Progress is bigger and more

made with Canva

As a manger, the pressure to define, coach, and report on the success of you and your team is constantly in the view of your supervisor and others in the organization. The idea of progress is bigger and more has been a mainstay in career. Often times the measure of success comes down to some type of quantifiable means. Just look at the popularity of SMART goals. People have poured a large focus into SMART goals and when is comes to Measurable they struggle with including qualitative measures. Why? Because they struggle to figure out and understand how qualitative aspects can be measured. SMART goals could be good if it isn’t overly focused on quantitative measures and includes a focus on inclusive and equitable aspects of the goal, SMARTIE goals.

When I worked in non-profit organizations the push was always to serve more students and raise more money. Even when we would start to focus on the quality of our service it would eventually get turned back to the question of whether or not we served more students with bigger results to satisfy donors. At the time, these all seemed noble and progressive. Now as I look at the influence it has had on furthering thoughts of perfectionism, one right way, and other white supremacy characteristics, I’m mortified at how much I missed the costs of this focus and the damage it did to myself and those around me.

For the next several weeks, I want to explore progress is bigger, more white supremacy characteristic and ways to apply antidotes to it. But first I will complete the reflection to action guide and share my thoughts.

Progress is bigger and more shows up as:

• how we define success (success is always bigger, more)
• an organization that assumes the goal is to grow — add staff, add projects, or ​serve more people regardless of how well they can serve them; raise more money, or gain more influence and power for its own sake — all without regard to the organization’s mission or especially the people and/or living beings that the organization is in relationship with
• gives no value, not even negative value, to its cost; for example, increased accountability to funders as the budget grows in ways that leave those served exploited, excluded, or underserved as we focus on how many we are serving instead of quality of service or values created by the ways in which we serve
• little or no ability to consider the cost of growth in social, emotional, psychic, embodied, spiritual, and financial realms
• a narrow focus on numbers (financial, people, geography, power) without an ability to value processes (relationships), including cost to the human and natural environment
• valuing those who have “progressed” over those who “have not” — where progress is measured in degrees, grades, money, power, status, material belongings — in ways that erase lived experience and wisdom/knowledge that is invisibilized — tending, cleaning, feeding, nurturing, caring for, raising up, supporting (thank you Bevelyn Ukah)​
• focus on getting bigger (in size, transactional power, numbers) leading to little or no ability to consider the cost of getting big in social, emotional, psychic, embodied, spiritual, and financial realms (thank you Bevelyn Ukah)

Antidotes include:

• honoring the ancient Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) philosophy that the decisions we make today should result in a sustainable world seven generations into the future
• insure that any cost/benefit analysis includes all the costs, not just the financial ones, for example the cost in morale, the cost in credibility, the cost in relationship to living beings, the cost in the use of resources
• include process goals in your planning, for example make sure that your goals speak to how you want to do your work, not just what you want to do
• ask those you work with and for to establish goals and evaluate performance holistically; for one example, set both content and process goals (what you do and how you do it) aligned with the values of the organization and/or community​
• make sure you and/or your community or organization has a values statement that expresses the ways in which you want to do your work; create this as a living document that people use in their day to day work
• look for ways to measure process goals (for example if you have a goal of mutually respectful relationships, think about ways you can measure how you are living into that goal);
• ​​learn to recognize those times when you need to go off the planned agenda in order to address people’s underlying concerns with the knowledge that doing so will result in a more solid product in the long term
• distinguish between growth, which is necessary and organic, and the conditioned desire for “more” — more stuff, more transactional power, more people, more … for its own sake
• consider adding measures that keep you grounded in what’s important — how many times did we laugh together today? how many times did we express gratitude? how many times did we allow silence? how many times did we allow dissent?

a. What does this look like when you act with progress is bigger, more mentality?

Tunnel vision probably best explains what it looks like for me. The description in the characteristics are also spot on to my experiences with progress is bigger, more.

b. What feelings do you have when you have progress is bigger, more mentality?

I typically feel a sense of pride and focus determination to appear to better than everyone else. The amount of belief in myself and those around me is typically very high and any feelings of humility are hard to be found.

c. What policies and/or practices does your work/organization implement that reinforces or encourages progress is bigger, more mentality?

At this time we have a pay-for-performance system, that pushes the priority to showing quantifiable results even though that system is rarely funded. As a result morale is low and we have retention and enthusiasm issues which creates a poor work environment.

d. What actions can you take to go from progress is bigger, more to progress is sustainability and quality?

We have been having more discussion around SMARTIE goal adoption and learning from elements of results-based accountability (RBA). This is a good movement to make sure that we are more holistic with our goals.

e. What benefits do you think you would get from applying more of the replacement characteristics?

Since we manage grants out to communities, I hope that this movement will support more of a transformational relationship with our grantees. This should help us in our collective effort to have deeper systems change and equity work throughout Colorado.

Action Plan Statement

From now on when I feel the urge to act with progress is bigger, more mentality, I will focus on SMARTIE goals because it provides me with an opportunity to have transformational relationships with grantees. I will also support my work/organization progress is bigger, more mentality by addressing SMARTIE and/or RBA goal implementation. When I do act with progress is bigger, more mentality, I will give myself some grace, acknowledge the impact I had on others, and engage in repair work.