The Courage to Look Up
“When you’re digging a ditch, don’t look up.” A scout leader gave me this advice 36 years ago, when I was eleven. At the time, I was actually digging a ditch, so I understood his meaning!   Hard tasks can be slow to yield. Those words, “don’t look up,” have stayed with me over the years as I confronted many difficult challenges. To me, the expression served as a reminder to have patience, to soldier on even when success isn’t visible. Take the long view, that’s what the wise man said.  Checking progress against a difficult task can really discourage us. And there’s that word again, courage, buried behind the “dis.”
In my advancing (some might even say quickly concluding!) middle age, however, I have come to distrust the patient, long view. As the famous economist John Maynard Keyes said, “In the long run, we’re all dead.” Extremely slow progress might deserve another name: failure. In the famous words of William Gladstone, the 19th Century British statesman, “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
During many years in leadership roles in the public and nonprofit sector, I have noticed that “the long view” often enters wearing compelling costumes.  One mask is “faith in the process.” Leaders who buy into the religion of process often spend substantial time focusing on how things get done. A process focus often leads to an investigation of best practices. In such settings, the dominant belief is that doing things the right way will lead to the desired outcomes, eventually. A commitment to best practices also implies a focus on research, founded on faith that others have successfully encountered our problems before. Process focus also tends towards the specialization and professionalization of tasks, making progress reliant on consultants, highly-educated and often expensive. In its worst manifestation, process focus can cause organizations to descend into literally months and years of examining internal rules and procedures. When this course reaches its outer limits, organizations develop many layers of people making rules and meta-rules, painstakingly pointing out all the infractions of those below them in the rule hierarchy.   The creation and perpetuation of bureaucracy threatens to become a poor substitute for getting things done. In the end, painfully, slowly, expensively and with the utmost perfection, nothing is accomplished. We shovel really well, but in the end we still haven’t created the ditch.
The point is simply this: talk is cheap. Ideas untested by reality are cheap.
Another disguise of the long view is focus on abstract principles and values. Here the premise is that if we promote the right ideals, good results will happen, someday.  A corollary belief in this setting is that if we are not “walking the walk,” the cause must be that we are not “talking the talk.” Unfortunately, experience teaches us that, all too often, the people who are the biggest espousers of principles and values are also the biggest flaunters. (So many spectacular examples of moralizing scoundrels have made the national news recently–no need to recount their bizarre exploits here!)  Interestingly, people with high integrity often do not talk much about their values and principles, preferring to let their actions speak for themselves.  Of course, there are counter examples on both sides. There are those who preach loudly, faithfully living out their doctrine, and also those who flout law, morality and ethics, but discretely, avoiding hypocrisy, at least.  The point is simply this: talk is cheap. Ideas untested by reality are cheap. Unfortunately, in our modern institutions, digging a ditch often becomes a highfalutin exercise in talking about “good” ditch digging while the shovels sit idle. And the windbags doing the talking rarely get anyone closer to having a functioning ditch!
After a long life of “not looking up” within organizations that are mired in process, principles, and values, but lacking meaningful achievements, people often take on the persona of Sisyphus, the mythic King cursed to roll a boulder up a hill, only to watch it come rolling back down. Perhaps you have seen this “Sisyphean” look before. Grim. Determined. Nose to the grindstone. The look that says, “We are on the Titanic and we are riding it into the cold deep, all the way to the bottom.” I recently saw that look on the face of a basketball player, his team down 30 points with five minutes to go, still fighting for every rebound. It is the look of honor in defeat.  Hopefully not the look in the mirror!
Wordle
I served as a narcotics prosecutor for several years. I will never forget the day a senior leader in my department told me, “Dave, things will go a lot easier when you realize we are powerless to change what’s going on out there. We’re giving aspirin to a terminal cancer patient.” Sisyphus. He was a good man who knew the system didn’t work but kept on trying anyway. There are so many such people in systems across America. In their hearts they no longer believe success is possible, but they go through the motions because “looking up” and confronting system failure hurts too much. It is easier and more comforting to keep shoveling, taking the long view, with faith in our process and principles.  At least I am still trying. This is what we say to ourselves as the boulder rolls back.
