October | 2021 | Mark McPeak

October, 2021

I’ve been working through another group of mountains: New Hampshire’s “52 With A View.” Obviously, they are all supposed to have interesting summits. And, so far, they do!

In fact, as I write this post I’ve climbed 45 of these mountains, so I’ve fallen way behind writing them up.

Compared to my “4000-footer” series, these posts will be briefer: sharing a couple of photos and a brief description of each climb, and a few miscellaneous thoughts on current events. I’ve also been sharing some music I’ve composed and recorded during the present pandemic.

So far I’ve been writing on the theme of feeding the wrong wolf: thoughts that come to mind when I think about our society in light of current events. I was reminded of the lesson of that old Native-American tale – that we all have two wolves battling inside us, good and evil, and the one that prevails is the one that we feed – when I was reacquainting myself with “Flawless Consulting,” by Peter Block.

But first:

I climbed Mt Avalon (3,442ft), in the Crawford Notch area of the White Mountains, on a beautiful, buggy, day in mid-June 2020, with my friend Eric. It’s a fairly short climb, nothing dramatic, on the way elsewhere, usually Mt Field and sometimes also a loop including Mt Tom.

I had solo-climbed three 52-With-A-View peaks the day before – Crawford, Stairs, and Resolution – staying that night at the Dry River Campground. The plan was to rendezvous with Eric to do some more climbing in Crawford Notch the next day – our hope was to climb three mountains that day, all on the west side of Crawford Notch: Mt Avalon, Mt Field, and Mt Willey.

(Note: Mt Field and Mt Willey are both 4000-footers and are described in another series on this blog.)

Since Eric was driving up from Newburyport that morning, and would probably take over two hours to arrive, I figured I could climb another 52-With-A-View peak, Mt Willard, before he got to Crawford Notch. (Turns out I had plenty of time, as there was plenty of road construction near Crawford Notch.)

After getting up Mt Willard and back down, I had a short wait and then met Eric back down at Crawford Notch. Having climbed three mountains the day before, and one already done when he arrived, I was pretty tired already!

We climbed up the Avalon Trail to reach the summit of Mt Avalon; it was just before 12:30pm when we arrived at the top:

Here is the view down to Crawford Station:

Eric is taking a photo looking over at Webster Cliff.

We would continue on then, towards Mt Field. It was a spectacular day!

I’ve been preparing a bid for a consulting role these days, and in the process I renewed my admiration for Peter Block’s masterpiece, “Flawless Consulting.” I had been very influenced by Peter’s work on “empowerment,” and we had even brought him into Plan’s International Headquarters in Rhode Island, in person, for a great workshop.

Later in my career I came to use “Flawless Consulting” quite a lot. It’s one of the most useful and practical management books ever published. Though he doesn’t reference the nonprofit sector in his book at all, the approach couldn’t be more consonant with the values and aspirations of our sector.

The following selection from the book captures lots of what I have learned about leading and managing our people, and helping make good change happen in our organizations:

“There is a widespread belief that we have not set the standards high enough. This is visible in education, where every state legislature thinks that it can improve public education by being tougher on performance standards, students, and teachers. They have been doing this for years, continue to be disappointed with its results, and keep on doing it.

Of course, the belief that low standards are the problem is not confined to education. It invades all of our institutions. It is born of the belief that people will not set high standards for themselves. That they need an outside agency to motivate and inspire them. At heart it is a fear-based strategy, where those who set the standards are the subject and those who must meet them are the object.

There is some validity to the idea that standards and performance are related. We do know that people will be responsive to the expectations others have for them. If a boss expects the team to perform well, it is more likely to happen. If a boss expects failure, that may happen also. There is a difference, though, between expectations between boss and subordinate or teacher and student, and standard setting.

To have high expectations of others is to have faith in them. It is an expression of optimism and hope in the capacities of another. It is an expression of the connection between people and is experienced as support. Standard setting, as it is most commonly used to trigger change, is not born of support, but born of disappointment and demand.

To judge others to be performing poorly because of low standards is to hold them in contempt. It is a belief that they need our standard-setting intervention to wake them up and motivate them. It is an institutional act that depends on coercion. If we don’t raise the bar, they will not jump higher. There is little care or connection in the strategy, and it therefore builds as much resistance as it was designed to overcome.

The myth is that setting standards will increase accountability. What it most often creates is compliance. People may be forced to find a way to meet those standards, but the institution suffers in other, less measurable ways. Instead of a more accountable culture, we find more bureaucracy, more people working to rule, more caution, less flexibility.”

When Block writes of contempt and coercion, he is describing ways that we, as leaders, feed the evil wolf. But by acting with faith, hope, and connection, he challenges us to nurture the wolf of love, caring and, in the end, much higher performance. I saw this again and again over the years.

However, it’s not a simple choice, and not the right approach in every situation. Because when we are accountable for an organization, its people, and the mission, our priority has to be to accomplishing the aims that underlie it all.

My own experience is that Peter Block is right, when we inspire through high expectations, we feed the good wolf and the result is amazing performance. But there are times when standards become important tools – sadly, these are times when a member of our team, despite all our efforts, no matter what we try, doesn’t seem to respond to expectations. Those are rare exceptions, but they do occur. And, in those cases, clear standards are necessary.

Here are links to the other posts in the “52-With-A-View” series:

All posts in this “52 With A View” series will be collected here.

There are three other collections of posts on this blog:

— I’ve been writing and recording a series of songs, with the general theme of the COVID-19 pandemic. As each is finished, you’ll find it here. Hope you enjoy them!

— Check out my “Everest Base Camp” series: four friends and I hiked from Lukla to the Everest Base Camp in November, 2019. It was incredible, spectacular, and very challenging.

— And don’t forget to visit my “New Hampshire 4000-Footer” series, for reflections on a career in international development and social justice, along with descriptions of climbing the 48 highest peaks in our state!

Mark McPeak

"Peace is not the absence of conflict. Peace is the ability to cope with conflict" – Gandhi

Monthly Archives: October 2021

Mt Avalon (11) – Standards? or Expectations?