Jess Pettit
Sure, the theme is what I define doing good enough now as which is doing the best you can with what you’ve got some of the time. And I think it’s always important to put in a little disclaimer. This is not surgery, right? Like, I’m not, I’m not an orthopedic surgeon. So doing the best you can with while you got some of the time is really talking about what it takes to kind of lean into our failures, our fears, when we are exhausted from trying and don’t wanna anymore. What is that about? And then, how do we how do we do something, right? And so the doing the best you can means it’s not gonna be perfect with what you’ve already got. Means you don’t need additional training or schooling or some kind of collection in order to actually do good. And some of the time is an incredibly low bar.

Keith Edwards
Hello and welcome to Student Affairs now I’m your host, Keith Edwards, today, I’m joined by Speaker consultant and author Jessica Pettit to talk about her new book, almost doing good. Jess is brilliant at demystifying approaches to engaging for greater equity and inclusion in ways that are helpful, accessible, humorous and memorable. I’m excited to talk more with you about this book and your approach Student Affairs NOW. is the premier podcast and online learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. Find details about this episode or browser archives at studentaffairsnow.com This episode is sponsored by Routledge Taylor and Francis view their complete catalog of education titles at routledge.com/education this episode is also sponsored by Huron, a global professional services firm that collaborates with clients to put possible into practice. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards. My pronouns are he, Him, his. I’m a speaker, author and coach, helping higher ed leaders and organizations advance leadership, learning and equity. You can find out more about me at keithedwards.com I’m recording this from my home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at the intersections of the ancestral and current homelands of both the Dakota and the Ojibwe peoples Jess welcome. Thank you for being here. Thank you for writing your first book and now your second book. Let’s just begin with a little bit of introductions. Tell folks a little bit about you and a little bit about the topic, and then we’ll dive into both books and then this book, and who knows where this is going to go.

Jess Pettit
I think that’s the best preamble ever. Who knows where this is going to go. So Jess Pettit, she her pronouns. I am sitting at home on Yurok, and we ought land. I am super excited to engage in this conversation, because working from student affairs as a background adjacent within higher education, as a consultant and speaker for a decade, and then now more in like a corporate or association space, it’s really cool to be able to pull all those skills all the way through and kind of flee with abandonment and, like, figure out what liberation from those particular systems are like, which, frankly, make education look very fast and progressive. So,

Keith Edwards
Awesome, awesome. Well, as I said, You’re You’re great at demystifying, making the complex uncomplicated, which is one of my favorite things to do, and saying things in the ways that are memorable, memorable. I often repeat little nuggets from you that you shared with me, or that I’ve seen you share on a YouTube or something, because I think it’s just a great example about, particularly about we write the first version of the story, and how do we make sure we are just open that it might get edited and we might be wrong, and being open to that can be really great. So I’ve got the first book here, which is good enough now, which has been out for a couple of years, and now you have written the prequel, not the sequel, The prequel, which I think is fantastic, almost doing good. So I just wonder if you could begin by kind of talking about all of this, about good enough now, almost doing good, kind of how these fit together, and how they’ve kind of fit in your overall approach and your overall thinking, and then we’ll get a little bit more into almost doing good.

