Ep 32: Vision with Michael Bassis
92,000 Hours
This week we are joined by Dr. Michael Bassis to talk about vision. We discuss vision in the workplace and at home. How do we focus on long term vision when the day-to-day tasks take up so much of our time? How can leaders successfully communicate their vision to their team? Is it possible to ensure our vision remains intact even after we leave our position or organization?
Michael Bassis is the former President of Westminster College, Olivet College, and New College. He was also the Provost of Antioch College. He received his BA from Brown University in Sociology and holds a PhD in Sociology of Education from University of Chicago. In retirement, he has begun painting. You can connect with Michael on LinkedIn and view his artwork at michaelbassis.com.
Transcript
Annalisa Holcombe (00:10):
Hi everyone. And welcome to the 92,000 hours podcast. Honestly, I was a little nervous heading into this episode because in this one I interviewed Dr. Michael Bassis. Michael is not only my former or boss, but he's also a really important mentor in my life. And he and his wife, Mary remain a part of my chosen family. He's also a pretty big deal. He was the 16th president of Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah. He also held presidencies at Olivet College in Michigan, New College in Florida, and was the provost of Antioch College in Ohio. He studied sociology at Brown University and received his PhD in sociology of education at the University of Chicago.
Annalisa Holcombe (00:54):
He is an advocate for educational innovation and change and I can personally vouch for his interest in challenging people to be and do their best. It was scary to be in a position to interview him, but it was also great because it gave me a chance to ask him questions I wouldn't have otherwise been able to. Today we are talking about vision, what it is and what we can do to help ourselves see into the future and around corners, not just at work, but also in our life.
Annalisa Holcombe (01:32):
All right. So let's do this thing. Let's start with the first question that I always ask everyone. And I gave you that [crosstalk 00:01:40]-
Dr. Michael Bassis (01:37):
That question?
Annalisa Holcombe (01:42):
Yes. So the question, if you remove things like work school, research, I'm going to say for you also like community engagement-
Dr. Michael Bassis (01:53):
This question reminds me of the one that sometimes they ask in interviews, you need to get prepared for. In the interviews, they will ask you to talk about your strengths. At some interviews they'll ask you, "Michael, we know about your strengths, but tell us about your weaknesses." And so what are you going to say? You can't really tell them about a weakness. So I used to say, if I were to ever get that question, I would tell them, "Oh, my weakness is I work too hard. That's what people tell me." So it's not that they wouldn't see that as a weakness. They would see that as something, "Absolutely. We want to hire someone who works too hard."
Dr. Michael Bassis (02:47):
Anyway, so I feel like I'm in that situation now, but I don't really have something that I'm super proud of, I don't think. But one thing I think has stayed with me forever and I feel good about it is that I'm pretty honest. I tell the truth. I don't try to fool people. I don't try to exaggerate. I don't cheat on my taxes. I mean, and as a consequence, I have no guilt about things I do.
Dr. Michael Bassis (03:35):
I mean, I've made mistakes certainly. My fair share. Maybe even more than my fair share. And I try to learn from those, but I don't look back and feel like I've done something bad. And I think it's because there's... I try to approach life honestly.
Annalisa Holcombe (04:02):
Michael, I have a question about that. Do you think that you spend time intentionally thinking about that, being honest or-
Dr. Michael Bassis (04:12):
No. Never.
Annalisa Holcombe (04:13):
Or it just is natural?
Dr. Michael Bassis (04:14):
Never. I never think about it. That's why thinking about this question that you were... I had to think a lot about what is it that I carry around with me. It's a part of me and I think is a good thing. Smaller basket when I carry around with me. So good.
Annalisa Holcombe (04:46):
I spoke with a person that I know that gave me this idea of that we underneath it all this is the what you're carrying around with you that's not always the good things. He said, "Underneath it all we're all like the little kid who has a little red wagon we're pulling behind us and our little red wagon is full of all of those hurts and all of those insecurities that started when we were little and they're piling up and we're just pulling that wagon along with us. It's all I think about when somebody's talking to me at work and they're having difficulty, I think, "All right, what's in their little red wagon that I should be paying attention to?"
Dr. Michael Bassis (05:24):
Yeah. Yeah.
Annalisa Holcombe (05:24):
Well, I love that story about your honesty. And I think it's real and I think it goes along with... And I wonder how it's related to this idea of what we're talking about today, because when I gave you ideas of subjects that you might be interested in talking about, you went, "I would like to talk about vision." So what attracted you to that subject? Why is that the one that you thought you'd be interested in talking more about?
Dr. Michael Bassis (05:57):
Good question. I think it's because when I think about my work, some of my biggest contributions at work have been working to try to forge a vision for the college or university I'm affiliated with. And it's the schools I admire, the ones that do have a vision, the ones that don't, find boring. And it just seems like a natural, I don't know, it's just part of the way I think.
Annalisa Holcombe (06:44):
I think it's also true that in what you're saying, leaders really are expected to come either with a vision or to further a vision that has already been established. And so it naturally makes sense to talk about that. And I'm interested in just for listeners purposes, how do you define what vision is, or what's the difference for a leader between mission and vision or purpose? How do you define those things differently and how has that happened for you personally?
Dr. Michael Bassis (07:36):
I think they're all variations on a theme and it's the theme that's important. An organization needs a direction. It needs to aspire to some place to go from where it is to some place else, presumably a better place, a more secure place, a more whatever place. And sometimes that's expressed in a mission statement. Sometimes it's expressed in a statement of purpose. Doesn't matter much where it's expressed, but I think it's important to express it and to keep it in the forefront of people's consciousness about the organization, because if everybody knows what the direction is, then they've got an opportunity to help the institution move in that direction. And if you don't know what it is, how are you going to help?
Annalisa Holcombe (08:55):
I was just listening to a podcast on my drive here to California, where the person was saying that... It was an organizational consultant talking about impact players, people who make an impact in the places that they go and they were talking directly about that, that everyone in basically every organization, people want to make an impact, but it's hard to know when, and if you don't have vision from your leader, you don't know if what you want to jump in to do is actually going to make an impact and people deeply want that. Have you found that to be true?
Dr. Michael Bassis (09:33):
Yeah, absolutely. Now, obviously not everybody. There's a third of the people in any organization who are wandering around aimlessly and that's what they want to do and-
Annalisa Holcombe (09:48):
Get through it.
Dr. Michael Bassis (09:51):
Yeah. But I think the majority of people certainly do want to help. They want to feel good about their participation and if they understand the direction and they can buy into it, then they can play an important role.
Annalisa Holcombe (10:14):
I was thinking about this before we are going to talk, I thought back upon my own experiences with understanding vision and learning from you in a really important time in my professional career. And I remember, and I think this is important because I remember your discussion about the vision. And I remember the organization that we worked in going into a strategic planning process and having that strategic planning process be very collaborative, but really focusing first on why. Like, why do we exist? And I guess from my perspective, I'm really interested in like I have questions about is that the appropriate place to start in your opinion? Would you still do it that way? How important is the collaboration and how important is it to have buy-in and real life understanding of the vision? I think it's because I worry so much about the vision being really located around... In lots of organizations that's in the leader's head and may not be well understood with everyone else. So I'm just interested in your position.
Dr. Michael Bassis (11:31):
I don't think there's any one size fits all. I think every situation is unique. I also think that let's assume you're creating a direction for an institution, and you involve people in the creation of that and they buy into it and they're part owners, but then they retire and you recruit more people and they're not part of that process. So it's almost like you need to reinvent-
Annalisa Holcombe (12:07):
Every time.
Dr. Michael Bassis (12:09):
Yeah. Nothing stays the same. Organizations are enormously dynamic and the world around them is changing. So it's a constant process of creation and recreation. And it's ideal if you can get participants as part of that creative process, but it's the art of managing an organization.
