By the Ropes

 By Rev. Craig B. Mousin, university ombudsperson, DePaul University

“The Captain, who had been on the coast before and ‘knew the ropes,’ took the steering oar, and we went off in the same ways as the other boat.”

“One of them, an old salt, who had seen something more of the world ashore, set all to rights, as he thought, — ‘Oh, vast there!—You don’t know anything about them craft. I’ve seen them colleges and know the ropes. They keep all such things for cur’osities, and study ’em, and have men a’ purpose to go and get ‘em.”1

Lessons from the High Seas

“Knowing the ropes,” a maritime cliché suggesting experiential learning that provides insider knowledge learned over time and recognized by seasoned experts as the right way to do the job, also applies to our contemporary workplaces. A leader who has learned by the ropes can be trusted by others in the team to know all the ins and outs of a skill or a profession and lead well. It further denotes someone with no knowledge learning a new skill or profession through experience.

Although Richard Henry Dana Jr.’s quote above juxtaposes knowledge “by the ropes” with learning acquired in college, the term also suggests knowledge shared by all in the workplace for the greater good of the enterprise.

In a recent biography by former Chief Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court Jeffrey L. Amestoy, Slavish Shore, The Odyssey of Richard Henry Dana, Jr., one sees through Dana’s eyes how learning by the ropes provides lessons for our work in the academy, and indeed, even addresses issues dividing our Republic. I had read Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast when in high school. Enveloped in my boyhood dreams of sailing the high seas, I had little inkling that lessons of Catholic Social Thought or managing through the mission lurked within its pages. Amestoy’s biography, however, sent me back to re-read Dana, where I found critical lessons for our times.

Dana, born into a Revolutionary War family, entered Harvard University as one of the Boston Brahmin elite. In his sophomore year, struck by a bout of measles that weakened his eyesight, he dropped out. In 1824, at age 19, he signed on as a sailor, writing, “There is not so helpless and pitiable object in the world as a landsman beginning a sailor’s life.”2  He proudly learns the ropes and soon earns the confidence of the entire crew as he throws himself into the daily routine. His tale reveals the life of the diverse crew from many parts of the world. They must trust one another as they undertake dangerous work and learn to survive despite poor food and sleeping quarters beset with leaks that let in the crashing waves.

When Dana returned to shore and his health had improved, he reentered Harvard and eventually graduated from law school, opening his law practice in 1840. Within months, his office was flooded with sailors seeking relief from wage theft and other indignities from a life at sea. Shipping out for two or more years at sea, sailors would often suffer wage-theft at the hands of captains and ship owners. If brought to court, the captain’s word prevailed against that of an uneducated sailor. Other attorneys, seeking higher and steadier compensation from merchants and owners, refused to take their cases, but the sailors found an advocate in Dana.

He knew the sailor’s life by the ropes. He also knew the unregulated power of a ship captain at sea could lead to abuses. Good captains tempered their power to gain the loyalty of a crew. Dana did not doubt the need for order, given the dangerous work, and believed deeply in the supreme power of the captain. But he also knew that many captains did not possess the self-discipline to control unlimited power. Bad captains lost the faith of the crew and soon found work poorly done, tasks unfinished, and crew productivity lost.

Dana had also witnessed the flogging of two sailors, merely for challenging the captain’s authority. Dana saw how class, education, and culture undermined legal procedures and denied the dignity of some by disregarding their testimony while giving credibility to the one in power.

Bridging Divisions, Honoring Dignity 

Dana’s example raises the question of whether we fully know the ropes of our own institutions. Universities are often critiqued as having silos when departments specialize in one area of learning and know little of the substance of another nor the culture that surrounds that learning style. Do we not also have hierarchical silos within our departments? Does a tenured department chair working long hours as an exempt employee know that the administrative assistant — a single parent and employee-at-will — must leave by five to pick up a child before daycare closes? Does an exempt manager who often puts in long hours understand that the receptionist cannot arrive any earlier because the daycare does not open any sooner?

Certainly, these are not identical problems to reefing a sail as a storm rises around Cape Horn, but tensions arise in the contemporary workplace when we do not know — by the ropes — the demands of different jobs in the workplace. Bullying allegedly impacts one in six workers in this nation.
Despite our best attempts, some of those workers are undoubtedly employed at universities and colleges. Bullies frequently beat the system because, while they are bullying downward, they are often self-servingly reporting upward. Will the procedures set in place by human resources fairly
determine if a person is being bullied when credibility issues are determined by power imbalances?

