Organizations that rely on the public trust must build trust from within to earn the reputation of trustworthiness.  Treatment of people creates an aura of trust or distrust.  It’s not arbitrary.  Human groups give and receive trust:  It is a two-way street built brick by brick, one decent act after another.
“The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust.”
— Henry L. Stimson —
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By Walter V. Wendler

Chaffee College, a California community college, recently dismissed adjunct faculty member and at-will employee Stefan Veldhuis a few hours before his scheduled class meeting, according to a post in Inside HigherEd by Colleen Flaherty last week.  Veldhuis claims he was a whistleblower in reporting inappropriate sexual activity and subsequently charged with inappropriate sexual activity himself. Retaliation?  Who knows?

Walter V. Wendler

As campuses lean ever increasingly towards part-time and adjunct faculty, giving and receiving trust to/from them is paramount.  Trust and decency are important for all and no contract provision for/by anyone provides it.

Employees at institutions of public trust may be terminated for cause. Universities should be public trust enterprises but trust evaporates in high temperature political monkey business along with diminished rewards for excellence, lackluster focus on teaching and scholarship, higher costs for less valuable experiences, and lower performance expectations. A dismissal might build trust by “doing the right thing” as opposed to expedient, trust rotting actions driven by fear, politics or cronyism.  Low and small-minded administrative behavior creates apprehension and suspicion. Not trust.
It’s difficult to know about the Chaffee case. The dismissal of a faculty member a few hours before class is strong medicine that voids a contract in existence since the beginning of the semester between a faculty member and students. The contract between a university and faculty member is a detail of employment law.  As important in a teaching/learning environment is the moral contract between teacher and students.

In all likelihood, this faculty member presented a syllabus that laid out expectations for the semester:  attendance and grading policies, tests, papers, expectations and means of assessment; a contract of sorts.  For the institution to annul that honorable agreement, an egregious violation of deep principle, a matter of law, or malfeasance should have occurred and been revealed plainly to the faculty member, even when employed at-will.  At Chaffee, this may or may not be the case.
Here is what I do know.

Stolen trust demeans faculty, staff, students and the institution while reeking of capricious, arbitrary, and/or prejudicial decision-making.  Institutions have an obligation to treat employees with decency and respect. Employees who engage in the high contact, emotionally laden setting of teaching, have an obligation to everyone, including the university, which demands decency.

It’s a two-way street. Meghan M. Biro, in a June 4, 2012, post in Forbes, says “Model the behaviors you seek… accept your responsibility as a leader and act with engagement, commitment and responsibility. Do this every day.”  Faculty members who violate given trust by engaging in inappropriate relationships of any kind with students, under any circumstances, represent fundamental abuses of power and shouldn’t be tolerated. Likewise, legal improprieties also should be grounds for immediate termination.  Teaching absent trust is wasted and wanting.

If, on the other hand, someone like Professor Veldhuis reports in good faith what he honestly believes is an impropriety, he should be held harmless. INC. ran a story by Geoffrey James earlier this month with this admonition, “Tell the truth. Employees realize there’s stuff you can’t share, like what you’re paying other people.  However, employees always find out when you do something underhanded…”  Untrusting leaders lead poorly, if at all.
Too many universities have become domiciles for dime store despots who demonstrate little understanding of the vitality trust and decency play as the bedrock of teaching and learning.

A university blind to the necessity of transparency is flawed. A faculty member not cognizant of his or her responsibility to build trust misses the first calling of teaching.

Trust is a two-way street to decency.

Sixth and final reflection on corporate culture…

Nurturing a strong organizational culture is the only job that matters. Without the power of a positive shared experience, selfishness and happenstance rule not vision or purpose.

“A company’s culture is often buried so deeply inside rituals, assumptions, attitudes, and values that it becomes transparent to an organization’s members only when, for some reason, it changes.”

— Rob Goffee —
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By Walter Wendler

Healthy organizations promote effectiveness through proactive leadership. Unhealthy organizations sap initiative and good intentions from all. The following six precepts have application in any setting where two or more people aspire to common goals.