Annalisa Holcombe (12:48):
Oh yeah. Well, I know that you have significant experience doing this in several different university settings as the leader. And you gave me an opportunity to read an article, a reflection that you'd created, where you really talked about the importance of being a maverick, or at least how you have really looked to your leadership vision in that way. So I'm interested in you talking a little bit about what do you mean by being a maverick and diving into some of the experiences that you've had in terms of establishing vision and that maverick sensibility in leadership?
Dr. Michael Bassis (13:32):
Well, let me talk about one of my presidency's where I think this is illustrated and most clearly, and you'll be the judge about whether I'm being a maverick or not.
Annalisa Holcombe (13:46):
Okay.
Dr. Michael Bassis (13:47):
This was at Olivet College where I became president in 1993. I had just had a terrible racial incident on campus that tore the campus apart, put this tiny little congregational, liberal arts college in a national spotlight. It was so ironic for it to happen there because Olivet had been founded by the same people who founded Oberlin College so it was the second college in the country to be open to women and people of all races. This was in 1875. So it had this wonderful legacy.
Dr. Michael Bassis (14:43):
Anyway, by the time I got there, the place was just demoralized. Half the board had resigned. There was no faculty leadership. The whole institution was in decay something or other. So that this racial incident and the feelings that it brought up on campus, which were not good ones, it was only the tip of the iceberg. So the first thing I did was called the faculty together. I arrived in the summer and called the faculty together and I said, "I need a day of your time." Early on, the only day we could find was Labor Day. So people left their families and came to the institution on Labor Day. And I said, "There's one central question that we've got to answer and if we don't answer it, this institution is not going to survive for long on its last legs. And the question is, given the range of alternatives open to them, why should a student choose to come to Olivet College?"
Dr. Michael Bassis (16:05):
I mean, there probably is no more basic question. Well then I created... It was like dropping a small bomb in a large room because I don't know what the faculty really expected. They expected I was going to lecture them or tell them what to do or whatever. Anyway, we ended up creating a process and the focal point was this vision statement, which started off by saying this institution is focused on individual and social responsibility. And this individual and social responsibility was, I think the perfect formula. I think that institution at that particular time-
Annalisa Holcombe (17:20):
That's really interesting because you started them with the big picture, why? Right off the bat. You were like, "Why," you did [crosstalk 00:17:28] that. Why should anybody be here? Why should people care?
Dr. Michael Bassis (17:30):
Exactly. We needed direction. We need to define who we are and then we have to create that. So for example... Obviously many meetings of all different kinds with involvement of faculty and staff and students. In the spring people started to say, "Well, what is this individual and social responsibility?" So I gathered the whole campus together in the gymnasium now for a day with-
Annalisa Holcombe (18:07):
With everybody there.
Dr. Michael Bassis (18:10):
And we decided what we were going to do is to develop what we called a campus compact. We were going to specify what it is we meant by individual and social responsibility. So we ended up with eight... Seven statements, which are still featured prominently at the institution 30 years later.
Annalisa Holcombe (18:34):
Awesome.
Dr. Michael Bassis (18:35):
As their campus compact.
Annalisa Holcombe (18:36):
That's awesome. What a legacy.
Dr. Michael Bassis (18:39):
I'm responsible for my own learning and personal development. I am responsible for contributing to the learning of others. I'm responsible for the quality of the physical environment. I'm responsible for treating all people with respect. Responsible for behaving and communicating with honesty and integrity. I'm responsible for the development and growth of Olivet College, students, faculty, staff. There's a ceremony where when entering students arrive in the fall, the officers in the senior class present them with this scroll with a compact. It's a ceremony designed to pass on the responsibility of being a member of this community that knows what it's about. Now is that story I've told you the story of a maverick?
Annalisa Holcombe (19:48):
Maybe especially and the part I really like about that is if the idea of a maverick is an individual who understands what conventional wisdom is, but makes their own decisions and their own choices anyway, I feel like you could have gone into that all of it situation focused on the problem. Here's the specific problem and the one that you have to fix, which in some ways makes me think, I'm learning something from this because it's in some ways it makes me think that we do that all the time. Here's a big problem. We need to solve it, but really the problem might be bigger than that. And this is just a symptom of a bigger problem. And by working on that particular problem, we might be emphasizing something that may not be the thing that we need to work on.
Annalisa Holcombe (20:45):
And I think we even do that organizationally, I can think of it right now in my life, as well as even in our personal lives. In my life life, I might be focusing on a particular problem that I think I need to fix, but I actually need to have a broader vision and be thinking a little bit differently about what the actual problem is.
Dr. Michael Bassis (21:03):
Yeah. Yeah. I do think that the whole is often greater than the sum of its parts. That's a basic lesson that comes out of my discipline, sociology, and you can see it clearly in families. You can see it clearly in organizations of all types. You've got lots of different pieces, but there is something about the whole. It's encompassed in the culture, the norms, the values, the collective wisdom of the place. That's enormously important and could be described as the most important asset of a social unit.
Annalisa Holcombe (22:11):
I just had a conversation for this podcast last week that was about organizational culture. And we talked about the whole iceberg model of culture that here are the artifacts or the things that you can see at the top of the iceberg, which are the vision statement or the core values that have been established, but underneath, and especially really lower underneath, like the murky depths, are things like unstated assumptions that people are making or judgments that are being made or the other or cultural norms that are happening in communities that are coming into the organization that occur. And I just think that just bringing all of that together, as well as with the vision, I'm interested in just your experience of how difficult understanding all of that can be for a leader and particularly a new leader. I would imagine having... I mean, I wonder if it's easier if you're the new leader or if you are already there and understand what some of those assumptions are.
Dr. Michael Bassis (23:19):
Oh, you'll probably remember my saying on more than one occasion, there are two types of people in the world. There are lumpers and splitters. I'm a lumper. The way I look at the world is I see lots of different pieces and I try to see patterns and relationships of other people who see it as something in their world and they want to break it down into its components and analyze deeper and deeper and deeper. They dig a narrow trench and see how deep they can get it. Those are the splitters. And I'm not saying one is better than the other. The world probably needs both kinds of people. But I think it's only the lumpers that think about things like where is this institution headed? Where is this family headed? What holds it together? What pieces do we need to nurture?
Annalisa Holcombe (24:54):
Yes. What are the patterns I'm seeing that could result in something bigger down the road?
Dr. Michael Bassis (25:00):
Right.
Annalisa Holcombe (25:01):
Well, I remember in one of the discussions we had you... And I hope that I don't throw you off here, but I remember the discussion about when you introduced me to the sigmoid curve. And it's been really significant for me ever since then with the whole idea... I mean, underneath it is a whole idea that it's based on mathematics, right? But it also applies to organizations, all sorts of organizations that the whole S curve means that you should... Even when you're successful, you should still be thinking about the next step, because eventually all successful things and I often joke about this with families as well, where I'm like, even every great marriage has points where it's going to go down. Every organization has points when it's going to go back down again and the idea is to start your new S before it starts to decrease again.
Dr. Michael Bassis (25:56):
Right. Because it's much more difficult to change a pattern when it's in decline. You're running out of money. People are demoralized, although I must admit it's not easy to change it when it's ascending, because people say, "Why did we need to change? The world will always be like this"-
Annalisa Holcombe (26:24):
Don't fix it. It's not broken.
Dr. Michael Bassis (26:26):
We just keep going in this direction. Leave me alone.
Annalisa Holcombe (26:31):
Yeah. I'm successful. Why are you driving me crazy? How can a leader... I do think that that is one of the more important aspects. I feel like the really thinking on that S curve can help leaders be thinking about how to look around corners. Your vision has to show you how to see what's coming around that next corner.