What is the courage to “look up”? What does it mean? It starts with crediting our own observations of reality rather than believing a fable when its narrative no longer rings true in our experience. Beware. Those defending the status quo will question the credentials of those showing the courage to confront reality. They will deny the visceral experience of system failure by attacking the perception of the failure. “Who are you to say that the ditch cannot be dug?  Are you a professional ditch digger? Have you been to ditch-digging University? How long have you been digging?”  But what happens if the ditch digger credits his or her own common sense, puts down the shovel, looks up, and says, “If this is the solution, we’ve still got a problem. Isn’t there a better way?”   The willingness, the courage, to credit common sense experience is one of the great well springs of American progress. As Emerson wrote in Self Reliance:
Let us bow and apologize never more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom and trade and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor moving wherever moves a man; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the center of things. Where he is, there is nature.
Something powerful and deeply liberating rises inside us when we have the courage to look up, when we recognize outright failure, or its close cousin, progress that is so slow it amounts to failure. In that difficult moment, we may recognize losses, wastes of time, missed opportunities. But the courage to stop doing what does not work often opens important paths to new strategies. The great leaders of our time have had the courage not only to persist, but also to stay focused on painful reality and to continue to innovate in the face of poor performance. Breakthroughs come when we persist in meeting failure with new strategies.
So what should we tell a scout of the future? Don’t play Sisyphus. Instead, come to work with a commitment to blast that boulder into orbit. And as you do, keep this in mind.  When you’re digging a ditch, look up. And if hard work doesn’t produce meaningful progress, then stop. And go get some dynamite.
Brown Jobs Now!
A Workforce Practitioner’s Plea to Turn Job Creation, Leadership On Its Head.
As a youth workforce development professional for the past 20 years, I have rolled with the punches, promoting and carrying out the order of the day in the effort of preparing youth for the employment world. First, I was told to emphasize pre-employment work maturity competencies, then focus on high stakes high standard testing.  From there I was prompted to help build an employer demand driven workforce system. And now — Green jobs. At this stage, I have grown weary of following an uninformed agenda. How is it that those who don’t work in the field can make up these terms for those who do, as if they have a better read on the young people we serve?
Let’s keep it real for a minute. The young people I work with are facing challenges that reach far beyond the realm of pre-employment work maturity training. Â How do you hold youth accountable to high standards when they’re dealing with the issues of a substandard living system? Â How exactly do you take the hardest to serve, most at-risk youth and turn them into Lockheed Martin’s employee of the month six months later? I may be a lot of things, but magician is not one of those things, and it is that sort of unrealistic thinking that made the employer demand driven workforce system laughable. So now, I can’t help but wonder what miracle they want me to perform with Green Jobs.
Now don’t get me wrong - saving the planet and job creation is a good thing. Many of my colleagues would have me hog-tied and bull-whipped for speaking out against any job creation strategy that would put opportunity in the path of blue collar workers. And I agree. But I think there is something else that we are missing. We’re missing the power and potential of Brown Jobs.
What is a Brown Job? Brown Jobs reflect the ultimate in reciprocity. These are the jobs where the unemployed are trained to help the unemployed, the poor are given the opportunity to help the poor, and the undereducated are trained to educate the uneducated. Â These are the jobs where those that are forgotten and overlooked become the advocates for those who look exactly like they did once upon a time, with the most important aspect of their job is to make sure that they are not overlooked and undervalued again.
Community service, right? Wrong. Brown jobs are career tracked jobs that are tailor-made for the most disenfranchised. Â Do-good students from Ivy League Colleges and Universities looking to spruce up their resumes won’t fit the bill because this type of work requires the ability to relate on a level that goes deeper then something you’ve “read about.”
Why Brown jobs? Simply put, the hard work has to be done by someone and who better than the youth who have lived the struggle? After all, the real battle often takes place in the communities well after the hours of 9 to 5. Who better than youth to fit this bill?