First, be willing and able to present your point of view to make the enterprise more successful in attaining its goals. Never compromise your perspective. Thoughtful and informed discussion, even disagreement, is not antagonistic but stokes the heart of an organization.  Krystal Barron in a May 23, 2013 post on The American Genius suggests five ways to argue fairly in the workplace.  These are nearly self evident. Focus on the positives, don’t take criticism personally, set up a framework for discussion, don’t be a gossip, and don’t participate in workplace gossip. The difference between a productive discussion and denigrating the culture of the workplace is a fine line that gets crossed, by design or default, daily.

Second, do everything you can to build confidence in organizational purpose by supporting forward-looking ideas. Purposeful confidence is not decoration but the integrated result of the work of many.  Consistent determination to improve creates confidence. Carmine Gallo, communications coach and author of “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to be Insanely Great In Front of Any Audience”, identifies key differences between confidence, and arrogance. Arrogant people have little regard for anyone or anything outside of self.  He suggests arrogant people are the last ones to “fess up” to their own mistakes.  Arrogance focuses inward on the individual while confidence focuses outward on the organization.

Third, contribute to the positive perspective in the workplace even when it’s difficult. It is easy to be a cheerleader when the team is winning. The real test of good citizenship is what happens when the culture is challenged by defeat, scarcity, misstep, poor leadership or occurrences caustic to a healthy culture. According to a 2010 post on the website Incentive, What Motivates, Michael Ryan says the value of uplifting people’s efforts, even when they are not successful, is irrefutable. I don’t believe Ryan is suggesting dispensing “faint praise” at the water-cooler, but sincere appreciation for hard work.

Fourth, encourage and support the people you work with. On any day all of us may be difficult to be with. Develop a perspective that allows you to look past individual frailty for everyone you work with: Encourage up, encourage out, and encourage down.  This may sound like Pollyanna to members of work organizations where there is incessant strife, favoritism, envy and other trappings of human nature. Larry Downes, CEO of New Jersey Resources, speaking to Harvard Business Publishing, said that leadership is alive, vibrant and personal and every member of an organization must be engaged as a leader. This implies that we are all edifying, encouraging and challenging each other forward.

Fifth, make yourself proud of the place you work. Some days that’s not easy.  That is why it’s called work.  International Business Times reported last week in a study conducted by People Management that claims two fifths of employees are not proud to work for the organization that signs their checks. That’s down from almost one half from last year.  It’s sad: Workplace pride is a self fulfilling prophecy.

Sixth, “boy-scout” the workplace. The Boy Scout rule, “Always leave the campground cleaner than you found it,” could be applied every day in every workplace. It’s a simple admonition that would go a long way to create positive corporate culture.  If leadership doesn’t give you a reason to do it, find it inside yourself as a personal mission. It will make you feel better about the place you work, and those you work with.
These simple observations will help make any workplace culture stronger and distribute leadership:  not by leading from behind, or leading from below or above, but by everyone leading from within.

Fifth in a series on Corporate Culture…
Where we work shapes us, our work, and those we work with.  Places create culture.

“I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.”

Abraham Lincoln
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By Walter Wendler

Organizations, like trees, have roots.  Roots tie people to places.  Geography and buildings impact the culture of an organization. The Catholic Church outside of Rome, Islam without Mecca, and Hewlett-Packard outside Silicon Valley are difficult to imagine.  Parings provide frameworks.  It’s a two-way street too:  Detroit without Chrysler is not easy to envision.

Some leaders have dubbed college campuses dinosaurs: Among them, James Duderstadt, president emeritus of the University of Michigan and early prophet of the impact that distance learning would have on higher education. President Duderstadt was correct in every respect except one: Campuses of research universities will not whither.  For research universities the power of place will multiply because of the Internet, not in spite of it.  The campus as a signpost of academic energy and a means to collect a critical mass of faculty and students increases the value of buildings in a place rather than degrades them.  This is where culture resides.

John Coleman, in a Harvard Business Review piece “Place Makes Culture,” addresses the importance of work environments. The interactive environments of Pixar and Mayor Bloomberg’s New York City Hall are cited as exemplary. These institutions thrive on human interaction. The different natures — one artistic and highly technical, the other pragmatic and highly political — testify to the pervasive impact of place on culture.   Organizations create, sustain, and promote high-impact human interaction intentionally to create a culture.