Dr. Michael Bassis (26:56):
Yeah. I think I used to say to myself that at least half of my time ought to be spent looking over the horizon because if I don't do it, who is going to do it? And it's what's over the horizon that's important as time passes the organization matures and if you don't anticipate those things... Again, easier said than done. I mean, I had this all figured out and we were just on a roll and at Westminster and asking all the right questions and coming up with really good answers. And I had convinced myself that this was solid enough that I could walk away and it would continue. And it turned out to be paper thin. I walked away and it all disappeared. So while I feel really good about lots of the contributions I made to Westminster, enrollment, the buildings, the new programs, finances, fundraising, in terms of the work I really wanted to do, which was a set of vision for the institution that it would then follow. It was a dismal failure.
Annalisa Holcombe (28:52):
How do you respond to that or deal with that when you're like, "This is the vision I set. Now I'm leaving." I think that's something that leaders have to worry about all the time. And whether you're leading a big organization, like a university or a department, right? People who have, or their team of five people they lead, like, this is the vision, this is the direction we're going in. I'm going to feel safe that I can go over here now. How do you deal with that? [crosstalk 00:29:21] Oh, wait, now it's all changed.
Dr. Michael Bassis (29:23):
The irony is that universities are lousy at it. Corporations are great at it. And I-
Annalisa Holcombe (29:32):
Tell me about that more. Why do you think that is?
Dr. Michael Bassis (29:34):
A lot of it has to do with their traditions of succession. What happens to the CEO of a corporation when they decide to retire? They have a seat on the board. Oftentimes they're the board chair. They plan succession to keep ideas alive. Universities, when a president leaves, the tradition is that person will never have any more influence on this campus because a new person is taking over and we need to give them space to do their thing. And so there's this... You go from leadership to a... I mean the whole thing stops.
Annalisa Holcombe (30:35):
Yeah. I also think that what we do in universities with, especially with presidencies is we deal in polarities. Whatever was the single most, either interesting or present characteristic of the outgoing leader, you're going to find that the president, the incoming leader is the opposite of whatever that was. But I do want to talk a little bit about in terms of the importance of vision and how to make sure it is deep and integrated into the organization. How important is it for the leader to have a team working on it with them? What have been your experiences with that in terms of your ability to move your vision forward?
Dr. Michael Bassis (31:29):
Yeah. Essential. I mean, because your team touches the rest of the institution in ways that you never can. If your team is bought into the vision and understands it... I mean, half of my job was to educate every week all the people that reported to me, all the people on this administrative council. And you remember, I used go on and on about one aspect of this or another, probably boring people to tears, but I figured you guys had to know it almost as deeply as I did in order to be able to teach all the people you worked with. And I think we were largely successful in that.
Annalisa Holcombe (32:32):
Yeah. I think so too.
Dr. Michael Bassis (32:35):
I would say the same thing about Olivet. I had a good team. I did the same thing, spent every week, teaching them about where we were headed and how we were going to get there and incorporating their ideas in it as well and there were always good ones.
Annalisa Holcombe (33:06):
How much time do you think you spent doing that work? I feel like that is something that most of us don't experience in our workspaces. Also we're focused in our weekly meetings in... I'm now working at a place that is both academic, but also ed tech. Right? Having all this... It's a tech company that is also a university. And I think that there's a lot of like what's agile? How we make decisions and how are we efficient? A lot of the how is talked about a lot, but I do think that if we took that and focused on why even more, it would be even stronger. And I think, I didn't realize how important it was to be in a situation in which the whole leadership team felt really solid.
Annalisa Holcombe (34:13):
And we knew where the horizon was and that we also operated in that, this sounds silly, but the geese flying towards someplace, like you're trying to get someplace, but there were different times when somebody else was the front. Was it the front of that triangle of the geese flying so that we could take the headwinds for a minute and then let somebody else take the headwinds. And so we could get in some ways, I think that's actually what gets you there faster than all this time spent on efficiency, but really taking turns, making sure that you're getting us in that direction and celebrating the person that was just at the head. Does that make sense?
Dr. Michael Bassis (34:57):
Sure.
Annalisa Holcombe (34:58):
But I think that is really hard to do.
Dr. Michael Bassis (35:01):
It seems to me that Western Governors, the direction is pretty easy to talk about and it can be pretty inspired. Oh yeah. And so maybe that's reason why they don't talk about it as much is because it's obvious.
Annalisa Holcombe (35:27):
Yeah. I think that-
Dr. Michael Bassis (35:29):
People, they somehow assume that-
Annalisa Holcombe (35:31):
We know it.
Dr. Michael Bassis (35:33):
That you know it and it's driving your day to day decisions.
Annalisa Holcombe (35:42):
Yes. And I think that's absolutely true. And that's been lovely, this whole idea of a whole system of higher ed that is mostly built for the 17 to 24 year old age group, mostly. And that I now work at a place that is built on where actually the majority of people get in education is as adults and helping to make that accessible for everyone. Because that underlying everyone is entitled to a good education is something that's deeply held at WG.
Dr. Michael Bassis (36:22):
But also willing to challenge a lot of contemporary wisdom in higher education. Wisdom that is really outmoded doesn't work anymore, but that it is so difficult to change.
Annalisa Holcombe (36:46):
If you've listened to this podcast, you know that I just love hearing people be fully themselves and bring their varied interests and perspectives to all aspects of their lives. Well, Michael Bassis has recently done just that by pursuing his dream of being an artist. You can view it at michaelbassis.com. And if I can just quote from that website here, this is what he says, "Whenever anyone asked what I planned to do in retirement, I always thought to myself and sometimes admitted out loud that I would spend my time making art. It didn't go so well at first." What a great quote, love the sentiment and the honesty. I hope you'll check out his art. It really did go well in the end. Until then though, let's get back to the interview.
Annalisa Holcombe (37:40):
Do you have any advice for people who might be listening to this who say, "Well, I'm not a leader of a university or of a whole organization." What do you think about the importance of having vision for ourselves or our own lives? Do you have any advice for people who may not be the leader with the vision, but they're a human being? What does vision mean for them?
Dr. Michael Bassis (38:04):
Well, there are always is the capacity to ask questions, which I think is an underutilized capacity. And you can be a staff person in a large office and make enormous contributions to vision by just asking the right question at the right time. It could be as direct as you could you explain to me again why we're doing this or how this fits with something else? And-
Annalisa Holcombe (38:44):
I love that you're saying that Michael. I was just thinking about, I had a conversation with somebody recently who they said, "What do you wish that you had from this person?" because I was struggling at work and I was talking to an organizational coach who said, "Well, then if you could have anything, what would you want?" And I think this is real both whether it's from the person who leads me or the people whom I lead, I would love that honestly curious question. I just would love to have more curiosity about the why we're doing this. I think that sometimes it feels frustrating to have people ask you about why, because you just want to get to the that I talked about why. Here's what and how, but I do think that being reminded and required to regularly articulate your why and what the vision is, is really helpful.
Dr. Michael Bassis (39:42):
Yeah. And I think there aren't very many people who staff people who are occupying a relatively powerless position who asked that question, but they could, if they, I mean, if someone who's looking to develop some leadership capacity or participation.
Dr. Michael Bassis (40:17):
As a leader, though, trying to motivate people like that, to ask the right questions, to want to find ways to roll up their sleeves and really make a contribution, maybe it comes down to just the basic notion that organizations are successful through people. And the more you can do to get more people rowing the boat in the same direction with some enthusiasm, and so that's our job is to cultivate that culture to work every day to identify those people and to encourage them and to help them find a way. That's the job of the leader.
Annalisa Holcombe (41:36):
I love that. I think that's the quote. I think that's the thing that... That's our job. And that's what we all want from our leaders as somebody that is doing that for us. And it reminds me of a time that I specifically remember that you were speaking to the board of trustees. You're at the front of the room speaking to the board of trustees. And after the board meeting, you mentioned to me that one of your chief deputy type people, one of the individuals was in the room, not a board member, but in the room looking at you and you could see his face not agreeing with what you were doing or saying. And your response to me for that was, "How much you loved that." Your response was, "He wouldn't do this the same way as me."