In the last column that he wrote for Update, Gary Miller stressed the benefits of community in the workplace, noting that Catholic Social Thought emphasizes how humans flourish in the workplace when dignity is respected and community emphasized. We also know that divisions within the community can decrease productivity and well-being for everyone. Dana knew community. He lived and worked with sailors through storms and through clear blue water. He knew the challenges
when bad leaders and outside forces threatened the safety of the ship and the crew. And he saw how
a community in which dignity was honored despite differences in education or class fostered harmony, safety, and productivity in which everyone could share.

Dana went on to a remarkable career (one which I recommend you learn about by reading the book) and his lessons in dignity expand beyond sailing. He lived and worked in the tumultuous antebellum United States when society was fractured by law and by differing mores. His knowledge of life on board ship, including the terror of flogging, inspired him to defend fugitive slaves running from the tragedy of slavery. The Fugitive Slave Act required that runaway slaves be returned to their purported owners. Dana, consumed with the horror of seeing a man be flogged, knew the horror of slavery in ways that many in the North could not. He knew the slave, like the sailor, was a human being, created in the image of God. He defended fugitive slaves and those who assisted them. Daniel Webster, then
secretary of state, argued that fugitive slave laws preserved the Union and called Dana’s actions in defending slaves treason. Although not a Roman Catholic, by knowing the ropes, Dana demonstrated what Catholic Social Thought teaches about a preferential option for the poor and what St. Vincent DePaul invoked about solidarity with the vulnerable. Dana was not a perfect man — he possessed
some of the erroneous prejudices of his time — but he knew the ropes. That, combined with his moral fiber, led him to advocate for those in need.

We live in tumultuous times. Our universities and colleges are institutions that sustain society while we also challenge society to its better purposes so that all within it may flourish. We must ask ourselves, do we live in silos, or do we engage those not privileged with our resources? Are we protected by institutions regulated by law or procedures that leave others on the outside and unprotected? Do we have internal procedures that seem fair on the surface, but give credibility to those with privilege, at the expense of those that do not know the ropes?

Challenge yourself to learn the ropes of another culture, of those whose views may disagree with your own, or of another group of employees at your institution. Perhaps, like Richard Henry Dana, Jr., it will change your life.

The opinions expressed in this column are the author’s alone and do not represent those of DePaul University or the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities. We invite you to respond to this column through the Human Resources and Mission blog. This will permit a fuller discussion of how mission and CST influence the employment process.


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1 Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast and Other Voyages, (N.Y., 1909), 60, 290.
2 Jeffrey L. Amestoy, Slavish Shore, The Odyssey of Richard Henry Dana, Jr., (Cambridge, Ma., 2015), 21 quoting Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast and Other Voyages (New York: Library of American, 2005), 5-6.
3 Robert I. Sutton, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One that Isn’t¸(NY 2007), 25.

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Community as the Foundation of a Healthy Workplace Culture

By Gary Miller, director of Human Resource Process Transformation and Integration at DePaul University

“I always viewed culture as one of those things you talked about, like marketing and advertising. It was one of the tools that a manager had at his or her disposal when you think about an enterprise. ...The thing I have learned at IBM is that culture is everything."¹ -Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.

Organizational culture can easily be dismissed as another management fad or the latest gimmick to come out of the consulting field. Granted — like many other workplace concepts, such as work-life balance, employee engagement, and pay equity — the concept of culture is somewhat vague and can be difficult to measure. Yet, a growing number of organizations have discovered the power of fostering an intentionally positive workplace environment.² Catholic college and university leaders, in particular, may be interested in the positive impact of an intentional culture on an institution’s Catholic identity. 

In their March 2016 article in the Harvard Business Review, Dave Ulrich and Wayne Brockbank advance the practicality of creating intentional workplace cultures by making the concept much more tangible. They write that rather than thinking about culture as “seen through symbols, rituals, stories and other organizational events” or as it “shows up in the values, norms, unwritten rules, emotional responses, or flows of how things are done in a company,” there’s a much more pragmatic view.

The authors propose in their article that an organization’s intentional culture should be built on “the identity of a company as perceived by its best customers, representing an outside-in view of culture. For example, Amazon wants to be known for disciplined execution of customer purchases; Apple for design and simplicity; Marriott for exceptional service; Google for innovation; and so forth. These brands or identities then become infused throughout the company through how employees and managers think, behave, and feel.”

This approach not only serves as a practical way to connect employees to brand and mission, but it also has the advantage of being authentic. For instance, a sporting goods store that hires applicants based on their passion for hunting, fishing, and outdoor activities and encourages employees to share their enthusiasm and knowledge with customers, conveys a certain genuineness, and is, in fact, authentic with regard to its brand.