Jess Pettit
Sure, the theme is what I define doing good enough now as which is doing the best you can with what you’ve got some of the time. And I think it’s always important to put in a little disclaimer. This is not surgery, right? Like, I’m not, I’m not an orthopedic surgeon. So doing the best you can with while you got some of the time is really talking about what it takes to kind of lean into our failures, our fears, when we are exhausted from trying and don’t wanna anymore. What is that about? And then, how do we how do we do something, right? And so the doing the best you can means it’s not gonna be perfect with what you’ve already got. Means you don’t need additional training or schooling or some kind of collection in order to actually do good. And some of the time is an incredibly low bar. I think when you have those three levers in those positions, we really run out of some pretty good excuses that we cannot do something. So that’s what kind of we’re good enough now came from, and I’ve been working with it the set. Second edition came out inside covid, as well as the audiobook, and the response through working with that curriculum and working with very different kinds of clients in the last five or 10 years really led to the prequel. And so I’m all about disruption and normalizing complexity. The language that I like to use this is complicated work. There is not a secret code to do everything perfect 100% of the time, all the time for everyone that doesn’t exist. So if it’s going to be complicated, how do we disrupt what we have been doing so that we can do something right. And the concept of the prequel really came from being outrageously frustrated working with some of the most resourced, wealthiest clients I could have imagined me working with and getting so close, so close to them, actually doing something that really shifted their workplace culture or their industry or their surrounding communities, and then just not doing it, just not just nope, not doing it. And I really wrote the new book, almost doing good as a cathartic experience of working through what it really means to work with the clients that have the resources to do anything they want to. And ultimately, I guess the last thing I’ll say is that the ultimately what happened is I realized that my own sense of humanity and compassion needed to show up instead of just getting frustrated. And when I was able to return humanity and compassion back to these incredibly resourced leaders, what I realized was specifically inside of my dei lens is that they are terrified to be first, and they are overly confident that they are not last, and with those two pillars in place, there is no room for momentum. Yeah, and so I needed to do something, plus we’re giving organizations human rights, which we don’t even give humans equitably. So organizations need to be able to engage in this conversation. So between those two things, almost doing good has occurred.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, so I’m sort of thinking a little bit about that story, and good enough now seems to kind of be the antidote to perfectionism, which I certainly, yeah, I can certainly fall into, which is sort of until I know it’ll work, until I know I’ll say the right thing, until I have the 60 minute gender studies lecture ready to go, I’m not going to say anything. I’m not going to do anything, because I might mess it up, or I might get it wrong, or I might get criticized. And I think that perfectionism really gets in the way and maintains the status quo. And tema Okun talks about perfectionism being a key component of white supremacy culture, and that good enough now is really the antidote. Like, just do the best with what you got some of the time. And it really, as you said, take some of the excuses away of, well, I’m good at this, but not that, and almost doing good. Go ahead.

Jess Pettit
I was just gonna say it doesn’t eradicate harm like while you’re doing the best you can with what you got, some of the time, that does not mean you are not actually harming someone. You’re responsible for that harm my learning curve. While I’m actively learning I am actively harming someone. But that doesn’t mean don’t get on the learning curve. Yeah, you know. So both are happening at the same time I am an anxious, neurotic perfectionist. So the idea that I wrote a book called Good Enough now with errors in it. Mind you, is is not lost on me that that irony is role modeling. Yeah, exactly, but at least it’s being vulnerable and authentic in my own failures, attempts, misguidedness, mistakes, missteps and almost doing good as that too, that I really I use a lot of case studies in the new book, and it’s well intentioned reactions that were not well thought out that ultimately caused harm, if not more harm than had they done nothing at all. Yeah. Then what is the pattern behind those things? That’s really what the new book is about.

Keith Edwards
So if you’re sort of a neurotic perfectionist, as you said, and good enough now is sort of sort of recognizing that and saying, okay, when I met my best, this is how I want to show up, right? Saying something, doing. Something might be imperfect, might do harm, but I’m learning, I’m growing. I’m trying and doing my best, then you have some great models and some visuals that I think are really helpful. I was sort of hearing your story about being super frustrated, which I can relate to, and I can fall into self righteousness really easily, which is you’ve got a lot of money. Why can’t you do this? If anybody can do this, you can do this. You’ve got no excuses. What is wrong with you? And then I heard you sort of say, maybe you can relate to that. But then I wanted to get into compassion. And when I put myself out of sort of my worst tendency, probably not the worst, but a not great tendency into this place of compassion. Then I could say, then I could offer something that might be helpful when I can understand where they’re at and why it’s hard for them, then I can offer something to be helpful and move them forward.