Annalisa Holcombe (42:24):
That basically the two of you agreed on the vision or the direction, but he wouldn't do this the same way. And that's okay because it's helping him develop his own leadership style, his own ideas of how to move in that direction and that was a good thing. Can you describe what that's... I think that is an unusual thing for a leader to do. And it's one of those moments that stuck in my head. Like, I can be there any moment because it was so seminally important to me in terms of my own leadership learning.
Dr. Michael Bassis (42:59):
Well, dissent is also helpful for the leader because it forces you to submit your idea to a sterner test, somebody whose talent you admire, who's got another way to think about it, or another idea about it or whatever. Who knows, you might even learn something and change your mind, which is terrific. Well, one thing, and that is this Charles Handy story about the Irishman.
Annalisa Holcombe (43:54):
Oh, what? Tell me about this. What the Irishman story?
Dr. Michael Bassis (43:57):
No, you remember it.
Annalisa Holcombe (43:59):
What?
Dr. Michael Bassis (44:02):
It's from his book, The Age Of Paradox, which is the same book. He has a chapter on the sigmoid curve. As a matter of fact, you should get your own copy of The Age Of Paradox by Charles Handy.
Annalisa Holcombe (44:21):
Okay.
Dr. Michael Bassis (44:22):
Anyway, this is about vision and about how looking ahead is difficult. And if you want to know how to proceed, looking backward at what you've done, isn't going to help at all. And he illustrates that by this simple little story about a guy who goes to Ireland looking for some place or some family, and he meets an Irishman along the way and asks for directions to this place. And the Irishman, he says, "Oh yes," he says. "I know where it is. You go straight up the road headed for Davey's Bar and you'll cross a bridge, but continue straight ahead and then about a mile before you get there, take the road to the right."
Dr. Michael Bassis (45:43):
Now, some people who don't think hard enough, I think that's fine advice, but you can't get there by following that advice because that's looking backward. You can't use it to look forward. So I oftentimes think about how am I going to get to Davey's Bar. But let me say one other thing about conventional wisdom and how entrenched it is, especially in higher education. And again, you've heard me rail about these things before, but university instruction continues to be dominated by lectures. Even in relatively small classes, a faculty member stands up and gives a five minute lecture, a 10 minute lecture, a 20 minute lecture, a 50 minute lecture to a bunch of students. It's a practice that started in the fifth century and just decades upon decades of research talks about how ineffective that is as a method of instruction, yet it continues to be the dominant one.
Annalisa Holcombe (47:26):
Doesn't make any sense.
Dr. Michael Bassis (47:27):
Here's an even more challenging one. Grades, we give out grades to students in school. Why? Because we've always done it and people believe in it and everybody wants high grades, but there's absolutely no evidence that the grades you get in school are related in any way to any future measure of success or happiness, but it continues to be the currency. It's crazy. We're organizing a system of higher education on myth. And that's one of the reasons why the higher education is in such trouble.
Annalisa Holcombe (48:19):
Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Michael Bassis (48:20):
Lousy outcomes, high expenses.
Annalisa Holcombe (48:29):
And as the leaders in my organization, they actually talk about this, what we should not be doing is putting more money to the same old problems. Let's instead of making up... This is an interesting question for you, Michael, is the question we have is, should we make it free for people, or should we change the system? Should we be investing in changing the system itself so that it's more about like, we would think at WG, your competency. Can you do it or not. Accessibility. How do you make it available at high quality to as many people as you possibly can?
Dr. Michael Bassis (49:11):
Yeah. Certainly just making it free, it seems to me to be silly. One of the ideas about reforming higher education that I first fell in love with was again, by a sociologist at Northwestern and Howard Becker. He said the way to reform higher ed is to give students the degree the day they arrive as freshmen, and then force them to leave four years later. So what they left with would be differentiated by their effort. How much they had decided to learn rather than some standard piece of paper that doesn't have any meaning.
Annalisa Holcombe (50:34):
Wow. How much we do that is based upon, we've always done it that way is hard to even think about, because it's like, we've just been swimming in these waters for so long. We haven't considered what the waters are made of.
Dr. Michael Bassis (50:49):
Right. And of all the institutions that have tried to break the mold and made some real progress, Western Governors is one of them.
Annalisa Holcombe (50:57):
Yeah. Yeah. Woohoo.
Dr. Michael Bassis (51:01):
You should feel really good about that.
Annalisa Holcombe (51:02):
Absolutely
Dr. Michael Bassis (51:06):
Not that you can take credit for it, but-
Annalisa Holcombe (51:06):
Yeah, I don't get any credit for it, but I do get to know that I'm working in a place that almost is a like innovation is a prerequisite for wanting to be there. That is part of the vision and the culture. So one last thing I want to ask you. I talk here in this podcast all the time about my love of mentors and the idea of having mentors in your life, whether they are formal or informal, whether the mentor knows that they're a mentor to you or not. So I would love if you would be willing to tell me about a mentor that you have had in your life or that you would like to call out or to mention here.
Dr. Michael Bassis (51:58):
Sure. I've only had one and I didn't discover him until early in my career, but it's Al [Augustin 00:52:16] who had been president at... He had been chancellor at the University of Wisconsin Parkside when I was hired as associate dean of faculty. One of the things that came along with that position is that I was a member of the administrative council. Six of us who met with the chancellor every week for, I don't know, three or four hours, like our administrative. And that was an enormous education for me which was really in my first administrative appointment to sitting at that table where all of the strategic and operational issues that affected the institution were discussed. And Al and I developed over time a really deep relationship that continued throughout the rest of my career. I have enormous admiration for him. He went to become president of Antioch. I left to become academic vice president at Eastern Connecticut. I clashed with a new president there who fired me. Al went through a divorce. We talked on the phone. I said, "I'm coming out. I'll give you marriage counseling if you give me career counseling."
Annalisa Holcombe (53:50):
I love it.
Dr. Michael Bassis (53:52):
We spent a very long weekend together. About a month later, I was in a meeting in Washington, DC. Mary was upstairs in the hotel room. She came down and said, "Alex's on the phone." I said, "Oh good. I'll call him back. Tell him this is important." And she said, "Mo, Michael, he really wants to talk to you." She said, "It's important. You got to come now." I started to argue with Mary about whether I was going to go upstairs. She said, "Michael, I think he's really serious." So then I started worrying." So I went upstairs. Al says to me, "Michael, sit down." I said, "Al, I'm in a meeting." "What do you [inaudible 00:54:43]? "Got to run back down." He says, "Michael, sit." He proceeded to read me the announcement of my appointment as executive vice president and university provost at Antioch.
Annalisa Holcombe (54:54):
Oh my goodness.
Dr. Michael Bassis (54:56):
He said, "I need you here. I just had a meeting with the board of trustees. They set out. It's Christmas time. Tell us what you need. We'll give you anything you need." And he says, "I know who I want to hire. And I'll hire Michael Bassis and get him here as quick as I can."
Annalisa Holcombe (55:14):
Wow.
Dr. Michael Bassis (55:16):
And so we worked together at Antioch for four years, five years maybe. And he's been a mentor throughout all the presidencies that I've had. And we're still in touch today. He's in his mid-eighties.
Annalisa Holcombe (55:35):
I love that. I love that story. Aren't you lucky to have a person that you got to know in that way, that was both your mentor, but then remained your friend for the rest of your life. Thank you so much for spending so much time with me today, right before a holiday and when I know you're busy and I'm really grateful. So much fun.
Dr. Michael Bassis (56:04):
Well, it feels like lots of conversations that you and I have had over the years. More often than not with a gin and tonic in front of us one of these days.
Annalisa Holcombe (56:16):
True. Do you have one right now?
Dr. Michael Bassis (56:16):
Not even a glass of water.
