Exploring ‘GoodWork’
Why do some leaders achieve and maintain high standards of good work when others abandon their humanity for whatever short-term gains come their way? This is one of the questions that the GoodWork Project has been exploring since it began in 1994.
There are basic elements of trust that are necessary to a working society. Trust is so vital that we don’t even realize all the ways that we operate trustingly. The ways that trust is important to good work are very deep and so essential.
GoodWork — a research unit of the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero, the Stanford Center on Adolescence and Claremont Graduate University — is on a mission to identify individuals and institutions that exemplify “good work” and to increase the incidence of work that is excellent in quality, socially responsible and meaningful to its practitioners.
The group has done more than 1,200 interviews with people from a wide variety of different professions — from genetics and journalism to medicine and law to business, education and philanthropy — to determine how, amid changing markets, disruptive technologies and bottom-line demands, professionals do good work.
The project has launched several initiatives aimed at encouraging good work, including a GoodWork Toolkit, a series of materials that discusses the core responsibilities, values and goals for good work. The organization has also embarked on the “Trust & Trustworthiness Project” study to examine how and why people and organizations invest in trust and the means by which trust can be earned and retained.
HOW Online spoke with GoodWork’s Project Manager Lynn Barendsen about what it means to be a “good” professional and why scandals are now cutting across business, society and government.
HOW Online: Was the founding of GoodWork a reaction to something that was happening in the business world?
Lynn Barendsen: When the three principal investigators [Howard Gardner of Harvard, Claremont's Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Stanford's William Damon] first got together, they were reacting [in their individual research] to a lot of things going on within the political world, the business world and the broader culture. They were remarking on a lessening of responsibility and the prevailing market attitude of “government is bad, markets are good, let the market do whatever it will do.” At the same time, what the market was able to do, due to advancing technology, was rapidly expanding, and people didn’t seem to be able to comprehend the full capabilities and consequences of this technology. They were trying to understand what the ramifications were. So the researchers asked, “How will we respond?” “What will happen to professionals — individuals who are given status and autonomy on the presumption that they will make complex judgments in a non-partisan, disinterested way?”
HOW: What does it mean to be a “good” professional and do “good work”?
Barendsen: With the GoodWork Project, we try to define what good work is in a variety of different professions and institutions. We talk about the “Three E’s” — excellence, ethics and engagement in each of these professions. An example of this is [retail company] L.L. Bean. I would say that, from all that I know, L.L. Bean does “good work” because they care deeply about the environment; they are setting themselves up to be a leader in this particular area. They think about the materials that they use to make their products, including recycled materials. They study and think about their employees; they want their employees to feel very involved and care about what it is that they’re doing and to feel that they have a say in the company. They’re trying to encourage other companies within Maine, where they are headquartered, to think about and go beyond Maine. They’re trying to bring other companies along and have a positive influence. I’m not saying that everyone at L.L. Bean is blissful, but for the most part people seem to really enjoy working there. All of those things would make me say that’s “good work.”
HOW: Is it possible to do “good work” without being socially responsible?
Barendsen: My own definition of good work involves being socially responsible. So, no, I don’t think it’s possible.
HOW: So good work is more than just “quality”?
Barendsen: To qualify for good work, you need to exemplify all three of the “E’s” — not just one or two. So, yes, good work means the socially responsible piece as well, thinking about the consequences of the work. And ideally, it means that whoever is doing the good work is engaged in that work and is finding the work meaningful. So to my understanding of good work, no, you can’t do good work if it’s not socially responsible. That’s part of the definition.
HOW: How does GoodWork look at a company’s obligation to social responsibility?
Barendsen: With respect to industry’s role in the broader community, I’d say one argument is that many people feel that a corporation’s obligations are to shareholders and that it’s the shareholders who should be socially responsible. At the GoodWork Project, we feel that a company has an obligation to be responsible, socially, and that its social policy should be an open book. It should be transparent so that those who invest in a particular company know what specifically they are investing in. If would-be shareholders of the company have the opposite corporate philosophy, they should not invest in the socially responsible company.