Jess Pettit
Yeah, I very much like the word facet, and I’ve been obsessed with this word for a really long time. And I don’t know why someone is doing something, but it is my responsibility to practice. What are some options here? And so if I’m not making I just got challenged on this this week with another friend is doing something interesting, and my friends are freaking out at why my friend is doing this, and so I keep coming up with different reasonings why my friend might be doing what my friend is doing. So then my other friends are telling me I’m coming up with excuses. And I was like, well, they’re not excuses, because I don’t actually know why my friend has made the choices My friend has made, but here are some options that through my experience being a human being, through the lens of who and how I want to be in the world, I’m coming up with some different options, right? So what I’ve learned with this kind of facets option, so I’m going to use an example from the Democratic National Convention. There was a big push to have at least one speaker be able to take the platform to represent Gaza and Palestinians. And there are petitions I was getting to, like, sign up to put pressure on this person to be able to take the stage. And a lot of my colleagues saw them not being approved to take the stage, meaning x, y and z. And so I said, okay, it could mean X, Y and Z. I’m not taking that off the table. What are some of the other things that could be the reason right? Like someone being a chicken, or it being too complicated, and they’re really conservative, and so they’re just disguised as progressives, or, you know, whatever. Those are all kind of the same reason. So then my job, and I believe this is deeply related to compassion and humanity, but my job is to come up with reasons that align with who I am that would make sense as possibilities so that I can stay true to who I want to be in the world when I don’t actually have the information. So for example, perhaps I don’t know. I really, truly do not know, but perhaps the speaker wasn’t granted access to the stage because active negotiations are happening for a ceasefire for the release of hostages. And had that happened, that those conversations would have gone wrong not to get Machiavellian. But the The truth is, I don’t know, yeah, that’s fine, but I was able to make some peace with who and how I want to be in the world, that perhaps, at minimum, the optics could have really had a negative impact on hostages and the work I deeply support to get towards a ceasefire. I don’t know if it’s true, but I can sleep at night with that understanding, yeah,

Keith Edwards
and that doesn’t mean we don’t engage. It just means we maybe engage with a little bit more empathy, a little bit more compassion, and I think it helps us curiosity, right, which might help us be more effective, right? But just saying, people who we disagree with, who don’t do what we think they should do, are horrible people. It’s kind of a conversation under,

Jess Pettit
yeah, like, I mean, you, what do you say next? Like, Oh, okay. I mean, yeah, there. There are things I have deeply held beliefs that need to be updated or changed, or I absolutely don’t agree and support certain things like that. Those, those extremes exist. I’m around them, but when I don’t have the information. And it’s my responsibility to not just backfill it with what I am comfortable with, because I don’t know

Keith Edwards
right well, and I think we’re tempted to backfill the blank space with things that makes our argument easy to justify, right, right, rather than the complexity and it might be different things and where we might need to listen and and see something in a different light.

Jess Pettit
Confirmation bias is like comfort food,

Keith Edwards
yeah, and so, so is blame

Jess Pettit
the chicken fried steak of responsibility. Is it somebody else’s problem? Yeah?

Keith Edwards
Yeah, they did it. It’s their fault. And now I can go back to whatever I want to go back to Great. So we’ve got this ecosystem of good enough now we’ve got this ecosystem of almost doing good. Tell us about almost doing good, this book that is now out. What’s kind of the big message and the big takeaway that you want folks to have from almost doing good?

