Work for systemic change but don't wait for it

The third, and people's least favorite, fundamental principle of intentional academia

Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash

The last two weeks I’ve been writing about the three core principles that thread through my own thinking about an intentional approach to life and work in academia, and by association also are the common thread through most of the posts at this newsletter. The first core principle was Control the Controllables: Figure out what’s within your sphere of control and then impose control on it. The second was Take Small Steps Within Coherent Systems: Adopt frameworks of action that allow you to do something small, consistently, and in which those small wins add up over time. Both (in my view, and many others’) quite sensible ways of going about life, and not particularly controversial.

The third core principle is different. Some people don’t like this one.

When I’ve talked or written about the other two principles, the responses are, on average, mildly approving, like a polite but quiet round of applause. But today’s principle sometimes evokes visceral reactions. It’s challenging, and not everyone accepts it. But all the other core principles seem to make their way back to this idea eventually. So while I’ve not been looking forward to posting this article, I think it’s necessary because like it or not, it truly is an essential, core principle to intentional approaches to academia.

Work for systemic change, but don’t wait for it

Let me repeat that: Work for systemic change, but don’t wait for it.

What this means is:

• We acknowledge that higher education has widespread, critical systemic flaws today and that everything we do as professionals in that system is done in the context of these flaws.

• We also acknowledge that the work that you read about here, intentional approaches to life and career in academia, are real work that takes time and effort, done on top of the day-to-day work in academia that is already overwhelming for many.

• We also acknowledge that one of the systemic flaws in higher education is inequity, and this work of being intentional about life and work is greater, and far less simple, for some than it is for others, and this unfairness is real and just one of the many flaws mentioned above.

So far so good. Here’s the part that a lot of people don’t like:

• This system is very likely not getting fixed any time soon, to any extent that makes this work significantly easier or more equitable, so fair or otherwise, the work falls on individuals.

Based on decades of interactions with faculty and other higher ed folk, I truly believe we are all in agreement on the first three points. The point of divergence happens in the last point, which is essentially the question, What are going to do about the first three points?

In my view there are only three answers to this question:

1. Do the work of intentional academia regardless of the system: The system is too big and too broken to fix, and in the meanwhile we have lives and careers that need tending.

2. Insist on systemic change, before engaging in the work of intentional academia: Refuse to engage in behaviors that reward a broken system, because the whole thing is, as the saying goes, like a pie-eating contest where the award for first place is more pie.

3. Engage in that work in ways that work for you, in increasing levels of control, and use it as a means of pushing systemic change.

The catchphrase Work for systemic change but don’t wait for it is my way of saying that Answer #3 is the right one. Let me go deeper on why I think the other two answers are not right.

The problem with “Do the work regardless of the system”

One approach to being intentional about life and work in academia is to talk about workflows, life hacks, tools, and so on as things we overlay onto the existing system of higher education. For example, a person could present GTD as a methodology of getting things done in higher education without questioning why those things are getting done in the first place or how we might push back on the influx of “things” to get done. Just do these steps and get more done, and don’t concern yourself with what you cannot control.

I will never advocate for this position, on purpose. That’s because this position is the very opposite of intentionality. It is a mindless application of productivity systems that don’t address the fundamental questions: Why are we getting all this work in the first place? Who is giving it out? And to what end?

In my view, any advice about productivity or purpose that does not at some point take concrete steps to eliminate pointless work at the source, is likely to be more like an advertisement for something than truly useful advice. In fact, this is probably why so many of the articles about GTD and other productivity systems are published by the makers of apps designed to implement GTD — for a low, low yearly subscription.

The problem with “Systemic change must come first”

Here is a recent Twitter exchange that started when I lightheartedly suggested that academics should take Thanksgiving break off from grading:

What a weird mix of fierce independence and learned helplessness: Don’t tell me what to do! That’s the system’s job!

But I don’t completely disagree with this line of thinking. As mentioned, we acknowledge that higher education has structural issues. If anything, it’s worse than people like my Twitter friend here often make it out to be. Having worked in higher education for 30 years, and in relatively high places and across many institutions for the last 10, I've seen "the system" up close. Believe me: You might be underestimating things. To simply leave this issues unaddressed is unwise.

The problem comes in when we say that not only must we address structural failures (which is true), we cannot and should not expect faculty to take on the work of intentional academia until these are addressed. This is a bad idea, for three reasons.