  

The First Step in Creating Culture

This column focuses on the first of the three steps Ulrich and Brockbank provide to develop a practical and authentic culture: “Define the Right Culture.” To do this, Catholic College and university leaders— from the president to the human resources director to the student affairs director— need to ask: “What is the shortlist of what we want to be known for by our best customers?” (Catholic higher education institutions might substitute students, faculty, administrators, alumni, or donors for “customers.”)³

Not only should the shortlist items reflect the institution’s core brand, I suggest another consideration should be the topics that generate enthusiasm among the college’s leaders.⁴ Given these considerations, one item to consider for your shortlist might be community. I refer to community in a positive sense, in which people strongly identify with the mission (the common cause) and work together in a collaborative fashion to accomplish goals related to furthering the mission.

Many Catholic college and university leaders extol the importance of community. For instance, Catherine McMahon, RSM, special assistant to the president for mission and planning at Gwynedd Mercy University, recognizes its significance in her article on sustaining a mission-oriented culture. She writes that “mission belongs to the community, not to any one person or office. . . . [U]ltimately the success of mission integration depends on the community that embodies it.”⁵

Defining community identity as part of the foundation upon which to build a culture may not seem results-oriented enough for some leaders. Nothing about community, however, suggests that outcomes aren’t important. Generating more revenue than expense, student retention, progress toward strategic objectives — all of these are essential for success and need to be closely monitored. But focusing on the bottom line isn’t what brings out the best in people. Rather, the quality of their relationships with co-workers and managers, integration into the workplace culture, and other such things are key to producing great results. Gallup’s comprehensive engagement research (as well as the corroborating findings of many other credible researchers over the past decade) clearly indicate that great organizational outcomes are directly linked to employees’ experience of engagement and support in the workplace.⁶   In fact, some practical notions about what constitutes a healthy community can be gleaned from standard engagement survey questions.

Not only do employees work better in a healthy community, but it is critical for student success as well. In his February 7, 2013 Inside Higher Education article, Robert Sternberg described twelve research-validated risk factors that account for why most students drop out. Among the factors listed is “disengagement from the university environment” — essentially, a failure of a student’s integration into the community.

While affinity groups and peer mentors may help a student’s emotional connection with a college, such things are not nearly as important as a faculty and staff who want to go the extra mile to help students, who feel good about the institution, and who demonstrate collegiality with their colleagues. To ensure that community is more than just a brand, it needs to be woven into the fabric of a college environment; it needs to be on the shortlist.

Fostering a Community of Persons

Community, being a hallmark of Catholicism and its social teaching, provides a particular additional reason to include it on the shortlist for institutions that want to maintain a Catholic identity. Pope Saint John Paul II wrote in Ex Corde Ecclesiae, (section 21), “A Catholic University pursues its objectives through its formation of an authentic human community animated by the spirit of Christ.” He continues in subsequent paragraphs to discuss the roles of faculty, students, and staff in facilitating community.

Catholic Social Teaching emphasizes the highest expression of community in its recognition of the workplace as a “community of persons.” To this end, John Paul II wrote in Centesimus Annus (section 35) that “the purpose of a business firm is not simply to make a profit, but is to be found in its very existence as a community of persons who in various ways are endeavouring to satisfy their basic needs, and who form a particular group at the service of the whole of society.”

The community of persons emphasizes the collaborative nature of work and the recognition that all workers in an organization are working toward common ends. John Paul II wrote in the same encyclical (section 43) that “By means of his work man commits himself, not only for his own sake but also for others and with others. Each person collaborates in the work of others and for their good. Man works in order to provide for the needs of his family, his community, his nation, and ultimately all humanity. Moreover, he collaborates in the work of his fellow employees, as well as in the work of suppliers and in the customer's use of goods, in a progressively expanding chain of solidarity.”

Additionally, a community of persons recognizes the high dignity of the human person – a foundational theme in Catholic Social Teaching.  Section 271 of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church expresses the dignity of the person as relates to work: “The human person is the measure of the dignity of work: ‘In fact there is no doubt that human work has an ethical value of its own, which clearly and directly remains linked to the fact that the one who carries it out is a person.’”