Annalisa Holcombe (56:35):
My thanks to Dr. Michael Bassis for sharing his experience, depth and passion for pursuing the best in ourselves, our organizations and our societies. You can connect with him on LinkedIn and view his art at michaelbassis.com. Next week, we will have what we hope will be an annual tradition, a group interview with friends of the podcast, reminding us all of what we are grateful for in 2021 and what we can look forward to in 2022, I hope you'll join us.
Annalisa Holcombe (00:10):
Hi everyone. And welcome to the 92,000 hours podcast. Honestly, I was a little nervous heading into this episode because in this one I interviewed Dr. Michael Bassis. Michael is not only my former or boss, but he's also a really important mentor in my life. And he and his wife, Mary remain a part of my chosen family. He's also a pretty big deal. He was the 16th president of Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah. He also held presidencies at Olivet College in Michigan, New College in Florida, and was the provost of Antioch College in Ohio. He studied sociology at Brown University and received his PhD in sociology of education at the University of Chicago.
Annalisa Holcombe (00:54):
He is an advocate for educational innovation and change and I can personally vouch for his interest in challenging people to be and do their best. It was scary to be in a position to interview him, but it was also great because it gave me a chance to ask him questions I wouldn't have otherwise been able to. Today we are talking about vision, what it is and what we can do to help ourselves see into the future and around corners, not just at work, but also in our life.
Annalisa Holcombe (01:32):
All right. So let's do this thing. Let's start with the first question that I always ask everyone. And I gave you that [crosstalk 00:01:40]-
Dr. Michael Bassis (01:37):
That question?
Annalisa Holcombe (01:42):
Yes. So the question, if you remove things like work school, research, I'm going to say for you also like community engagement-
Dr. Michael Bassis (01:53):
This question reminds me of the one that sometimes they ask in interviews, you need to get prepared for. In the interviews, they will ask you to talk about your strengths. At some interviews they'll ask you, "Michael, we know about your strengths, but tell us about your weaknesses." And so what are you going to say? You can't really tell them about a weakness. So I used to say, if I were to ever get that question, I would tell them, "Oh, my weakness is I work too hard. That's what people tell me." So it's not that they wouldn't see that as a weakness. They would see that as something, "Absolutely. We want to hire someone who works too hard."
Dr. Michael Bassis (02:47):
Anyway, so I feel like I'm in that situation now, but I don't really have something that I'm super proud of, I don't think. But one thing I think has stayed with me forever and I feel good about it is that I'm pretty honest. I tell the truth. I don't try to fool people. I don't try to exaggerate. I don't cheat on my taxes. I mean, and as a consequence, I have no guilt about things I do.
Dr. Michael Bassis (03:35):
I mean, I've made mistakes certainly. My fair share. Maybe even more than my fair share. And I try to learn from those, but I don't look back and feel like I've done something bad. And I think it's because there's... I try to approach life honestly.
Annalisa Holcombe (04:02):
Michael, I have a question about that. Do you think that you spend time intentionally thinking about that, being honest or-
Dr. Michael Bassis (04:12):
No. Never.
Annalisa Holcombe (04:13):
Or it just is natural?
Dr. Michael Bassis (04:14):
Never. I never think about it. That's why thinking about this question that you were... I had to think a lot about what is it that I carry around with me. It's a part of me and I think is a good thing. Smaller basket when I carry around with me. So good.
Annalisa Holcombe (04:46):
I spoke with a person that I know that gave me this idea of that we underneath it all this is the what you're carrying around with you that's not always the good things. He said, "Underneath it all we're all like the little kid who has a little red wagon we're pulling behind us and our little red wagon is full of all of those hurts and all of those insecurities that started when we were little and they're piling up and we're just pulling that wagon along with us. It's all I think about when somebody's talking to me at work and they're having difficulty, I think, "All right, what's in their little red wagon that I should be paying attention to?"
Dr. Michael Bassis (05:24):
Yeah. Yeah.
Annalisa Holcombe (05:24):
Well, I love that story about your honesty. And I think it's real and I think it goes along with... And I wonder how it's related to this idea of what we're talking about today, because when I gave you ideas of subjects that you might be interested in talking about, you went, "I would like to talk about vision." So what attracted you to that subject? Why is that the one that you thought you'd be interested in talking more about?
Dr. Michael Bassis (05:57):
Good question. I think it's because when I think about my work, some of my biggest contributions at work have been working to try to forge a vision for the college or university I'm affiliated with. And it's the schools I admire, the ones that do have a vision, the ones that don't, find boring. And it just seems like a natural, I don't know, it's just part of the way I think.
Annalisa Holcombe (06:44):
I think it's also true that in what you're saying, leaders really are expected to come either with a vision or to further a vision that has already been established. And so it naturally makes sense to talk about that. And I'm interested in just for listeners purposes, how do you define what vision is, or what's the difference for a leader between mission and vision or purpose? How do you define those things differently and how has that happened for you personally?
Dr. Michael Bassis (07:36):
I think they're all variations on a theme and it's the theme that's important. An organization needs a direction. It needs to aspire to some place to go from where it is to some place else, presumably a better place, a more secure place, a more whatever place. And sometimes that's expressed in a mission statement. Sometimes it's expressed in a statement of purpose. Doesn't matter much where it's expressed, but I think it's important to express it and to keep it in the forefront of people's consciousness about the organization, because if everybody knows what the direction is, then they've got an opportunity to help the institution move in that direction. And if you don't know what it is, how are you going to help?
Annalisa Holcombe (08:55):
I was just listening to a podcast on my drive here to California, where the person was saying that... It was an organizational consultant talking about impact players, people who make an impact in the places that they go and they were talking directly about that, that everyone in basically every organization, people want to make an impact, but it's hard to know when, and if you don't have vision from your leader, you don't know if what you want to jump in to do is actually going to make an impact and people deeply want that. Have you found that to be true?
Dr. Michael Bassis (09:33):
Yeah, absolutely. Now, obviously not everybody. There's a third of the people in any organization who are wandering around aimlessly and that's what they want to do and-
Annalisa Holcombe (09:48):
Get through it.
Dr. Michael Bassis (09:51):
Yeah. But I think the majority of people certainly do want to help. They want to feel good about their participation and if they understand the direction and they can buy into it, then they can play an important role.
Annalisa Holcombe (10:14):
I was thinking about this before we are going to talk, I thought back upon my own experiences with understanding vision and learning from you in a really important time in my professional career. And I remember, and I think this is important because I remember your discussion about the vision. And I remember the organization that we worked in going into a strategic planning process and having that strategic planning process be very collaborative, but really focusing first on why. Like, why do we exist? And I guess from my perspective, I'm really interested in like I have questions about is that the appropriate place to start in your opinion? Would you still do it that way? How important is the collaboration and how important is it to have buy-in and real life understanding of the vision? I think it's because I worry so much about the vision being really located around... In lots of organizations that's in the leader's head and may not be well understood with everyone else. So I'm just interested in your position.
Dr. Michael Bassis (11:31):
I don't think there's any one size fits all. I think every situation is unique. I also think that let's assume you're creating a direction for an institution, and you involve people in the creation of that and they buy into it and they're part owners, but then they retire and you recruit more people and they're not part of that process. So it's almost like you need to reinvent-
Annalisa Holcombe (12:07):
Every time.
Dr. Michael Bassis (12:09):
Yeah. Nothing stays the same. Organizations are enormously dynamic and the world around them is changing. So it's a constant process of creation and recreation. And it's ideal if you can get participants as part of that creative process, but it's the art of managing an organization.
Annalisa Holcombe (12:48):
Oh yeah. Well, I know that you have significant experience doing this in several different university settings as the leader. And you gave me an opportunity to read an article, a reflection that you'd created, where you really talked about the importance of being a maverick, or at least how you have really looked to your leadership vision in that way. So I'm interested in you talking a little bit about what do you mean by being a maverick and diving into some of the experiences that you've had in terms of establishing vision and that maverick sensibility in leadership?