It is likely that the University of Phoenix will not reach whatever potential it has until it acquires a university campus. Without a place it is symbol sans substance: a skyrocket going nowhere. But a campus with lecture halls, libraries, classrooms, laboratories, studios, and theaters, where a culture is created and sustained by engaged people, promotes ideas and learning.

Writing in Entrepreneur, Robert McCarthy suggests troubles that  warn of cultural collapse: high turnover, late departure and early arrival to and from work, low attendance at company events, and a lack of honest communication about mission and purpose, all flowing from a weakening corporate culture in workplaces.  Places.

The culture and habits of an organization are defined by the climates and habits that create patterns, according to Kermit Burley of Demand Media. Edgar Schein concurs in Organizational Culture and Leadership.   Artifacts and place of business – what you see – affect productivity and effectiveness, says Schein, a noted organizational scholar from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.  Furthermore, he states emphatically that leadership itself is defined in part by the artifacts and the place of business.

For universities, positive relationships between campus and community impact the culture of both. Eastern Kentucky University and the city of Richmond are cited as an example of a positive working culture by Kim Griffo, Executive Director of The International Town and Gown Association.  Moreover, the 26 Jesuit colleges in the United States have had a sustained and positive impact on the communities in which they are located, according to a New York Times piece by Jacques Steinberg, “Which Colleges make the Best neighbors?”

In our universities the work culture creates value. The university is not a business, but it must be business-like.   In the world of commerce, according to

“Great Places to Work 2013,” the annualized stock returns for Fortune 500 companies identified as great places to work was 10.8% last year, compared to Standard and Poor’s top 500 list of 4.5%. I hear the whisper in my ear, “Profit and quality are not equal.”   I know.
But in our universities effectiveness and the environment that create and sustain culture are knotted together and create the potential for excellence, and for Mr. Lincoln’s pride.  I know that too.

By J. Larry Miller

The cold weather and frost that hit last Friday morning marks the end of the growing season and the reality that winter cannot be far away. Pastures will not be growing and the beginning of the daily task of feeding hay will soon be upon the livestock producers.

Larry Miller, executive director Franklin County Farm Bureau

As I drive by cattle grazing on pasture, I realize that the summer has been good for cattle producers as the cows are in very good condition going into winter. Hay supplies are good so I guess so bring on the snow and cold weather!

Harvesting is still very much with us but harvested fields are out numbering those that have not yet been harvested. Wheat planting is probably complete so that all effort can be focused on harvesting. Fall fertilizer is being applied and fall application of herbicide will soon be in full swing.

Spraying in the fall for weed control is a fairly new operation added to fall work but weed control is now a year-around task.

Some of you are aware that the Franklin County Ag in the Classroom Program has, in the past, been the recipient of the Monsanto Grant. This grant has to be applied for by farmers in Franklin County who are at least 21 years of age and actively farm a minimum of 250 acres of corn, soybeans and/or cotton or 40 acres of open field vegetables. An active farmer is one who is “actively engaged in farm work, or hires and actively manages others to do so.”

The Franklin County Ag in the Classroom is a vital part of the education of children in pre-school through 8^th grade in Franklin County and is in need of your support to continue with this education.

It is very easy to apply for the Monsanto Grant – simply sign-up online at www.growcommunities.com and fill out the short form. This form will ask for your name, address, phone number and email address along with the entity that you would like to receive the grant. In the space provided please type in Franklin County Ag in the Classroom. If you would rather take the time to make a phone call you can do so by calling 877/267-3332. Grant applications are due by November 15^th.

If you have any questions please call Gay Bowlin at the Franklin County Farm Bureau at 435-3616.

I want to remind everyone that the Franklin County Farm Bureau is taking orders for fruit and pecans again this year. Call the office to place your order now.

Remember to call now to make your reservation for the Franklin County Farm Bureau Annual Meeting on December 2^nd at the Benton Civic Center.

Remember we are farmers working together. If we can help let us know.