Thank you President Fenves. Thanks to you, Debra Kress, and your staff
for giving me the chance to speak to you today.
Congratulations to all of the award recipients and welcome to all those
who have come to celebrate their accomplishments.
The
wonderful thing about awards ceremonies is that it gives us a chance to
recognize people who have put in extra effort to make the University of Texas
function so effectively. One of the most
important things that they do is to strengthen our community.
Sociologists
have spent a lot of time studying the kinds of relationships that people engage
in. It turns out that we can sort the
people we encounter in the world into three groups: Family, Neighbors, and Strangers.
Most
of the people in your life are Strangers.
You don’t know them, and they don’t know you. You don’t have any kind of trust built up
with them. When you engage in
transactions with Strangers, you have to settle up in the moment, because you
don’t know if you will ever see them again.
If you are driving down Mopac and you get a flat tire and someone with a
truck pulls over and helps you change your tire, it would not be embarrassing
to pull out a twenty-dollar bill as a way of saying thanks. The person might refuse saying they just
stopped to help, but it wouldn’t be an inappropriate gesture. Likewise, you can’t borrow eggs from HEB. You are a Stranger to your grocery store, and
so it is cash on the barrel for each purchase.
At
the extreme other end are Family. You
have lots of interactions with Family.
You engage in rituals with them.
You celebrate holidays and birthdays.
And—as a result—you have a highly trusted relationship with them. So much so, that when you engage in
transactions with family, you don’t really keep score. Parents do and do and do (and do) for their
children without ever sending them a bill (much as they might like to
sometimes). Children may take care of
their aging parents without sending in a time sheet. And every family has a ne’er-do-well uncle
who has never made much of his life. The
Family takes care of him—even if he is the butt of the occasional family joke. (I also tell people that if you can’t figure
out who that uncle is, it might be you…).
In
the middle, we have neighbors. Neighbors
are people we know reasonably well. We
have conversations and parties, and do favors.
We see them often. We have
developed some amount of trust. You even
have some rituals. In my old
neighborhood, at the end of October every year, we had Hallowine in which we
put all of the candy from the block on one driveway while the adults drank wine
and watched the costumes. When we engage
in transactions with neighbors, we don’t’ settle up in the moment. But, we do keep score. A neighbor who takes and never gives is
eventually kicked out of the neighborhood.
If
you wake up one morning and see that you have a flat tire, your neighbor might
come out and help you fix it. But, you
wouldn’t thank him by offering a twenty-dollar bill. That would
be embarrassing. Instead, you might bake
a banana bread or drive his kids to school one day. You don’t have to settle up that day, but you
do in the long-run.
Most healthy organizations create
neighborhoods. Our co-workers are our
neighbors. UT is a big
neighborhood.
Each of us puts in
effort at our jobs to help make the university a better place. We get to know our colleagues. We try to make sure that the people around us
are able to achieve their goals. Of
course, we are keeping score. Anyone who
routinely takes things from others, but never gives back is eventually taken to
task for it. Other people will not band
together to help solve a problem without payment when they do not trust that a
particular person or group is part of the neighborhood.
We forget the
importance of the UT neighborhood at our peril.
No important job can get done here unless everyone works together. When one of our sports teams makes the
playoffs, we all come together to ensure that an unexpected event is handled
smoothly. We bring together parking,
facilities, UTPD and emergency services and more. If we were all strangers, then each
unexpected thing would have to be handled with a change order. We would have contracts that specified the
letter of what had to be accomplished.
Neighbors don’t
have contracts, they have covenants.
They agree on a set of principles that guide what they want to
accomplish and then they work together to make it happen. They know that some days their unit may have
to bear the brunt of a new task, but that at other times, other members of the
community will step up to do their share.
But, a
neighborhood requires energy to keep up.
It does not happen on its own.
You who are here
today—particularly those of you who are being honored at this ceremony—are the
builders of the UT neighborhood. You take
it upon yourselves to welcome new employees into the neighborhood and to show
them what it means to be a Longhorn. You
help to develop people’s careers and to let the people who work here know that
UT wants them to succeed. You lead by
example, letting your commitment to the institution influence the attitudes and
actions of the people around you. You get to know your colleagues and develop a
trusted network.
And we all must
continue to tend our neighborhood.
Staff, faculty, and administrators must recognize how important—and how
fragile—our neighborhood can be. We must
look to develop our future leaders and supervisors. We must take care of each other when times
are bad. And give of our time,
expertise, and wisdom when times are good.
We must all live up to the ideals of this great university. And—most of all—we must continue to serve as
an example to our students, to Texans, and the world beyond that what starts
here changes the world only when we
work together as neighbors.
Hook ‘em.