In the GoodWork Project, in general, we talk a lot about responsibility. One of our latest books, “Responsibility at Work,” is completely about responsibility, and one of the findings is that as people move further on in their careers and their lives, they understand their responsibility in terms of widening spheres. So what would a student versus a professional talk about when we ask them, “To whom or to what do you feel responsible in your work?” What a student would talk about would be vastly different than someone who is near retirement. We all have conceptions of our work, but those conceptions are different, and it’s important to understand those differences. A young person typically talks about responsibility to themselves and to what we call “immediate others,” which would be friends and family. Someone who is much further along in their career would typically talk about responsibility not only to self but to family, to the workplace and to the wider world. When people understand themselves in widening spheres of responsibility, they realize they become more adept at whatever it is that they do and they can have greater impact.
HOW: We’re seeing a number of scandals that cut across business and society and government. So how are we doing, as a country, in doing good work? And how are we, as people in a global community, in doing good work? Are you seeing any trends that indicate that we’re doing better or worse than we have in the past?
Barendsen: Well I have to admit that, lately, [after President Barack Obama's inaugural address] I’m hopeful. His inaugural speech was so aligned with our thinking and beliefs — and Howard quipped the other day — that “we could have written that speech.” President Obama’s talking a lot about civic responsibility — that each of us needs to take on some difficult tasks and that we don’t exist in a vacuum - to talk about what each of us can do. We’re hopeful, and certainly some of the early regulations that he’s thinking about, with respect to lobbying and a push toward transparency, can only be positive steps.
As far as the rest of the world is concerned, and the U.S. in general, we’re not doing that great. We have found there is much more interest in good work pretty much everywhere other than the United States. There are more people contacting us from all over the world than there are from within the United States, with the exception of educators who know Project Zero, the research organization within which the GoodWork Project is housed. But with that exception, people around the U.S. haven’t really found the project, and the press has paid very little attention to our work in the United States as compared to other countries.
HOW: Why do you think that is?
Barendsen: Howard says that the dominant metaphor is that “the market knows all and that regulation is inherently bad.” That metaphor needs to be changed, and certainly our new president has started to think in these terms. There are societies that are better at good work. I would say some are more challenged; in general, there are many more countries interested in these issues outside of the United States than within the United States. I think of Scandinavia, particularly Denmark and Sweden. That said, there are some U.S. companies doing really terrific, socially positive things. There are many good-work places within the United States, and there may be more examples of individual companies doing good things here than elsewhere.
HOW: Do you think one of the reasons why there’s not as much interest in some of these issues in the U.S. is because we think differently in the workplace?
Barendsen: I think there is something about an “American frame of mind” that has to do with independence, that has to do with, “We’re all going to figure this out and we shouldn’t come up with one solution but let individuals work it for themselves.” I think that’s an idea that doesn’t necessarily always work. Especially with our current economic crisis, there haven’t been enough controls put on the market and on our economic system. So I think that “love of freedom” that is so American can really hurt us when it’s applied to our business world. That said, I’m not advocating complete controls; I think there must be a happy medium somewhere.
HOW: What do you see as the role of this new administration in inspiring good work?
Barendsen: “Inspiring” is the key word here. We’re a country that’s really hungry to be inspired right now, and I’m hoping that people will be patient and give President Obama a chance because he’s got a really hard task ahead of him. He needs to inspire and he needs to set a good example. I am hopeful that by setting a good example, setting some good standards and changing how we think about education and what we’re doing with our environment, that some very positive change could happen.
HOW: Even though business appears to be talking more about transparency, there seems to be a major breakdown of trust that’s going on in business. Since GoodWork does a lot of work and research related to trust, why do you view trust as being so important?
Barendsen: I don’t think that good work is possible if there isn’t trust. Trust enables communication and cooperation; when there isn’t trust, individuals aren’t going to work together.
We found in our “Trust & Trustworthiness Project” that young people don’t trust distant figures or institutions; they don’t trust politicians; they don’t trust government bodies in general. Young people trust their immediate others — they turn to their friends, often before their family. The Internet has changed perceptions of trust. Young people are thinking about their identities differently, their conceptions differently, how they describe or define themselves on Facebook or on MySpace, whatever game they might be playing — they can constantly change their identity.
I don’t think that the impact of that is going to be tiny. There’s a whole generation of what’s been called “digital natives,” and later generations don’t really get it. Individuals are operating differently and conceptions of trust are really changing.