Jess Pettit
The there’s a moment in the book where, when I had some early readers and editors, they they const, there was a consistent pattern of just like, I need, like, a Likert scale, like, what, what is happening? And I’m like, well, first off, what do we need to talk about? Your need for a linear model between good and bad, and can it just be a not? Can it just be complicated? So I made a Likert scale, right? And if one end is doing bad and one end is doing good, I can’t remember the actual words I used, because I don’t actually think it’s a Likert scale, but that’s the next page, so don’t get excited. But if one is bad and one is good, then somewhere in the middle is usually assumed to be neutral. And what I’m inviting is that almost can be almost in the right direction and almost in the wrong direction. And when you’re taking that first step, you’re usually pretty clear that you are taking a step in the right direction, or you’re taking a step in the wrong direction, at least from your perspective. I think that’s important. And so I really wanted to hone in, if we’re talking about the loss of momentum, that first moment where, like physics is starting to kick in, can we fail together in the right direction is something I think that should be supported, applauded, paid for, resourced and leaned into together. But I don’t know that I’m going to get to like success, but at least it’s together and in the right direction. You know when what?

Keith Edwards
What would that look like, individually and then organizationally.

Jess Pettit
The example I like to use is our comfort with this in a different context, because as soon as we start talking about dei initiatives, we just throw up our hands there, and we don’t always we have no idea, or we’ll do something that we know is not going to work, but, like, it’s a best practice, right? So, like, have a programming series, do an assessment, watch a movie. Technically, that is in the right direction, but I would like to do something different, and I’d like it to feel better, and the out of context of DEI that I think is helpful, whether we’re talking about student affairs, higher education, membership based associations, corporations, doesn’t matter. Last night, I was tick talking, and my phone interrupted my tick tock to tell me that it needed to do an update because iOS seven point 17.7 became 18, or something like that. The operating system had to update. So as an iPhone user, that means I’m not gonna be able to use my phone for some period of time. So just I just say, Yes, put it down on the night side table. I go to bed, I wake up in the morning. My phone is reduced or re what. I don’t even know how technology works, and I’m using that as an example, because I don’t even need to know. I am so comfortable with my lack of knowledge that, like, my phone will take care of itself. Oh, I didn’t even know it had security problems that are now being fixed by iOS 18. Great. I’m going to bed. I’m sleeping well, when we start talking about innovation, very cool business term, to be creative enough to come up with some new way of doing something, you have to fail a lot. Yeah, so one of the. First things I do when I work with organizational leaders is, is, what are you doing to foster trying, and how are you supporting failure? Yeah, and their heads explode, just like, What are you talking about? No, no, we don’t fail here. And I’m like, you get everything right perfectly the first time. Like, that doesn’t happen. Cars get released all the time that need updates. Apps are a great example, because every time you open your phone, there might be, like, a little update occurring. We’re totally cool knowing the technology can update, but we are not cool thinking that we individually need to update our relationship with someone else. Needs to update our perception of other people. Needs to update that somehow is different, and I don’t think it should be. You’re

Keith Edwards
reminding my good friend and friend of the podcast, Neil velimo, talks about often we have to get caught trying, right? We have to get caught trying to do better for this student or trying to solve this problem. We might not solve it, but let’s get caught trying to make this better, whether it’s basic needs, whether it’s a dei whether it’s a change in policy, whether it’s making the title nine processes more inclusive for trans students, like, how do we get caught out there trying to make things better and just your story? There is, is a great example of that. Let’s let’s try and and if it doesn’t work, then let’s be transparent about that. And I think organizationally, we have this culture of learning where people can make mistakes and share them. Hey, I tried this last week. It totally didn’t work, and here’s why, and then other people can learn from that. I think that that that really is this. You mentioned curiosity. We’ve talked about empathy, but also just this learning and growth. You’re talking about apps updating, but yeah, we are all learning and growing, and hopefully next week will be better than today, and next year will be a lot better than today. But if there isn’t that permission to fail and learn, make mistakes and correct and apologize, then we we stay silent, we stay quiet, we stay under the radar. Or if we do make mistakes, we don’t tell people. We cover them up and we hide them. And it can lead to, you know, the status quo, or it can lead to some real unethical behavior.