There are none better than the youth we serve to fill in these gaps. Why? Because they are already there! Any youth worker will tell you that our goal is to make sure that when youth leave our program, our program never leaves them. Let’s put these youth to work in Brown jobs, uplifting their peers, community, and improving the educational and workforce system. The benefits for such an investment will be huge. The Brown Job Industry would fulfill the following:
- Sufficient job creation for poor unemployed youth.
- Youth entry-level positions that allow for rapid progression through a combination of experience, education, and on-the job training.
- Long-term benefit within affected communities and the society as a whole.
Leadership Comes From Within
The only way to effectively reach the youth is with help from the youth.
This is a concept we as youth workers have embraced for several years. It only takes a couple of seconds of observation to see the enormity of the gap in communication between the average middle class educator and the young people they are supposed to assist. Instead of considering the road that has been traveled, many educators sit on their side of the table, judging the young person they see on the other side of the table. Â Before properly assessing the situation, acknowledging the challenges that were overcome up to that point, they’d rather declare that they don’t have a chance. They’d rather assume there must be some sort of gang affiliation, or question why they dress or look the way they do.
What they need to say is, “I feel your struggle and I understand your hustle. Let us work together to find a way out of this mess.”
Who understands youth better than youth?
Though I constantly hear clueless policymakers speak about reducing the drop-out rate, solving the unemployment rate, and getting more youth off the streets and into programs, they tend to get quiet when the question of where all these new teachers and support are coming from. They’re talking a good game, but if you can’t deliver, why waste the breath?
It is my opinion that more youth will find more successful, productive work in the human service system than in the green industry, which may lead to nothing more than moving shrubs and clearing bushes. Â The report, 7 Myths about Green Jobs published by the University of Illinois and Case Western University challenges the efficacy of the Green Jobs Model. Programs already have a hard time getting youth off the streets and into the construction labor unions. What makes the Green Industry any different?
There’s one caveat. It is our responsibility to make these jobs permanent and incorporate them into the matrix of our human service system. For the past three years, YDRF has pushed Peer Support Workers (PSWs) as an entry level path to the workforce development system. Groups of trained and paid youth with intent focus on program and peer development activity should adorn every school, GED class and Job Training program. Â The PSW will have a detailed career track to other positions in the organization and within the civil service system.
It should come to us as no surprise that if we keep using traditional measures to select teachers and youth workers, those who fall outside those traditional measures will be discounted and overlooked. Consequently the Ivy League student gets more opportunities to work in the hood than the committed, ex -offender who knows the error of his ways and is committed to making sure no one walks down that path.
If we continue to use these traditional measures for building the human service workforce, we will get the same substandard, lack-luster results we’ve always gotten, and we will deny the opportunity of a new breed of workers to carry the torch to take their peers into the 21st Century, fight injustice, and advocate for those who are undervalued and overlooked.
The new Brown economy is an economy of service to our fellow humans, the ones who need it most. It is ready and waiting for us to put it in force. Let’s put those who’ve been there, back there and watch what happens.
Edward DeJesus is the President and Founder of the Youth Development and Research Fund (www.ydrf.com). Reprint permitted with the author’s expressed permission from the Youth Engagement Blog.
A Little Self-Promotion
KFLA is working on a couple of new posts for you, but we wanted to take a moment for a little self promotion. Â In particular, we want all of you to be aware of the follwing:
- where KFLA can be found in the social media sphere;
- and what things we are currently working on.
Social Media
KFLA has group pages on both LinkedIn and Facebook. Â We set these pages up for you — they are another chance for you to show your affiliations, check on one another and tell the stories that interest you. Â Also, we are starting to gather ideas on podcast themes, so if you have any ideas, just send us a note.
Become our fan
Join the group
Upcoming Events
Here are some of the things that we are working on and hosting.
Call to Action: Immigration -
Denver
September 17-18
Planning meeting
Annual Board Meeting -
Denver
September 30 - October 3
Call to Action: Race & Equity -
Denver
October 8-10
Planning meeting