Reflections on gaining clarity, understand reality, and building solutions in community. To get it right, you gotta “Turn Left”!
I have always had a strong sense that when you are stuck at what to do and how to explore possibility of growth, expansion, or just deepening impact, you need to go to the source. The people who know the challenges and have ideas for how to overcome them. The quote reverberates for me, always, is: the people closest to the problem are the people closest to the solution. It’s attributed to Glen E Martin, who goes onto say: “…but farthest from power and resources.” That second phrase begs a response, an action, a bridge, to advancing the ideas and accessibility to provide avenues of agency and belonging for those who you wish to work with to design solutions to some of the deepest challenges facing our world.
In my work, one of the key ways I can live this out, and that our team actively engages in, is simply talking to our teachers and our volunteers. Our teachers work closely with children each day. They know the 20 or 30 kids in each class, or the 8 kids in their small group, or the one child they work with in speech therapy. Or they a larger population of students, understanding the ecosystem of whole school, as a school nurse, band teacher or librarian. They are closest to the challenges that children and families face, and when we want to grow to serve them in their work with kids, we must prioritize leaning in. Our model is a key component of our ability to carry out our mission and achieve our vision (I call this, our “Impact Model”), and a core move we make within our framework is to listen to teachers and get to know them to serve them better. We spend time talking with them at checkout, we engage with our amazing teacher volunteers, and we ask questions when we are touring schools or speaking with leaders.
Some of our most powerful programs were borne out of these conversations. Our team and I learned so much when we opened our doors to support all 90 school nurses. We developed our Free 2 Learn feminine hygiene program by learning from nurses, teachers and classroom aides about the needs of girls in middle and high school. Lori, pictured in this post, is one of the school nurses who really helps me understand some of the key needs these professionals face when working with children across the school building. In fact, before we even opened up to nurses, Lori was in a session I was leading and gave me so much insight as I worked to expand our free store to support their work. We also gained tons of amazing information from our teacher survey this past year, hearing again and again the need for sensory and play items, leading us to develop our Free 2 Play program that brings the community together to donate gently used sports equipment, music equipment, adaptive seating, games and more. The list goes on, but the lesson is clear: listening to stories, hearing patters, and responding with empathy is what has truly driven our program development.
Another key component is our team: our amazing staff and our insightful volunteers. They see the nitty gritty day in, day out work happening at our warehouse, and they put in the time and effort to not only carry out our mission, but help build into our model of impact: kindness to our teachers, empathy toward their needs, creativity with the supplies we have donated. They don’t just see fake donated flowers; they see the possibility of taking those flowers and making bouquets for teachers to enjoy all year long. Speaking of which – bring us your vases if you have extra! They see ways we can streamline our operations. They have brilliant ideas for how to organize materials, pack STEM kits, or build out our program structure.
The people closest to the problem – the challenge you face/we face – are the people closest to the solution.
No matter the business you are in, the work or phase of life – motherhood, leading a team, starting your education, or building out your retirement plan – you can find ways to lean in, listen and understand where you fit in to helping solve some of the world’s biggest problems, or simply a small but pressing community need.
An idea I love on this comes from David Novak’s book, How Leaders Learn. Novak is the cofounder and former Chairman of Yum! Brands, one of the world’s largest restaurant companies (KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut) and shares in his brilliant book many key insights that have shaped his life as a learner. In one of my favorite chapters, “Are you Delusional?” he talks about the hunt for the truth: seeing the way the world really is. That to see with clarity, means “know your starting point.” Explore the way the world really is by speaking to the people who understand things you may not see.
Three key ideas on why and how you can do this:
1 – You need to “deal in reality”: He encourages you to “see the world the way it really is, not how you wish it to be.” To do this, you must hunt for and chase after the truth.
2 – Build a process to understand why something is the way it is. He shares about Taco Bell unveiling their new breakfast only to see dismal sales. They started a process to learn the root cause of this by listening to customers and studying their reactions to this product and learned that it was just too messy! People didn’t want to get salsa on their work outfit at the start of the workday. Imagine that! So, they built a heavy duty, portable, breakfast sandwich and branded it as a “Good to Go” handheld.
3 – Stay as close to the source as possible. To be a critical thinker, you need to make sure you have all of the information.
How do we live this out in realty? Novak has us covered there as well. I love this principal he shares:
“Turn Left First”
The idea of Turn Left First is part of their “customer mania” training for Yum! Brands leaders: “Whenever they walk into a restaurant, they should first turn left and go talk to customers, rather than going straight to the back of the store to talk to managers or team members.”
What ways can you “turn left first” in your role? Is it spending a little more time listening to your kids or your family at the end of the day rather than rushing to start dinner or move everyone to the next activity? Is it spending time with your customers on the way to a meeting or simply making phone calls to understand how the product is performing? Is it talking with teachers? Is it talking more with your team in the mornings over coffee for a few extra minutes to learn a bit about their weekend or their upcoming event? So much of life, connection and joy comes from the moments in between. From my vantage point, those moments are the most pivotal of all. Learning who someone is and what they are thinking about will allow you to see things as they really are. This will lead to more clarity and better outcomes.
I always love checking our teachers out, because it gives me a chance to just chat with them, understand their needs and learn the stories of what they’ll do with the supplies they found. These stories are compass for our work. They are what helps us understand if we are carrying out our mission to achieve our vision, and in fact, these interactions are a key component of our Impact Model. An empowered teacher is a teacher that is heard, understood and cared for.
A great example of turning left first is the mindset that Stephen Klasko, the former president of Thomas Jefferson University, shared in a podcast I recently listened to on leadership and life. He shared, “If you can add value to others, you’re going to be the kind of person who is contributing to others, listening to others.” He shared a story about how he would go and stand in line for lunch with hospital employees and chat with them about their thoughts on how things were going. That once there had been a new employee health plan that his leadership team was confident was being received well, but then he would go down and chat with people in the lunch line and hear the truth. He wasn’t afraid of seeing the way the world really is. He and Novak both were comfortable with facing reality to make reality better for people. Klasko shared that a key value for his work is to put people first “Do the right thing, put people first, be bold and think different.” To think different, he expanded his advisory team to the people closest to the problem. He found ways to burst through his leadership bubble. He found ways to Turn Left. So whether you are running a restaurant, a teacher supply store, a hospital system, a university, a family or a project of any kind finding ways to listen, learn – to “Turn Left” – will propel you forward. Spending some extra time turning left will not only help you understand the problems, but will lead to conversations, ideas, innovations, and solutions you would have never understood on your own. Turning Left will help you understand the problem more deeply, by building trust with the people who will not only help you see more clearly but will help you understand the best next steps to build a solution or overcome an obstacle, as a team. To get it right, you gotta turn LEFT!