Jess Pettit
But at the root of it, I I’m going to keep coming back to this, because I think it’s really easy to kind of become this mylar balloon of like vulnerability and authenticity, right and and I wanted to use the word generosity, right then, right is that there’s an assumption that this app is doing something good For me, so I I’m able to, like, Project generosity out, but at the same time, don’t forget harm is happening, and so when the complexity is that we’re holding both of those at the same time, I’m not eradicating harm, but I’m becoming responsible for the harm that I am mildly conscious of, which is at least a step in the right direction, so that I can consciously maybe create less harm, but maybe actually do some real work where I’m becoming more conscious of what I previously was unconscious of. I work with a lot of marketing teams, if you can imagine this, and one of the first things I do is I download an annual report, but I download it for the last 10 years, and I do like a content analysis of the same stock photos, the same employees that are pictured doing exactly the same thing. How that annual report has been greenwashed or pink washed, how racialized it has become, how it’s been povertized, right? Like look at this, us doing good in our local neighborhoods or something. And if you’re telling the exact same story for 12 years, you have not improved anything. You’re monetizing your marketing off of an idea that you might do good. That’s gross. I don’t like that. I think that’s gross. I would much rather a genuine reality of where you lost money, where you failed, where you had an opportunity, but you didn’t do it. You know, you signed up for a 5k and only three employees participated. Well, good on those three employees, right? Like, can we have a real annual report and and part of the reason why that is such a crazy and wild idea is that it’s at the intersection or demolishing. The intersection, I guess I should say of like white hegemony, Christianity and capitalism. But until those three things get dismantled, we are redecorating a problematic intersection, and that’s that’s the real work that we need to be doing. But to get there, we have to use our own resources and be responsible for ourselves.

Keith Edwards
I guess that’s a great example of the organizational level. And it doesn’t even quite seem performative. It seems to me like a little step even behind that, where we’re just maybe pretending like performativity would be a step in the right direction. And I’m having conversations with a lot of people who are really troubled by performative allyship or performative whatever. And I’m becoming more and more convinced that that performative allyship is a step toward actual allyship, right? That that it’s not necessarily a thing to avoid, but it’s a thing to recognize, like, Oh, you’re doing it because you want to be seen as doing it, not the best reason, but you’re doing it. And so how do we move that into more genuineness and authenticity? And I’m trying to think what’s sort of the marketing Annual Report version of performativity and then more genuineness down the road.

Jess Pettit
I mean, on an individual level, I think you can just do a little inventory of your on your social media platforms. It’s a fun little thing to do when you’re adding friends or following people back, what do they have in common, and are they more of your Echo Chamber, or are they outside of your echo chamber? Just that alone is interesting, right? And most of us don’t connect our social media followings or whatever to outside of our echo chamber, but it’ll really jack up your algorithms if you start doing it, and you might actually get access to things and perspectives and information data points that are outside of like your immediate circle. And then you might have to have a thoughtful conversation about what is, what is resonating with you what isn’t what is truth, right? Like it is very sexy right now to have a conversation about what is truth, but if, at the root of that conversation is truth is what you believe, I don’t think that’s truth. I think that’s what you believe, right? But I also am not a moral relativist. I think there is one truth, but we live in a place, in a culture, primarily here in the United States, where we can’t even tell someone to their face they are lying. We have to come up with some way of alternative facting, untruthing the thing they’re saying, because we’re trying to be respectful, but that’s performative, because you’re being respectful of someone out of theater when you actually don’t actually respect that person. Yeah,

Keith Edwards
yeah, you were describing before. Sort of the sounded like the seeds of the book was, I’m frustrated. I want to get in this place of compassion and humanity, and from there you wrote the book. I’m interested. What did you learn writing the book? What did you learn in the process of writing the book? What kind of emerged or Ahad as you were going from that place?

