to me with ideas, when I see the problem, don’t find their idea a promising solution. It’s life. Being ambitious and idealistic is hard. Being honest about prospects of success and earnest in toiling to get there is even harder. But it’s worth it.
Bottom line; heed constructive criticism, heed people’s specific objections and look for ways to address them; ignore efforts to discourage, move on from partners whose concerns you decidedly cannot address, and find others. You can always go back and approach the doubter later. It’s easy to make a bad call when you are overwhelmed yourself.
“After so many years of defending ourselves against life and searching for better controls, we sit exhausted in the unyielding structures of organization we’ve created, wondering what happened. What happened to effectiveness, to creativity, to meaning? What happened to us? Trying to get these structures to change becomes the challenge of our lives. We draw their futures and design them into clearly better forms. We push them, we prod them. We try fear, we try enticement. We collect tools, we study techniques. We use everything we know and end up nowhere. What happened?”
-Margaret Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers in “A Simpler Way”
There are very few risk-takers in Spokane. A few experiences of pushback that I’ve encountered can be squarely blamed on apathy, embedded in traditionalism. I think of something developer Rob Brewster said: “It’s a frustrating place to do business. We continue to see the private side trying to make Spokane more successful while it’s just going to constantly be beat down by the ineptness of the leadership.”
Never try to change a structure unless there is a mechanism for change. If there is no mechanism, you’ll walk away embittered, unfulfilled and unsuccessful. What ails Spokane is that so much of what we see is the fear of the structures already present. Always best o begin anew and rearrange the variables so tha tgrowth and options for change are built in. Much of this is cultural in SPokane. The one good thing about those immutable companies/structured companies is that they trap themselves and cannot alter to meet new ideas and challenges. Change matters and is one consistent feature of life. Rigidity is self defeating and evetually perishes.
Next is the question as to whether the younger people have the courage to make mistakes. Many don’t. Some do. To those that do, it’s always best to probe, watch, be thoughtful and move forward to congeal the historical good part with the futre that seems sound. Growth occurs and is welcomed.
It’s a good topic.That which we know can hinder learning that which we don’t know. I had to answer that quetion.except both sides were argued. I learned a lot. It’s carried over in life. Anyway, I don’t live in Spokane but I do come often. It’s a tough lil town to make headway in. Even now, there’s a slow changing of the old guard……they’re reluctant but growth does happen as a matter of course. It happens or a city dies off. SPokane has experience the die off. Soon there will be new growth in a beautiful part of the world. Best wishes to all of you. D