First: Systemic change in higher education is slow. This needs no explanation to anyone who has actually been in the system more than one year. In fact, it really only takes a week or so to realize just how glacial the pace of change is. Higher education is often described as being a bastion of liberal thought, but in fact it is perhaps the most conservative undertaking in history, surpassing even institutions like the Catholic Church¹ in its dogged adherence to “what we’ve always done”.

Many institutions today, when faced with a very simple task that should take an hour — for example, creating a survey to send to faculty to gauge their views on some decision — feel the need to create a committee, to look into creating a taskforce, that will look intro drafting the survey, which will be run by the provost (and maybe another committee) at some point in early 2026, at which point the university will start thinking about when to send something out (in maybe 2027 once “all voices have been heard”)².

Whether you view this fundamental slowness as a feature or a bug is not really the point. The point is that things happen very slowly around here. In fact:

Second: There is little reason to believe that any meaningful change in higher education is going to happen at all. I don’t mean this as a cynical remark. I mean it as a plain fact obtained by taking a look around.

Who, exactly, is going to bring about these systemic changes, and address these structural failures?

• The government? If anything, that system is somehow even more broken, slow, and distant from meaningful changes than higher education is.

• The senior leadership team at the university? Many of these teams are the very heart of the dysfunction in the system. Even when leadership is smart, ambitious, and well-meaning (like the senior leadership team at my university, with whom I’ve worked closely for several years) their ideas and plans have to filter through all those dysfunctional layers.

• The faculty senate? These bodies are often the mirror image of senior leadership — sometimes the epicenter of dysfunction, sometimes smart and capable but hampered by poor senior leadership. Either way, senior leadership and faculty governance are often in open conflict with each other, meaning that serious movement on change is unrealistic to expect.

• Deans or department chairs? Being closer to the day-to-day lives of faculty actually makes it more likely that these folks can do some good, compared to folks higher up. But despite my respect for those positions, the fact is that typically these are not generally positions of leadership, but rather management, and the difference is profound.³

I believe it is a grave mistake to believe that anyone or anything is coming along to make the work of intentional academia any easier or less burdensome. Nobody is coming to the rescue.⁴

Third: Meanwhile, life goes on. All of us live in the real world, in the here and now. There are children to raise, relatives to care for, physical health to maintain, interests and hobbies to cultivate, house projects that need attention, trips to organize, books to read, retirements to plan. This doesn’t even mention the dreams we have for our careers. You are free to adopt the strategy of not taking on the work of being intentional until structural issues are addressed. But the clock and calendar don’t care. Life is happening anyway. There is only the choice of whether you are going to be mindful about it or not.

A third way

It’s unwise to simply overlay productivity hacks onto a system that is fundamentally dysfunctional and continues to push you around with unending work. It’s unrealistic to exempt yourself from approaching that work intentionally until the system stops pushing you around. So what is to be done?

Go back to the question from above: Who, exactly, is going to bring about systemic change, and address structural failures? You probably already knew the real answer before I gave the bullet list. The answer is you are. Or rather, we are.

The history of higher education is not exactly riddled with success stories of positive, significant systemic change, but there are a few. In my discipline of mathematics, the “calculus reform” movement of the 1990’s is a notable example. Briefly, prior to the 1990’s, university calculus was taught in a way that focused on lecture, and mastery of hand-calculations. But in that decade, the rise of cheap computing technology and a growing sense that college students were learning how to do calculations but not understanding what they meant, led to a movement to reform the way that subject is taught. Leading this movement was Harvard professor Deborah Hughes-Hallett, who co-wrote a new calculus textbook featuring this reformed approach, later to be known as “Harvard Calculus”. In hindsight, there are features of the Harvard calculus approach that may be questionable⁵. What is not questionable was that the Harvard calculus approach and the book that presented it, led to a sea change in how all undergraduate math is taught, overturning literally centuries of traditional instruction and leading to something that, on balance and in my opinion, is vastly superior to what it replaced.

Calculus reform is similar to most other positive, significant systemic change movements in higher education, in at least one way: They start with a small group of individuals committed to trying things out themselves and seeing their actions through to the end.

The institution, or college or department, can make those individuals’ work easier or harder — a point I’ve noted already. But also noted already, the institution cannot be expected to do that work for them. If it tried, we’d probably end up with yet another task force to determine a committee to convene a task force⁶.