Jess Pettit
So the great question, it kind of brought up two things. So I want to make sure that I hit both of them, because I think, I think it could be interesting for listeners that there’s never, there’s almost never one answer that like creates a moment where I have to do something and I have to learn something. So the first one is around best practices, and the other one is when you learn about a new concept and it it just doesn’t land well. So my therapist would say, like, intuitively, I knew something was happening, but I couldn’t figure out what was happening. So I want to talk about both of those, if that’s possible. So the first one about best practices, there’s actually, I call them chuck in the book, to protect the innocent. But CEO I was working with for the global company. They’re in 18 countries. They started right before covid During the shelter in place years. They’re founded in the southern hemisphere, during the couple of years of covid, they grew from 18 employees to 180,000 employees, and they had one incident internally that actually cost them more productivity than covid. Did because they just didn’t know how to respond. And at a moment of like, peak frustration with the CEO, I just yelled, I’m a little embarrassed that I was not more like coothed, but I was pissed, to be honest, and I just screamed at him to stop spit polishing a landmine. And why? I didn’t know that image was going to come out of my mouth, right? But he was so good at spit polishing things that that was the only best practice tool that he knew how to use. And so he was just doing it harder and faster and more frequent. But that very you could be very good at that activity, but if it is the wrong activity, in a very dangerous situation, not only could you cause more harm, but you’re actually making it more dangerous. You’re causing more harm by doing the thing that is easy and comfortable and accessible for you to do to try to eradicate harm. So that moment is really where disruption comes in, is that your go to Actions very likely, are informing your reactions instead of your well informed responses, and often it is because you don’t recognize a problem that you don’t experience. So you are reacting only to the problems that you seem to understand or experience for yourself. And frankly, you don’t really have a solid understanding of what other consultants or other employees or other members of your community have been saying this whole time, right? So that’s that’s kind of the spit polishing of the land mine that the same time I’m changing channels for people not looking at the visual inside covid. I got an MBA largely because it’s a little embarrassing, because I would like to think of myself as more resilient. But like I made it about four or five weeks of sheltering in place during March of 22 April of 2020 not 22 and I was not doing well, and my whole life is about traveling, and I don’t know how to cook, and I’m in a very committed relationship that is healthy, because I’m out of town most of the time, and I knew that school would be an outside structure that might help me stay sober, right, which was pretty important. So I enrolled in an MBA program. It’s a one year program here at my local university, because my partner is a professor, I get, like, a tuition benefit, not full tuition, but some significant I thought that, you know, if it’s a one year long program, who knew how long this thing, covid e was going to last, I might be able to wrap it up and still start traveling or drop out or something anyway. So I’m in an accounting class in my MBA program, and they introduced cressy’s fraud triangle, which is from 1953 if you’d like to get nerdy with me, we’re totally welcome to but the Cliff Notes is Cressy interviewed white collar criminals who admitted guilt of committing fraud inside of an organization, and this came up in accounting, because this triangle is still very much used around accountability and ethics for accountants, because accountants stand at the center of these three sides of The triangle, which allows it very easy to commit fraud, if you think of like what’s been in the news lately, a lot of people who haven’t, who haven’t been found guilty of crimes that some people think that they have committed, often will be found guilty of, like tax evasion or accounting problems because of the way that it’s very easy to have, what is the opportunity, the pressure and the rationalization of the three ingredients needed for fraud? This is probably very boring for people, but welcome to being a nerd. So what I realized was, is that that wasn’t the ingredients needed to commit fraud. Those are the ingredients needed to disrupt what’s expected of you. And so the thing that didn’t land well, I mean, there’s a lot of things in that MBA program that did not land well, that was based on sustainability and corporate social responsibility, but to disrupt what’s expected of you doesn’t have to be for bad. Can I use those same ingredients to disrupt for good? So that’s happening in my mind, except I don’t realize it’s happening because it’s kind of cooking without the speakers turned on, and I’m working with these clients. As post covid as they are, you know, dealing with whatever post covid means for their organization, after George Floyd has been murdered. After, after, after, like, all this stuff is rumbling around in my head at the same time. And so what I’ve done is I’ve taken the Crecy fraud triangle and morphed it into what I’m referring to as the doing good triangle, which is about disruption, but now we’re back to not spit polishing landmines, because it’s about being prepared and really understanding what is the experience inside your organization, your industry and your community, recognizing problems exist that you as a leader who is very resourced, likely is not experiencing. So how do you recognize things you don’t experience? And then, based on the preparation that you have, you have a number of experiences that you likely don’t experience to pick from. So how do you practice recognizing those realities. And then how do you make an informed response versus a knee jerk reaction, so that you can almost do good, so that you can be leaning in the correct direction of your response based on what your organization stands for. And most organizational leaders can’t even say what their organizations stand for, but if you can answer that, then you can do those three things. Now we can disrupt for good. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Keith Edwards
I love this. You mentioned it twice, the React versus response, and I think you know the space between those is really critical. When we’re triggered or we just have a quick thought, or someone makes us mad, I get self righteous. You get frustrated, right? We’ve talked about some of these things, if you can just slow down in the moment and shift and you know the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu talked about a sacred pause being the difference between reactivity and choosing a response. And that sacred pause can be count to 10, can be take a breath,respond to the email tomorrow, wait till next week.

