Management gurus often talk about the parable of “The Fox and the Hedgehog.” The Fox knows a little about a lot of things. The Hedgehog knows just one big thing, and she knows it very well. The Fox is more glamorous and sleek as it bounds from place to place, but the humble Hedgehog stays focused on a clear concept and is more likely than the Fox to succeed in her mission.
I am no management guru and I have no transformative expertise to offer in the many skills required of managers. But I have one clear simple idea that might work for many social work managers today. I am a Hedgehog. You might want to be one too.
Imagine it is 1965 and instead of a social work manager you are a corporate hiring and training manager. You have problems. Your company needs highly skilled and motivated workers and you are having trouble finding enough good men.
The men you have are working too much overtime. The men are getting frazzled and fatigued. The men’s work quality is slipping. Customers are starting to complain.
All you need is men with talent. You can train new men in the specific skills the jobs require. But where are the men? Where are the men you so desperately need?
You are starting to hear rumblings about women wanting to enter your industry. Sure, maybe a few of them. But most of them just want to file their nails and eat bon-bons and watch soap operas and gossip with their friends on the phone. And even if there are a lot of them who say they want jobs, that will never work. You know how women are. They’re all so manipulative! And they could never do the job the way men do it. What your people do is man’s work. Besides, women would drop out of the training program as soon as they saw what it really took. We love and respect them, of course, but they are just irresponsible. And anyhow, your current workers do not want to work with women. Men have enough of women at home!
What are you going to do to recruit the talent you need?
What did we do?
Starting in the 1960s, corporate hiring and training managers underwent a huge transformation in the way American businesses treated women. There was resistance, there was turmoil, there was disruption and displacement, but we got over it and we got to a better place. American businesses stopped wasting talent just because it was female.
Today, children, families and communities are struggling. If we listen, we can hear that men want to be hired and trained to help in our industry. They have the drive and the talent to help families thrive, to help neighborhoods be safe and strong, to help children grow up healthy and happy.
Many women did not want to be stuck at home or in low-level jobs; many men do not want to be stuck outside the family, in subservient parenting roles, or marginalized in their communities. They want to be respected for more than the money they make.
Opening up business jobs to women did more than just give them employment and put dollars in their pockets. It completely reconfigured cultural notions of what women—even women who did not want or need jobs—should and could be. Changing business changed women, and changing women changed business—in a virtuous cycle that continues to this day. We can do the same in a virtuous cycle of interactions between Social Work and men.
If we are unhappy that men are too often cold, irresponsible, immature, undependable—recall your experience (“enough of them!”), name your stereotype (“they’re all so violent!)—we need to be their hiring and training managers for jobs in which they get respect and rewards for being gentle, reliable, warm and nurturing. In our everyday decisions, in our planning, in our policies and programs, our treatments and services, we are, in effect, making decisions about hiring and training people to be parents, and more broadly, to be engaged, effective, community citizens. Men are not going to prepare themselves for those jobs if they are not going to be hired to do them, and be rewarded and respected for their efforts.
Social work managers are looking for innovations. Let’s critically, honestly, candidly, unflinchingly examine what we think of men. And if we see that we have not exactly lived up to our Code of Ethics where men are concerned—being aware of our biases, respecting the dignity and worth of the person, and recognizing the central importance of human relationships in men’s lives, for instance—let’s pursue two avenues for improvement: 1) let’s reach out to men and actively, affirmatively make sure they know that we want them to come for training and that they will be respected and treated fairly in our hiring decisions; 2) let’s reach in to our staffs and work hard to change a social work culture that sometimes treats men as unsuited or inferior for the family and community work that needs to be done.
That is what a Hedgehog might do. It is an innovation we need, a strategy we can grow with, a formula for enhancing our value to the society that funds and pays us. Easier said than done, I know. But you said you were looking for a challenge, didn’t you?
This blog was originally published by the Network for Social Work Management as part of the Monday Morning Manager series.
I am no management guru and I have no transformative expertise to offer in the many skills required of managers. But I have one clear simple idea that might work for many social work managers today. I am a Hedgehog. You might want to be one too.
Imagine it is 1965 and instead of a social work manager you are a corporate hiring and training manager. You have problems. Your company needs highly skilled and motivated workers and you are having trouble finding enough good men.
The men you have are working too much overtime. The men are getting frazzled and fatigued. The men’s work quality is slipping. Customers are starting to complain.
All you need is men with talent. You can train new men in the specific skills the jobs require. But where are the men? Where are the men you so desperately need?
You are starting to hear rumblings about women wanting to enter your industry. Sure, maybe a few of them. But most of them just want to file their nails and eat bon-bons and watch soap operas and gossip with their friends on the phone. And even if there are a lot of them who say they want jobs, that will never work. You know how women are. They’re all so manipulative! And they could never do the job the way men do it. What your people do is man’s work. Besides, women would drop out of the training program as soon as they saw what it really took. We love and respect them, of course, but they are just irresponsible. And anyhow, your current workers do not want to work with women. Men have enough of women at home!
What are you going to do to recruit the talent you need?
What did we do?
Starting in the 1960s, corporate hiring and training managers underwent a huge transformation in the way American businesses treated women. There was resistance, there was turmoil, there was disruption and displacement, but we got over it and we got to a better place. American businesses stopped wasting talent just because it was female.
Today, children, families and communities are struggling. If we listen, we can hear that men want to be hired and trained to help in our industry. They have the drive and the talent to help families thrive, to help neighborhoods be safe and strong, to help children grow up healthy and happy.
Many women did not want to be stuck at home or in low-level jobs; many men do not want to be stuck outside the family, in subservient parenting roles, or marginalized in their communities. They want to be respected for more than the money they make.
Opening up business jobs to women did more than just give them employment and put dollars in their pockets. It completely reconfigured cultural notions of what women—even women who did not want or need jobs—should and could be. Changing business changed women, and changing women changed business—in a virtuous cycle that continues to this day. We can do the same in a virtuous cycle of interactions between Social Work and men.
If we are unhappy that men are too often cold, irresponsible, immature, undependable—recall your experience (“enough of them!”), name your stereotype (“they’re all so violent!)—we need to be their hiring and training managers for jobs in which they get respect and rewards for being gentle, reliable, warm and nurturing. In our everyday decisions, in our planning, in our policies and programs, our treatments and services, we are, in effect, making decisions about hiring and training people to be parents, and more broadly, to be engaged, effective, community citizens. Men are not going to prepare themselves for those jobs if they are not going to be hired to do them, and be rewarded and respected for their efforts.
Social work managers are looking for innovations. Let’s critically, honestly, candidly, unflinchingly examine what we think of men. And if we see that we have not exactly lived up to our Code of Ethics where men are concerned—being aware of our biases, respecting the dignity and worth of the person, and recognizing the central importance of human relationships in men’s lives, for instance—let’s pursue two avenues for improvement: 1) let’s reach out to men and actively, affirmatively make sure they know that we want them to come for training and that they will be respected and treated fairly in our hiring decisions; 2) let’s reach in to our staffs and work hard to change a social work culture that sometimes treats men as unsuited or inferior for the family and community work that needs to be done.
That is what a Hedgehog might do. It is an innovation we need, a strategy we can grow with, a formula for enhancing our value to the society that funds and pays us. Easier said than done, I know. But you said you were looking for a challenge, didn’t you?
This blog was originally published by the Network for Social Work Management as part of the Monday Morning Manager series.
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