Show Your Work
In the 7th grade, I had a math teacher named Barry Soffin.
Mr. Soffin always insisted that we show our work.
You couldn’t just come up with the right answer. You had to demonstrate how you’d gotten there. It kind of sucked.
My Seventh Grade Math Teacher, Mr. Barry Soffin, with two of his kids during the 1980’s. (credit: Daniel Soffin)
Little did I realize that by insisting I show my work, Mr. Soffin was doing a few things at once.
First, he was making sure my fundamental approach to the problem was right— ensuring that I was actually learning the process.
Second, he was making sure I, at worst, didn’t cheat or, at best, didn’t just randomly guess.
And third, he was teaching me an important lesson about transparency:
That transparency in the process will help the outcome of that process.
Just like in seventh-grade math class: if we don’t show our work, we don’t get full credit. Whether we’re a leader of 15 or 1,500 people, or making decisions on behalf of an international community, we need to show our work. Without it, we won’t get full marks, no matter the outcomes of our efforts.
The public expects and demands transparency throughout our decision-making process. And without that, we’ll lose out on their trust and support.
We live in a world where the former President updated the public 33 times PER DAY* on his Twitter feed. He provided us every waking thought that ran through his mind or that he wanted us to know/think. Whether we like it or not, it’s now what we expect from our leaders.
All of my experiences have been telling me one thing for the past few years: the times, as well as our audiences, have changed. And we all need to keep up.
The number one thing I hear from my team at Classroom Champions is - “we want to understand the strategy more, what the plan to accomplish it is, and we want to hear as much as you can share.”
The number one thing I hear from the athletes that I represent on the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee Board is - see above paragraph.
Those are two very different audiences with different roles and completely different relationships to me. And the frequency/intensity of the requests for more information is approximately 2-3x what it would have been just five years ago.
It’s not just me - my peers tell me they’re seeing the same thing.
(The underlying conditions for this are certainly deeper than a President tweeting. To dive deeper, here’s a fantastic piece from The Atlantic titled AMERICA IS HAVING A MORAL CONVULSION.)
Regardless, the days of getting all of the work done behind the scenes and then revealing the final result are long gone. I’m finding that people expect to be a part of the process. They, oftentimes very rightly, feel entitled to that information and to be a part of the decision-making process. And you know what I’m seeing as a result?
The end products are BETTER.
More communication and sharing of the work being done yields more timely and relevant feedback, more unity, and ultimately more projects that are setup to succeed due to broader support.
Yes, it’s more work. It means needing to take more time and share what’s going on more frequently. Which sometimes is difficult when you’re the one with the knowledge. It’s easy for me to forget what I have and haven’t shared!
But in the end, just like taking Mr. Soffin’s math test or competing at the Olympics, we play to win.
So if sharing our work more is a bigger part of the winning equation than ever before - sign me up!
For more on this subject, I lifted a bit of the above from a blog I wrote last year. Dive deeper and read why Harvard gets their ethics course dead wrong in my mind, here.
- Steve