Jess Pettit
eat a sandwich, take a nap, yeah, walk dog, meditate,

Keith Edwards
go outside, look at a tree, lots of different things, but anything that shifts us out from sort of our agitated neuro system saying, protect yourself. Do this. Blame, you know, into and you use the language of an informed choice. I like the language of conscious choice. We’re aware of what we’re making and why others might say it’s based on our values or the core of who we aspire to be. But getting out of you just said that, and I just respond. Just react to choosing a response can be really critical. And I like the prepared because it it gives us some homework to do, right? I’ve got to prepare. I gotta do my self reflection. I’ve gotta understand the dynamics. I gotta and then recognizes, be aware of lots of things, but you’re particularly pointing to things that don’t directly affect us, right? Yeah. So the three part doing something, the response is doing something right, right?

Jess Pettit
The three parts of my triangle follow preparation, recognition and response, which parallel cressy’s Also, I believe, disruption, which is taking advantage of the opportunity, taking into account the rationalization for whatever reason to commit fraud in this case, and then the internal and external pressure. To me, they parallel each other, and they’re all entry points. And most of the case studies in the book are really using one of them, but not using the other two, which is how it caused more harm. Yeah.

Keith Edwards
And so if we can bring all three of these, we can do better, maybe cause less harm. Or when we cause harm, we might be aware of it and be able to learn, maybe take responsibility for that and do better next time. Yeah.

Jess Pettit
The irony of writing a second book, which I never thought I would write, is the third book is going to be called doing better good.

Keith Edwards
Okay, yeah, I love it better.

Jess Pettit
I love that’s where we’re headed, almost doing good, good

Keith Edwards
enough now, doing better good. Yeah, excellent. Well, before we move to our final question, I’m wondering if there’s anything else here that you want to highlight that we haven’t gotten to, we’ve talked about the triangle, we’ve talked about the landmines, we’ve talked about frustration into compassion. We’ve talked about reactivity to response. Anything else you want to point to before we move to wrapping up

Jess Pettit
the main thing that we haven’t talked about, and you mentioned. That in my intro, and you said very kind things about me and my work, but I think that is heavy, and I think to some people it’s going to sound very negative, is that there is some real strength in almost getting it right, right. There’s some real positives there. There’s amazing humor involved in cross industry conversations, building relationships with your stakeholders, working with your own colleagues, friends and family. There is some real positives and beauty there. I wrote in last month’s newsletter that when thinking about vulnerability, I feel like at the intersection of strength and weakness, maybe it even applies to like negativity and positivity is a crosswalk of vulnerability, and it is very vulnerable to walk in a crosswalk because you’re hoping people follow the rules, but you’re going to take a risk and you’re going to try and do it, and if you can do it together, that’s even better. But the I don’t want it to be lost, that humor and joy are a significant part of this work. They’re just the flip side of feeling stuck and wanting to try, but trying is exalt trying is trying, right, right? So holding both of them at the same time, you can hold two conflicting emotions at once, and that is what this work is. And so if we’re back to that Likert scale, that almost for good and almost for bad are really close together on that Likert scale, and I remember doing bad are right next to each other, because it’s up to how that impacts someone else.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, to be really close, I’m reminded of Brene Brown talking about, rather than being a knower and being right, being a learner and getting it right. And I think that’s a little bit of what you’re talking to, and you’re pointing to corporate situations. But I also think a lot of higher ed fetishizes being a knower and having all the answers and always being right, and then we’re not open to the mistakes we’ve made, the harm and doing better the next time, and learning and improving and taking responsibility and apologizing and and repairing and moving forward in some of those ways, so that that focus on learning and improvement, I think it’d be really great.