Dr. Michael Bassis (13:32):
Well, let me talk about one of my presidency's where I think this is illustrated and most clearly, and you'll be the judge about whether I'm being a maverick or not.
Annalisa Holcombe (13:46):
Okay.
Dr. Michael Bassis (13:47):
This was at Olivet College where I became president in 1993. I had just had a terrible racial incident on campus that tore the campus apart, put this tiny little congregational, liberal arts college in a national spotlight. It was so ironic for it to happen there because Olivet had been founded by the same people who founded Oberlin College so it was the second college in the country to be open to women and people of all races. This was in 1875. So it had this wonderful legacy.
Dr. Michael Bassis (14:43):
Anyway, by the time I got there, the place was just demoralized. Half the board had resigned. There was no faculty leadership. The whole institution was in decay something or other. So that this racial incident and the feelings that it brought up on campus, which were not good ones, it was only the tip of the iceberg. So the first thing I did was called the faculty together. I arrived in the summer and called the faculty together and I said, "I need a day of your time." Early on, the only day we could find was Labor Day. So people left their families and came to the institution on Labor Day. And I said, "There's one central question that we've got to answer and if we don't answer it, this institution is not going to survive for long on its last legs. And the question is, given the range of alternatives open to them, why should a student choose to come to Olivet College?"
Dr. Michael Bassis (16:05):
I mean, there probably is no more basic question. Well then I created... It was like dropping a small bomb in a large room because I don't know what the faculty really expected. They expected I was going to lecture them or tell them what to do or whatever. Anyway, we ended up creating a process and the focal point was this vision statement, which started off by saying this institution is focused on individual and social responsibility. And this individual and social responsibility was, I think the perfect formula. I think that institution at that particular time-
Annalisa Holcombe (17:20):
That's really interesting because you started them with the big picture, why? Right off the bat. You were like, "Why," you did [crosstalk 00:17:28] that. Why should anybody be here? Why should people care?
Dr. Michael Bassis (17:30):
Exactly. We needed direction. We need to define who we are and then we have to create that. So for example... Obviously many meetings of all different kinds with involvement of faculty and staff and students. In the spring people started to say, "Well, what is this individual and social responsibility?" So I gathered the whole campus together in the gymnasium now for a day with-
Annalisa Holcombe (18:07):
With everybody there.
Dr. Michael Bassis (18:10):
And we decided what we were going to do is to develop what we called a campus compact. We were going to specify what it is we meant by individual and social responsibility. So we ended up with eight... Seven statements, which are still featured prominently at the institution 30 years later.
Annalisa Holcombe (18:34):
Awesome.
Dr. Michael Bassis (18:35):
As their campus compact.
Annalisa Holcombe (18:36):
That's awesome. What a legacy.
Dr. Michael Bassis (18:39):
I'm responsible for my own learning and personal development. I am responsible for contributing to the learning of others. I'm responsible for the quality of the physical environment. I'm responsible for treating all people with respect. Responsible for behaving and communicating with honesty and integrity. I'm responsible for the development and growth of Olivet College, students, faculty, staff. There's a ceremony where when entering students arrive in the fall, the officers in the senior class present them with this scroll with a compact. It's a ceremony designed to pass on the responsibility of being a member of this community that knows what it's about. Now is that story I've told you the story of a maverick?
Annalisa Holcombe (19:48):
Maybe especially and the part I really like about that is if the idea of a maverick is an individual who understands what conventional wisdom is, but makes their own decisions and their own choices anyway, I feel like you could have gone into that all of it situation focused on the problem. Here's the specific problem and the one that you have to fix, which in some ways makes me think, I'm learning something from this because it's in some ways it makes me think that we do that all the time. Here's a big problem. We need to solve it, but really the problem might be bigger than that. And this is just a symptom of a bigger problem. And by working on that particular problem, we might be emphasizing something that may not be the thing that we need to work on.
Annalisa Holcombe (20:45):
And I think we even do that organizationally, I can think of it right now in my life, as well as even in our personal lives. In my life life, I might be focusing on a particular problem that I think I need to fix, but I actually need to have a broader vision and be thinking a little bit differently about what the actual problem is.
Dr. Michael Bassis (21:03):
Yeah. Yeah. I do think that the whole is often greater than the sum of its parts. That's a basic lesson that comes out of my discipline, sociology, and you can see it clearly in families. You can see it clearly in organizations of all types. You've got lots of different pieces, but there is something about the whole. It's encompassed in the culture, the norms, the values, the collective wisdom of the place. That's enormously important and could be described as the most important asset of a social unit.
Annalisa Holcombe (22:11):
I just had a conversation for this podcast last week that was about organizational culture. And we talked about the whole iceberg model of culture that here are the artifacts or the things that you can see at the top of the iceberg, which are the vision statement or the core values that have been established, but underneath, and especially really lower underneath, like the murky depths, are things like unstated assumptions that people are making or judgments that are being made or the other or cultural norms that are happening in communities that are coming into the organization that occur. And I just think that just bringing all of that together, as well as with the vision, I'm interested in just your experience of how difficult understanding all of that can be for a leader and particularly a new leader. I would imagine having... I mean, I wonder if it's easier if you're the new leader or if you are already there and understand what some of those assumptions are.
Dr. Michael Bassis (23:19):
Oh, you'll probably remember my saying on more than one occasion, there are two types of people in the world. There are lumpers and splitters. I'm a lumper. The way I look at the world is I see lots of different pieces and I try to see patterns and relationships of other people who see it as something in their world and they want to break it down into its components and analyze deeper and deeper and deeper. They dig a narrow trench and see how deep they can get it. Those are the splitters. And I'm not saying one is better than the other. The world probably needs both kinds of people. But I think it's only the lumpers that think about things like where is this institution headed? Where is this family headed? What holds it together? What pieces do we need to nurture?
Annalisa Holcombe (24:54):
Yes. What are the patterns I'm seeing that could result in something bigger down the road?
Dr. Michael Bassis (25:00):
Right.
Annalisa Holcombe (25:01):
Well, I remember in one of the discussions we had you... And I hope that I don't throw you off here, but I remember the discussion about when you introduced me to the sigmoid curve. And it's been really significant for me ever since then with the whole idea... I mean, underneath it is a whole idea that it's based on mathematics, right? But it also applies to organizations, all sorts of organizations that the whole S curve means that you should... Even when you're successful, you should still be thinking about the next step, because eventually all successful things and I often joke about this with families as well, where I'm like, even every great marriage has points where it's going to go down. Every organization has points when it's going to go back down again and the idea is to start your new S before it starts to decrease again.
Dr. Michael Bassis (25:56):
Right. Because it's much more difficult to change a pattern when it's in decline. You're running out of money. People are demoralized, although I must admit it's not easy to change it when it's ascending, because people say, "Why did we need to change? The world will always be like this"-
Annalisa Holcombe (26:24):
Don't fix it. It's not broken.
Dr. Michael Bassis (26:26):
We just keep going in this direction. Leave me alone.
Annalisa Holcombe (26:31):
Yeah. I'm successful. Why are you driving me crazy? How can a leader... I do think that that is one of the more important aspects. I feel like the really thinking on that S curve can help leaders be thinking about how to look around corners. Your vision has to show you how to see what's coming around that next corner.
Dr. Michael Bassis (26:56):
Yeah. I think I used to say to myself that at least half of my time ought to be spent looking over the horizon because if I don't do it, who is going to do it? And it's what's over the horizon that's important as time passes the organization matures and if you don't anticipate those things... Again, easier said than done. I mean, I had this all figured out and we were just on a roll and at Westminster and asking all the right questions and coming up with really good answers. And I had convinced myself that this was solid enough that I could walk away and it would continue. And it turned out to be paper thin. I walked away and it all disappeared. So while I feel really good about lots of the contributions I made to Westminster, enrollment, the buildings, the new programs, finances, fundraising, in terms of the work I really wanted to do, which was a set of vision for the institution that it would then follow. It was a dismal failure.
