LOOKING BACK 2 - Lessons Learned on "changing", from known to unknown

This week I felt the need to write with a perspective of "looking back" at analyzing the way forward.

In my first article this week, I focused on my research path, now I want to share thoughts and learning from teaching, whose career is now 20 years ...

I was hired by IADE to begin teaching design project, exactly in the second half of 1998. I was actively working at NOVODESIGN - Design Agency, already with a full and hours-long work hours and "no space" for my personal life, when I received the call from Professor Diamantino Abreu, in his name and in the name of the coordinator of the project chairs António Cruz Rodrigues, invited me to teach at that institution where I had been a student ...

The decision was easy, I just asked my boss if i should accept this challenge and he wisely replied: "Of course, Americo you have a sense of responsibility for which I know you will not fail with the commitments here in the Company, so go forward Men"...

At that time, I still had a naïve perception of the appreciation of the "teacher", rather, the "being" university professor. Because of the responsibility, role and importance they had of my life and the lives of my colleagues, they should be well paid, respected and "being a teacher" had weight in our society.

I remember that when I started working with my Professor António Cruz Rodrigues, all of us in the Atelier admired António's persistence in keeping MODUS design open because he gave so many hours of classes at IADE (which we associated with "earned "very well) that would be for want of keeping updated with the market that maintained the Atelier ...

So when I began to give lessons i understand very soon that the "very well" was very relative and that final balance between all activity of being a teacher implies, from preparation, continuous research, participation in conferences, publication development, group / council / school meetings ... to have a payment based on the payment of the hours taught was somewhat unbalanced.

But has always "that house" knew how to create and manage expectations: first with the promise / vision that it was necessary to obtain the degree of Master so that the academic life began to have amplitude; later the promise was raised to the PhD "with the Doctorate until you can open your University you see there!" ... but at the end of the day, the Master did not bring anything significant, the PhD did not either ... "this has certain rules, precise of years, antiquity to rise of category, blah, blah, blah "...

Among promises, and because we were in "a creative university", incentive plans based on academic performance were created and withdrawn ... "within the category, they can increase in rank with the number of publications, works for the community, projects of visibility for university, etc ... "... But as always as soon as the indicators showed that a part of the teachers of the house WORKED a lot and the ratios to climb upward were easy to reach .... THE plan was withdrawn without further information or conversation...

But to synthesise the conversation, what is most in the memory of all those almost twenty years is the typical message that was constantly transmitted and repeated to all of us: "these are equal or better conditions than any private and even public university! "... and "do not forget that you teaching are in the best design school in Portugal and have taken the course here, so must wear the shirt" ....

For years, at least for me, this rhetorical speech worked! It did not occur to me that the best school of design of the Country did not give the same conditions to its teachers as the "others" ....

Many times I did not even go to check, essentially in a TIME where every day I knew / thought that we were even in the Best School in the Country, because we were not afraid to risk the different and better, because the school was designed with its center at its best and UNIQUE ASSETS - students and TEACHERS, in a time where whenever I went outside I was even more sure that we were doing what was best done out there!

Pragmatically, motivation for intrinsic factors, lasts only for a few time ... no one feels that it is evolving just because "they work for the best ...". It is only rational good sense that any manager knows that when years go by and for years the experienced faculty does not see their work properly recognised and valued, they are no longer" closed to the world" and "not wanting to hear other proposals", they go on to look for other opportunities to grow and value their career! ...

Even more, when you realize that in terms of management board vision/, your "School" no longer exists ... the center of activity ceased to be the students and the teachers to be a "standardised excel sheet", equal to a young academic who NEVER has worked at least but has obtained a recent Academic Degree than for a Professor with the same academic title but with years of experience in the market and teaching ... Even more reinforced by the reversal of the degree of importance that must exist in a University, that is , where the non-teaching body becomes bigger and more important than the Teaching body!

This is the water drop for the speech of "you took the course here and donned the jersey" ceases to make sense ...

But..what are the lesson at the end of it all?

Maybe the lesson is that as soon as we get out of the comfort of what is good for us and what we "know as certain", there are opportunities to challenge ourselves and find who truly values us for what we do, and for all the experience accumulated over the years....

Years in which you NEVER lower our arms or transfer our demotivation to the classroom or to the research projects you build!

The lesson is that when we read clear signs that organisations are not centered what should be their essence, it is time to quit being Quixote's, when organisations only attach importance to "false images" and "Opinion making" more than "BEING" is time to look for other more genuine challenges, even if smaller ones ....

In fact life is full of examples that the little one grows and that the giant when he falls asleep "can fall" ...

The reality is that in the last couple of years an important part of the Experienced Teachers of the house where I came from, noticed that they were stagnant, stopped in time in terms of career development and in terms of the ability to do different and better, left and are leave, aware that they are risking this change of course, but at the same time aware that their examples can be examples for some of the colleagues who decided to stay and also change the course of things "inside" ...

Sometimes we achieve better results in changing organisations, when we increase their own competition, thereby creating the pressure to change that, when you are stable and secure in your identity and reputation, do not feel ...

It is also relevant to perceive the response of organisations to this change / transformation movements, often believers of their immutability, they only see these changes as opportunities to continue their management of excel, ie, do not seek to replace experience teachers with equivalents (perhaps because their value proposition is not even adjusted to the market value for this type of faculty) but bet on young people without academic or research experience ...

In this case, it is important to see if what is behind this attitude is not the preposition that "what matters is the name of the institution and not who represents it to the students" ... It seems to me that unfortunately this is the case and in this way, gradually the market, students and parents of the students will realize for sure! even with many "communicational fireworks" in which the institution invests ...

With this outburst and testimony I close the week of LOOKING BACK week. Case Closed :)

Américo Mateus - Head of Research DELLI - Design Lusófona Lisboa