But in order for individuals’ work to really lead to positive systemic change, there has to be a counterbalancing force that pushes back against the system, otherwise we are back to “Do the work regardless of the system”. I think GTD and other coherent systems are exactly the right platform for this. The formula has two parts:

• Do your job and do it well. I am not going to advocate for malicious compliance or anti-work. Doing your work — teaching, research, service — with excellence, and yes, with productivity, builds capital in addition to being personally satisfying and helpful to others. A smart administrator⁷ will be quite reluctant to fire or censure the best teacher in the department, or the most prolific researcher, or the most reliable player. Adopting habits like those found in GTD, along with the other core principles of controlling the controllables and taking small steps within coherent systems makes it easier for your work to grow and shine.

• But do it within boundaries you define, and do not step out from behind those boundaries. But I am also never going to say that you should do every single work request that is put in front of you, or worse, invent work requests that weren’t there. It’s your life, and you get a say in when, where, and to what extent the work happens. Determine what you would like your life, ideally, to look like, Write out your goals at Horizon 5 and Horizon 4. Then say “yes” to things that align with those, and say “no” to those that don’t unless there is some very good reason.

These two parts go together. Being excellent in your work, and seeking out ways to improve and grow, gives you professional capital that can insulate you from people who don’t like that you are stating clear boundaries and respecting them. Setting those boundaries in return, gives you more time and space to learn and grow.

“But I’ll get fired/bad evaluations/negative performance reviews if I do this.” You might. But have you tried? What happened when you tried? If you have not tried, then consider the possibility that you are merely experiencing resistance and that this concern is not based on actual fact.

“But I am already tired/busy/overwhelmed.” You might be. That’s why I advocate taking small steps within coherent systems. Small wins are wins, and Rome wasn’t built in a day. Also, consider the possibility that the way out of exhaustion and overwhelm leads through taking a hard look at what you are currently doing and just not doing some of those things any more. At least, consider the possibility that there is, actually, a way out. Again, have you tried? What happened when you tried?

Finally, and importantly, as noted systemic change happens with not strictly with individuals but with small groups of individuals — people committed to working outside the system, making things happen for themselves but not by themselves. One of my great hopes for this newsletter is that it can become for you a source of people who are emerging from the shadows of our deeply broken higher education system and coming together in this way.

Conclusion

Again, some people don’t like this axiom that I’ve written about today. I hope that if that’s you, you’ll see this article not as some tenured full professor telling you how to live your life. I’m not, and I have no authority anyway. Instead, I hope you take this idea as a hopeful sign, that we neither have to accept the systemic problems of higher education nor disengage from our work to fix them. You really can have it all if you are willing to think intentionally.

Etc.

This post is long enough, so I will just leave you with my musical selection today: A blistering cover of the Howlin’ Wolf blues classic “Killing Floor” by Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash, with vocals from Brian Johnson of AC/DC. (If you know AC/DC’s hits, you might be surprised that Johnson’s natural singing voice is low and gravelly, like Howlin’ Wolf’s, and not high and screaming as on “Back in Black”.) Stick around for the surprise cameo at the harmonica solo.

1. And I say this as a Catholic with all due affection to the Church.

2. Like Dave Barry, I am not making this up.

3. To clarify: As a former department chair myself, I have nothing but respect for the work that deans and chairs do. But in my experience, the primary role there is not to lead change but to manage it: For example to take care of the fine details and unintended consequences of the initiatives approved (somehow, after being stuck in committees and task forces) by the provost or faculty senate, and to help faculty do their jobs. It’s in that second part that I think deans and chairs have the biggest and best roles to play.

4. There are other possible players in the life of a university that might be even more powerful than any of these in the list, namely: donors, alumni, and parents. When one of these groups gets it in their mind to pressure a university to change something, it can be shocking how fast it happens. I’m not sure any of these would ever be truly invested in faculty productivity and purpose, but if they ever did, then watch out. I do not include students here because although students do indeed have far more power than they often realize, like faculty groups their influence has to filter through a lot of dysfunctional layers.

5. I was in graduate school at Vanderbilt, and teaching calculus as a grad assistant, during this time. It’s hard to overstate how divisive the Harvard Calculus book was at the time. Despite being a very traditional department, many faculty embraced the “conceptual understanding” approach. Others… did not. There were sometimes shouting matches, and faculty-meeting battles to control how we grad students were to teach the subject. In the end, we used the uber-traditional Stewart Calculus book, which is still being used there in some classes.

6. In fact I suspect sometimes people convene these task forces, committees, etc. precisely to bury any spark of real action or change — a form of resistance.

7. N.B., not all administrators are smart.