Annalisa Holcombe (28:52):
How do you respond to that or deal with that when you're like, "This is the vision I set. Now I'm leaving." I think that's something that leaders have to worry about all the time. And whether you're leading a big organization, like a university or a department, right? People who have, or their team of five people they lead, like, this is the vision, this is the direction we're going in. I'm going to feel safe that I can go over here now. How do you deal with that? [crosstalk 00:29:21] Oh, wait, now it's all changed.
Dr. Michael Bassis (29:23):
The irony is that universities are lousy at it. Corporations are great at it. And I-
Annalisa Holcombe (29:32):
Tell me about that more. Why do you think that is?
Dr. Michael Bassis (29:34):
A lot of it has to do with their traditions of succession. What happens to the CEO of a corporation when they decide to retire? They have a seat on the board. Oftentimes they're the board chair. They plan succession to keep ideas alive. Universities, when a president leaves, the tradition is that person will never have any more influence on this campus because a new person is taking over and we need to give them space to do their thing. And so there's this... You go from leadership to a... I mean the whole thing stops.
Annalisa Holcombe (30:35):
Yeah. I also think that what we do in universities with, especially with presidencies is we deal in polarities. Whatever was the single most, either interesting or present characteristic of the outgoing leader, you're going to find that the president, the incoming leader is the opposite of whatever that was. But I do want to talk a little bit about in terms of the importance of vision and how to make sure it is deep and integrated into the organization. How important is it for the leader to have a team working on it with them? What have been your experiences with that in terms of your ability to move your vision forward?
Dr. Michael Bassis (31:29):
Yeah. Essential. I mean, because your team touches the rest of the institution in ways that you never can. If your team is bought into the vision and understands it... I mean, half of my job was to educate every week all the people that reported to me, all the people on this administrative council. And you remember, I used go on and on about one aspect of this or another, probably boring people to tears, but I figured you guys had to know it almost as deeply as I did in order to be able to teach all the people you worked with. And I think we were largely successful in that.
Annalisa Holcombe (32:32):
Yeah. I think so too.
Dr. Michael Bassis (32:35):
I would say the same thing about Olivet. I had a good team. I did the same thing, spent every week, teaching them about where we were headed and how we were going to get there and incorporating their ideas in it as well and there were always good ones.
Annalisa Holcombe (33:06):
How much time do you think you spent doing that work? I feel like that is something that most of us don't experience in our workspaces. Also we're focused in our weekly meetings in... I'm now working at a place that is both academic, but also ed tech. Right? Having all this... It's a tech company that is also a university. And I think that there's a lot of like what's agile? How we make decisions and how are we efficient? A lot of the how is talked about a lot, but I do think that if we took that and focused on why even more, it would be even stronger. And I think, I didn't realize how important it was to be in a situation in which the whole leadership team felt really solid.
Annalisa Holcombe (34:13):
And we knew where the horizon was and that we also operated in that, this sounds silly, but the geese flying towards someplace, like you're trying to get someplace, but there were different times when somebody else was the front. Was it the front of that triangle of the geese flying so that we could take the headwinds for a minute and then let somebody else take the headwinds. And so we could get in some ways, I think that's actually what gets you there faster than all this time spent on efficiency, but really taking turns, making sure that you're getting us in that direction and celebrating the person that was just at the head. Does that make sense?
Dr. Michael Bassis (34:57):
Sure.
Annalisa Holcombe (34:58):
But I think that is really hard to do.
Dr. Michael Bassis (35:01):
It seems to me that Western Governors, the direction is pretty easy to talk about and it can be pretty inspired. Oh yeah. And so maybe that's reason why they don't talk about it as much is because it's obvious.
Annalisa Holcombe (35:27):
Yeah. I think that-
Dr. Michael Bassis (35:29):
People, they somehow assume that-
Annalisa Holcombe (35:31):
We know it.
Dr. Michael Bassis (35:33):
That you know it and it's driving your day to day decisions.
Annalisa Holcombe (35:42):
Yes. And I think that's absolutely true. And that's been lovely, this whole idea of a whole system of higher ed that is mostly built for the 17 to 24 year old age group, mostly. And that I now work at a place that is built on where actually the majority of people get in education is as adults and helping to make that accessible for everyone. Because that underlying everyone is entitled to a good education is something that's deeply held at WG.
Dr. Michael Bassis (36:22):
But also willing to challenge a lot of contemporary wisdom in higher education. Wisdom that is really outmoded doesn't work anymore, but that it is so difficult to change.
Annalisa Holcombe (36:46):
If you've listened to this podcast, you know that I just love hearing people be fully themselves and bring their varied interests and perspectives to all aspects of their lives. Well, Michael Bassis has recently done just that by pursuing his dream of being an artist. You can view it at michaelbassis.com. And if I can just quote from that website here, this is what he says, "Whenever anyone asked what I planned to do in retirement, I always thought to myself and sometimes admitted out loud that I would spend my time making art. It didn't go so well at first." What a great quote, love the sentiment and the honesty. I hope you'll check out his art. It really did go well in the end. Until then though, let's get back to the interview.
Annalisa Holcombe (37:40):
Do you have any advice for people who might be listening to this who say, "Well, I'm not a leader of a university or of a whole organization." What do you think about the importance of having vision for ourselves or our own lives? Do you have any advice for people who may not be the leader with the vision, but they're a human being? What does vision mean for them?
Dr. Michael Bassis (38:04):
Well, there are always is the capacity to ask questions, which I think is an underutilized capacity. And you can be a staff person in a large office and make enormous contributions to vision by just asking the right question at the right time. It could be as direct as you could you explain to me again why we're doing this or how this fits with something else? And-
Annalisa Holcombe (38:44):
I love that you're saying that Michael. I was just thinking about, I had a conversation with somebody recently who they said, "What do you wish that you had from this person?" because I was struggling at work and I was talking to an organizational coach who said, "Well, then if you could have anything, what would you want?" And I think this is real both whether it's from the person who leads me or the people whom I lead, I would love that honestly curious question. I just would love to have more curiosity about the why we're doing this. I think that sometimes it feels frustrating to have people ask you about why, because you just want to get to the that I talked about why. Here's what and how, but I do think that being reminded and required to regularly articulate your why and what the vision is, is really helpful.
Dr. Michael Bassis (39:42):
Yeah. And I think there aren't very many people who staff people who are occupying a relatively powerless position who asked that question, but they could, if they, I mean, if someone who's looking to develop some leadership capacity or participation.
Dr. Michael Bassis (40:17):
As a leader, though, trying to motivate people like that, to ask the right questions, to want to find ways to roll up their sleeves and really make a contribution, maybe it comes down to just the basic notion that organizations are successful through people. And the more you can do to get more people rowing the boat in the same direction with some enthusiasm, and so that's our job is to cultivate that culture to work every day to identify those people and to encourage them and to help them find a way. That's the job of the leader.
Annalisa Holcombe (41:36):
I love that. I think that's the quote. I think that's the thing that... That's our job. And that's what we all want from our leaders as somebody that is doing that for us. And it reminds me of a time that I specifically remember that you were speaking to the board of trustees. You're at the front of the room speaking to the board of trustees. And after the board meeting, you mentioned to me that one of your chief deputy type people, one of the individuals was in the room, not a board member, but in the room looking at you and you could see his face not agreeing with what you were doing or saying. And your response to me for that was, "How much you loved that." Your response was, "He wouldn't do this the same way as me."
Annalisa Holcombe (42:24):
That basically the two of you agreed on the vision or the direction, but he wouldn't do this the same way. And that's okay because it's helping him develop his own leadership style, his own ideas of how to move in that direction and that was a good thing. Can you describe what that's... I think that is an unusual thing for a leader to do. And it's one of those moments that stuck in my head. Like, I can be there any moment because it was so seminally important to me in terms of my own leadership learning.
