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Created: August 15, 2003
Latest Update: August 15, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

When in Doubt, Regroup and Redefine

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, August 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

Let's talk about the power of reframing. I had a great idea for how to teach our sociology students how to prepare for and find jobs in their local area. Most of them (this was in the 70s) wanted to do community work and social work to help improve the South Central Los angeles area after the Watts Riots. Many of them had never been to college before, nor had anyone in their family.

Now, we in the sociology department had a field study course.We only had about 24 students in each course. But John and Dexter had similar courses. So we had this great idea of putting all of them together and creating a social research center on the lower floor of our Social and Behavioral Science Building. We found (well, actually we "liberated") tables, chairs, calculators, typewriters, and even an old refrigerator donated by one of the students. We settled in with about 75 kids and all my community contacts: directors at the county research department, of the local combined services community building, the local mental health unit. They needed a needs assessment for a grant they were applying for. So our students, community members, tackled the writing of questionnaire schedules, and discovered how to do sampling, collected the data, and together we all wrote a report. Not all 75 kids and combined social workers. Everybody did a piece of it, and everybody used whatever skills they had. And in exchange, the agency wrote a part-time position in for a student internship in their agency.

None of us got paid extra for this. It was part of our teaching and learning commitment. It WAS NOT volunteerism. It was OUR community, for goodness' sakes, and we were taking care of it. We had an enormously good time, and our theory was that when all the other faculty saw the fun we were having in our sandbox, they'd come in to play, too. I had the math and research experience, Carol was rapidly learning those areas, Elizabeth fed us healthy, well, and some not-so-healthy foods from her old refrigerator, Herman drank coffee with us, and we taught and learned coding and cardpunching before the days of computer entry, and when reports were due, we sat together and went over the analyses and writing. When a study director yelled at a student for not having done assigned coding, we sat them down together and pointed out that the student had understood about assigning a number for the answer, but missed the part about the address on the 80 column card where the number was to go. The director calmed down, the student was relieved and happy, and we shared a coke together.

That big old room in the basement watched all those todos, and reflected an aura of people working together for good things for the community, and learning how to supervise and manage right along with all the other skills. We were so good at respecting and caring about each other and our community that the department of health, education, and welfare gave us a $75,000 grant. Those were the good old days, the days when we were a hugging place, a happy place, and the community was happy with us.

But in the aesthetic process of creating this climate of caring and learning and doing, we fussed and yelled and spilled out into the hallways, where we were doing calculations at a purloined child's table. We were messy and noisy. So how did we get the school to give us that wonderful basement room and trust 75 kids and a crazy teacher? Reframing. Though we called it redefinition. We looked about at the people jammed into my office, into the halls, and recognized that the President wouldn't be too happy if he were told that that was three Field Study classes. Classes, indeed, flitting all over here and yon, all talking at once. So one day we brought crepe paper and wine and cheese and cold drinks and cookies, and invited all our friends in the community. Yep, we invited them to that little crowded crazy professor's office with ll the kids in the hallways. But we put the food on purloined tables out in the patio. And we sent out announcements to the whole community, including the governor, because of course our community network went that far, inviting everyone to the opening of the Social Systems Research Center.

Suddenly 75 kids running all over doing goodness knows what weren't three barely tethered field classes; they were a research center. When in doubt, when in trouble, sit and think, and redefine the situation. Remember that knowledge is based on perspective, and if you change the perspective you get to reinterpret that knowledge. Those really were the good old days. Once the center begins to develop historical tradtion, identities are invested, rules grow up and take over like weeds, and we forget the wonderful aesthetic process of turnng a sandbox into a productive garden.

So this explains my choice of text for the course. I would have preferred Schucks' Foundations of Administration, for it's a much heavier book theoretically, but it's out of print. But the subtitle of Reframin Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership fits right into the experience of agency, as I have lived it.