To further understand a community of persons, consider the alternative extreme that many Americans experience: a society of individuals. According to Michael Naughton, “a society of individuals will usually be focused on limited goals such as survival, security, and success.  The enterprise is seen as a zero sum game since when goods are shared, they are diminished. . . . [T]he principle of equivalence dominates the landscape, where exchanges are defined in terms of a quid pro quo, and where contracts, not human relationships, attempt to establish trust.  . . . Prudence and judgement are replaced by managers’ constant referral to procedures and regulations as the basis of decisions, which are more concerned about process than outcomes.”⁷

The call for leaders to create communities of persons “actually expresses the full realization of what a company and corporation can be. The etymology of the words ‘company’ and ‘companions’ — cum (with) and panis (bread) — suggests ‘breaking bread together.’ The etymology of the work ‘corporation’ — the Latin corpus (body) —suggests a group of people ‘united in one body.’”⁸

After the shortlist items are identified, leaders can move on to the second step of creating an intentionally healthy workplace culture: “Translate the ideal customer-centered identity into behaviors for employees.”⁹ Before considering the next step, however, at least one more column will be dedicated to this essential idea of community and its importance in maintaining a Catholic identity and creating an authentic culture supportive of the mission.

The opinions expressed in this column are the author’s alone and do not represent those of DePaul University or the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities.

Footnotes:

1.     Lagace, Martha, “Gerstner: Changing Culture at IBM - Lou Gerstner Discusses Changing the Culture at IBM ” in HBS Working Knowledge, December 9, 2002. http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/3209.html

2.     The alternative to fostering an intentional culture is to settle for randomly emergent cultures in every department that are unconsciously shaped by each manager’s disposition. Some of the companies that have done this well are listed in this Business Insider article: http://www.businessinsider.com/25-best-corporate-cultures-2014-8

3.     Both quotes in this paragraph are taken from the Ulrich and Brockbank article. The other two steps that Ulrich and Brockbank present are (1) “translate the ideal customer-centered identity into behaviors for employees”, and (2) “design the right processes, practices, and structures for supporting and encouraging those behaviors.” See the article at https://hbr.org/2016/03/your-company-culture-cant-be-disconnected-from-your-customers

4.     In the management classic, Good to Great, Jim Collins discusses the important role of leaders who are passionate about the contribution their organization is making to society. He summarizes the concept in an article on his website:” http://www.jimcollins.com/article_topics/articles/good-to-great.html

5.     McMahon, Catherine, RSM. (2014). It Takes a Village: Creating and Sustaining a Mission-Oriented Culture at a College or University. In the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, A Mission Officer Handbook: Advancing Catholic Identity and University Mission, Vol.1.(pp.19-22). CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

6.     A sample of studies that show the relationship between engagement levels and positive business outcomes include: Harvard Business Review Analytic Services Report:http://www.yorkworks.ca/default/assets/File/analyst-insights-HBR_Achievers%20Report_TheImpactofEmployeeEngagementonPerformance(1).pdf; 2013 Gallup Engagement Survey Results (see the summary on page 9): http://www.gallup.com/strategicconsulting/163007/state-american-workplace.aspx; Specific Best Practice Employers Engagement Findings: http://www.apqc.org/sites/default/files/files/Link%20Engagement%20to%20Bus%20Outcomes.pdf; and Towers Watson 2012 Survey: http://www.towerswatson.com/en/Insights/IC-Types/Survey-Research-Results/2012/07/2012-Towers-Watson-Global-Workforce-Study

Given that at least 4 of the Q12 questions seem to measure employees’ community-like experiences, it could be argued that employee engagement is at least partially the degree to which an employee is experiencing community. Consider the research findings of the 2015 Great Places to Work Survey: https://s3.amazonaws.com/bestworkplacesdb/publications/WO_2015_BestWorkplaces_en.pd

7.     Naughton, Michael. The Logic of Gift: Rethinking Business as a Community of Persons (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2012), pp. 43 & 44.

8.     Vocation of the Business Leader: A Reflection. Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (PCJP). The document grew out of a seminar sponsored by the John A. Ryan Institute at the University of St. Thomas (MN) and the PCJP, held in February 2011, called “The Logic of Gift and the Meaning of Business.” Sec. 57 at https://www.stthomas.edu/media/catholicstudies/center/ryan/publications/publicationpdfs/vocationofthebusinessleaderpdf/PontificalCouncil_4.pdf .  

Note that although the text speaks of companies and corporations, its concepts are to be very broadly interpreted to include all types of workplaces, as explained in the document’s forward: “The text is intended as an educational aid that speaks of the “vocation” of the business men and women who act in a wide range of business institutions: cooperatives, multinational corporations, family businesses, social businesses, for-profit/non-profit collaborations and so on.”

9.     The second step that Ulrich and Brockbank present is:  “translate the ideal customer-centered identity into behaviors for employees." See the article at https://hbr.org/2016/03/your-company-culture-cant-be-disconnected-from-your-customers

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