Dr. Michael Bassis (42:59):
Well, dissent is also helpful for the leader because it forces you to submit your idea to a sterner test, somebody whose talent you admire, who's got another way to think about it, or another idea about it or whatever. Who knows, you might even learn something and change your mind, which is terrific. Well, one thing, and that is this Charles Handy story about the Irishman.
Annalisa Holcombe (43:54):
Oh, what? Tell me about this. What the Irishman story?
Dr. Michael Bassis (43:57):
No, you remember it.
Annalisa Holcombe (43:59):
What?
Dr. Michael Bassis (44:02):
It's from his book, The Age Of Paradox, which is the same book. He has a chapter on the sigmoid curve. As a matter of fact, you should get your own copy of The Age Of Paradox by Charles Handy.
Annalisa Holcombe (44:21):
Okay.
Dr. Michael Bassis (44:22):
Anyway, this is about vision and about how looking ahead is difficult. And if you want to know how to proceed, looking backward at what you've done, isn't going to help at all. And he illustrates that by this simple little story about a guy who goes to Ireland looking for some place or some family, and he meets an Irishman along the way and asks for directions to this place. And the Irishman, he says, "Oh yes," he says. "I know where it is. You go straight up the road headed for Davey's Bar and you'll cross a bridge, but continue straight ahead and then about a mile before you get there, take the road to the right."
Dr. Michael Bassis (45:43):
Now, some people who don't think hard enough, I think that's fine advice, but you can't get there by following that advice because that's looking backward. You can't use it to look forward. So I oftentimes think about how am I going to get to Davey's Bar. But let me say one other thing about conventional wisdom and how entrenched it is, especially in higher education. And again, you've heard me rail about these things before, but university instruction continues to be dominated by lectures. Even in relatively small classes, a faculty member stands up and gives a five minute lecture, a 10 minute lecture, a 20 minute lecture, a 50 minute lecture to a bunch of students. It's a practice that started in the fifth century and just decades upon decades of research talks about how ineffective that is as a method of instruction, yet it continues to be the dominant one.
Annalisa Holcombe (47:26):
Doesn't make any sense.
Dr. Michael Bassis (47:27):
Here's an even more challenging one. Grades, we give out grades to students in school. Why? Because we've always done it and people believe in it and everybody wants high grades, but there's absolutely no evidence that the grades you get in school are related in any way to any future measure of success or happiness, but it continues to be the currency. It's crazy. We're organizing a system of higher education on myth. And that's one of the reasons why the higher education is in such trouble.
Annalisa Holcombe (48:19):
Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Michael Bassis (48:20):
Lousy outcomes, high expenses.
Annalisa Holcombe (48:29):
And as the leaders in my organization, they actually talk about this, what we should not be doing is putting more money to the same old problems. Let's instead of making up... This is an interesting question for you, Michael, is the question we have is, should we make it free for people, or should we change the system? Should we be investing in changing the system itself so that it's more about like, we would think at WG, your competency. Can you do it or not. Accessibility. How do you make it available at high quality to as many people as you possibly can?
Dr. Michael Bassis (49:11):
Yeah. Certainly just making it free, it seems to me to be silly. One of the ideas about reforming higher education that I first fell in love with was again, by a sociologist at Northwestern and Howard Becker. He said the way to reform higher ed is to give students the degree the day they arrive as freshmen, and then force them to leave four years later. So what they left with would be differentiated by their effort. How much they had decided to learn rather than some standard piece of paper that doesn't have any meaning.
Annalisa Holcombe (50:34):
Wow. How much we do that is based upon, we've always done it that way is hard to even think about, because it's like, we've just been swimming in these waters for so long. We haven't considered what the waters are made of.
Dr. Michael Bassis (50:49):
Right. And of all the institutions that have tried to break the mold and made some real progress, Western Governors is one of them.
Annalisa Holcombe (50:57):
Yeah. Yeah. Woohoo.
Dr. Michael Bassis (51:01):
You should feel really good about that.
Annalisa Holcombe (51:02):
Absolutely
Dr. Michael Bassis (51:06):
Not that you can take credit for it, but-
Annalisa Holcombe (51:06):
Yeah, I don't get any credit for it, but I do get to know that I'm working in a place that almost is a like innovation is a prerequisite for wanting to be there. That is part of the vision and the culture. So one last thing I want to ask you. I talk here in this podcast all the time about my love of mentors and the idea of having mentors in your life, whether they are formal or informal, whether the mentor knows that they're a mentor to you or not. So I would love if you would be willing to tell me about a mentor that you have had in your life or that you would like to call out or to mention here.
Dr. Michael Bassis (51:58):
Sure. I've only had one and I didn't discover him until early in my career, but it's Al [Augustin 00:52:16] who had been president at... He had been chancellor at the University of Wisconsin Parkside when I was hired as associate dean of faculty. One of the things that came along with that position is that I was a member of the administrative council. Six of us who met with the chancellor every week for, I don't know, three or four hours, like our administrative. And that was an enormous education for me which was really in my first administrative appointment to sitting at that table where all of the strategic and operational issues that affected the institution were discussed. And Al and I developed over time a really deep relationship that continued throughout the rest of my career. I have enormous admiration for him. He went to become president of Antioch. I left to become academic vice president at Eastern Connecticut. I clashed with a new president there who fired me. Al went through a divorce. We talked on the phone. I said, "I'm coming out. I'll give you marriage counseling if you give me career counseling."
Annalisa Holcombe (53:50):
I love it.
Dr. Michael Bassis (53:52):
We spent a very long weekend together. About a month later, I was in a meeting in Washington, DC. Mary was upstairs in the hotel room. She came down and said, "Alex's on the phone." I said, "Oh good. I'll call him back. Tell him this is important." And she said, "Mo, Michael, he really wants to talk to you." She said, "It's important. You got to come now." I started to argue with Mary about whether I was going to go upstairs. She said, "Michael, I think he's really serious." So then I started worrying." So I went upstairs. Al says to me, "Michael, sit down." I said, "Al, I'm in a meeting." "What do you [inaudible 00:54:43]? "Got to run back down." He says, "Michael, sit." He proceeded to read me the announcement of my appointment as executive vice president and university provost at Antioch.
Annalisa Holcombe (54:54):
Oh my goodness.
Dr. Michael Bassis (54:56):
He said, "I need you here. I just had a meeting with the board of trustees. They set out. It's Christmas time. Tell us what you need. We'll give you anything you need." And he says, "I know who I want to hire. And I'll hire Michael Bassis and get him here as quick as I can."
Annalisa Holcombe (55:14):
Wow.
Dr. Michael Bassis (55:16):
And so we worked together at Antioch for four years, five years maybe. And he's been a mentor throughout all the presidencies that I've had. And we're still in touch today. He's in his mid-eighties.
Annalisa Holcombe (55:35):
I love that. I love that story. Aren't you lucky to have a person that you got to know in that way, that was both your mentor, but then remained your friend for the rest of your life. Thank you so much for spending so much time with me today, right before a holiday and when I know you're busy and I'm really grateful. So much fun.
Dr. Michael Bassis (56:04):
Well, it feels like lots of conversations that you and I have had over the years. More often than not with a gin and tonic in front of us one of these days.
Annalisa Holcombe (56:16):
True. Do you have one right now?
Dr. Michael Bassis (56:16):
Not even a glass of water.
Annalisa Holcombe (56:35):
My thanks to Dr. Michael Bassis for sharing his experience, depth and passion for pursuing the best in ourselves, our organizations and our societies. You can connect with him on LinkedIn and view his art at michaelbassis.com. Next week, we will have what we hope will be an annual tradition, a group interview with friends of the podcast, reminding us all of what we are grateful for in 2021 and what we can look forward to in 2022, I hope you'll join us.