Animal welfare is notorious for looking externally for somewhere to attribute blame for industry failure. A high kill rate is the fault of an irresponsible public. A lost pet has been abandoned by an uncaring family. A pet left unclaimed is because an owner is too lazy to find it. A surrender dumping through ignorance. A lack of adoptions is an uncaring community.
One of the revelations of the No Kill movement, is that when a pound or shelter stops attributing blame to external factors – and instead examines the failures in their own actions and begins to challenge the thinking that hampers their life saving efforts – that the killing stops virtually overnight.
But how can this be so? How can one shelter, when presented with the ‘problem’ of homeless pets, find solutions, success and happy endings – while another when presented with the same ‘problem’ finds unrehomable pets, a uncompassionate community and killing?
It turns out, as we suspected all along, to be all about attitude;
During the 1970s, Chris Argyris, a business theorist at Harvard Business School (and now, at 89, a professor emeritus) began to research what happens to organizations and people when they find obstacles in their paths.
Professor Argyris called the most common response ‘single loop learning’ — an insular mental process in which we consider possible external or technical reasons for obstacles.
Less common but vastly more effective is the cognitive approach that Professor Argyris called ‘double-loop learning’. In this mode we question every aspect of our approach, including our methodology, biases and deeply held assumptions.
This more psychologically nuanced self-examination requires that we honestly challenge our beliefs and summon the courage to act on that information, which may lead to fresh ways of thinking about our lives and our goals.
In interviews we did with high achievers for a book, we expected to hear that talent, persistence, dedication and luck played crucial roles in their success. Surprisingly, however, self-awareness played an equally strong role.
The successful people we spoke with — in business, entertainment, sports and the arts — all had similar responses when faced with obstacles: they subjected themselves to fairly merciless self-examination that prompted reinvention of their goals and the methods by which they endeavored to achieve them.
No one likes to ruminate on how their best efforts were actually a major contributing factor to their failure – especially when the work you are doing is your life’s passion and there are innocents and life and death decisions involved. It is much easier to attribute the blame for failure to some uncontrollable, insurmountable outside force – if only ‘they’ would shape up, then your efforts would be rewarded. It’s not me, it’s you…
It is hard, unpleasant but vital to challenge entrenched thinking and behaviours if we want a different result. There is rarely an immediate environmental compulsion to do so – misery loves company, and so people who have failed will happily work together to build a consensus that failure couldn’t possibly be the result of so much good intention and hard work. This appeasement of individuals almost certainly ensures failure is built into to future policy.
Challenging our beliefs is vital. Breaking out is vital. It is why new people from other industries often have so much success when they are given the chance to lead shelters in new directions. It is why No Kill succeeds. Success breeds success and failure almost always breeds failure.
The pets deserve the very best us. Be brave and challenge yourself to do better.
Like this little pep talk? See another great article on ‘The Art of Doing’: How To Be A Super-Achiever: The 10 Qualities That Matter