There are basic elements of trust that are necessary to a working society. For example, you trust that people will stop at stop lights. You trust that this piece of paper actually means money. Trust is so vital that we don’t even realize all the ways that we operate trustingly. The ways that trust is important to good work are very deep and so essential.
HOW: What are some of the ways of re-engaging that trust, rebuilding that trust, so that good work can happen?
Barendsen: Developing good work and good citizenship in a distrustful time is our challenge. The example set by our nation in recent years has been largely a toxic one, and people don’t trust us. And in the same way the new administration is trying to rebuild trust in our nation, we are trying to build trust in our young people and get them excited about the future and about possibility — and to really get them to care.
We did work in a local school a few years ago around the issue of honesty. We worked with the school for a full year on the question of “Why be honest?” Inherent in that question was the understanding that being honest is actually really difficult. If it were easy, we would probably all do it more often. We surveyed the students to find out when they had been honest — if they had ever used study guides, CliffsNotes or SparkNotes; if they had ever lied to a friend about her outfit and told her they liked it when they did not. There was a series of questions. The last question was, “Do you consider yourself an honest person?” The students said, “Yes, I’ve lied to my friends about outfits; yes, I’ve used CliffsNotes; yes, I’ve lied to my parents about something or other; and, yes I do consider myself an honest person.” This is because honesty is really hard.
All of this culminated in a town meeting where the entire student body was in the auditorium and students could stand up and talk about what they felt with respect to honesty, and trust was very much a part of that.
One student stood up and said — and this was a few years ago, under a different administration — “Why are we supposed to be honest when the examples that we see set by our politicians and by business leaders are anything but that, and they’re doing really well and they lie left and right. Why am I supposed to be honest? If that’s the way that the world operates, who says that I’m supposed be honest in everything that I say and do?”
Another student stood up and challenged him and said, “Honesty is like a muscle, and if you don’t use it on a regular basis, it’s going to atrophy. It’s not the kind of thing you can turn on and turn off.”
The major takeaway from that is that our young people really do look to our leaders. They really do say, “They’re lying, and why should I be different?” I think if we have positive, inspirational examples, a lot of change might actually be possible.
HOW: What happens to the research that GoodWork does? What do you do to impart this to students or companies? What is the ultimate goal of all this information?
Barendsen: That’s a big question. The answer is that we want more people to be good. We decided many years ago that maybe all we need is a bumper sticker that says, “Just Be Good.” If only it were that simple. We have written many articles and quite a few books, and that gets the word out to a small community. More recently, we have been trying to work directly with schools and with individuals in a variety of settings to encourage good work.
HOW: How does your Toolkit encourage social responsibility?
Barendsen: In terms of what the Toolkit does to encourage responsibility, I’m confident in saying that it makes people think differently about their behavior. The Toolkit is made up of case studies and short stories about individuals struggling with ethical issues of one kind or another and trying to make difficult decisions. They’re all true stories, from a variety of professions, and that’s why people have found them very compelling. They are not the kinds of ethical dilemmas that you read about in Philosophy 101, which seem really hard to get a handle on. They’re real, and people can relate to real-world situations.
Here’s an example of a particular case: A young woman is a high school journalist in a very competitive private school. She’s the editor of her high school newspaper, and she’s struggling with the issue of trying to decide whether she should report about alleged rapes on campus. When she is set to report on these alleged crimes, she is told by her adviser that the school will not buy any copies of the newspaper if she prints the story. The paper is dependent on the revenue from the school’s purchase of the newspapers, and without the funds, they will not have enough money to produce the paper in the future. She is also advised by faculty that printing the story will threaten the recommendations she needs to get into college. She comes from a journalistic tradition: Her grandfather worked for The New York Times. Yet her sibling in the school is getting embarrassed by the situation.
We talk about this kind of a case with students to get them to think about their various roles. The young woman has a role as an editor. She has a role as a student. She has a responsibility as a granddaughter to a grandfather whom she greatly loves and respects. Also, she has an obligation as a sister. She feels responsibility to herself to do what she feels is right. She feels responsibility to her school, to her classmates. She feels responsibility to her family and to her ideas.
This is the kind of case that gets people to think about who they are in a particular situation, what their various roles and responsibilities are and to get them to think beyond themselves.
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