Jess Pettit
The irony, I feel like it’s like higher ed is like two sides of Velcro, right? Is that an academic environment wants all of the answers, but is actually where, like, curiosity and learning is supposed to be fostered? Yeah, you’re supposed to not know stuff, right? But it’s inside of a higher ed model that has definitely been corporatized. And a different podcast, we can talk about lbjs, use of higher education becoming a gatekeeper between middle class and upper class as a form of equity under the civil rights movement right, which is absolutely not what it looked like, because it was kind of performative. And by kind of, I mean very and it’s now a corporate model housing academia, where we’re supposed to be curious and ask them questions, but there’s pressure to know all of the answers, and to be the leader of the answers, instead of just being like, I don’t know, let’s talk about it more.

Keith Edwards
Yeah,

Jess Pettit
it’s fast, it’s the whole thing is fascinated, and it’s crafted on purpose, right? So

Keith Edwards
that’s where the disruption and the innovation and Yeah, well, we are running out of time. The podcast is called Student Affairs. Now, what are you Jess Pettit thinking about troubling pondering now might be related to this. Might be other things, and then also, if folks want to connect with you, where can they do that?

Jess Pettit
I am constantly troubled and pondering and discovering and finding new things, I find one of the biggest lessons I had from the really hard time that I had during the two and a half years of sheltering in place is a very good self work, Very good therapy work. Stayed sober is beauty. Novelty, laughter are massive motivators for me to maintain a critical eye, looking for other perspective possibilities and leaving room for edits to my own judgments and assumptions and leaving room to understand that my judgments and assumptions make me feel safe and prepared because I have survived my life, but that doesn’t mean I’m right. So then, how can I listen to a situation or another person? As if I do not know the answer. Listen as if they know something I do not know, so that I can engage in curiosity and learning. And that really grounds me back into kind of the who and how I want to be in the world. I’m not saying that everyone needs to be me who I’m a mess, but when you decide who and how you want to be, then what can you do to both challenge and reground yourself back into that over and over again. And for me, it’s laughter, beauty and novelty, very

Keith Edwards
after beauty and novelty, great. And for folks who want to connect with you, where can they do that?

Jess Pettit
Yeah, uh, scream out a window that might work. Look for a united lounge. Usually 8c is what my chiropractor calls me from sitting on a window seat. But you can also go to goodenoughnow.com if you want more information specific about the new book, you can go anywhere online where you would get an ebook, an audiobook or paperback, or you can go to almost doinggood.com whatever I can do, I’m always available to ask questions and listen to other people’s questions. Happy to help.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, awesome. Well, thank you. Jess, this has been terrific, and I really appreciate you, and both books and the work that you’re doing related to higher ed and the work you’re doing beyond, as you mentioned, a lot of corporate and membership driven associations, this has been great. Thank you. Well,

Jess Pettit
thank you Keith, and thank you everyone for listening to the podcast, because being able to learn and think about things is actually just making you better at whatever it is your job is too. So absolutely, see in the grocery stores people, yep.

Keith Edwards
And thanks to our sponsors of today’s episode, Routledge and Huron. Routledge Taylor and Francis is the world’s leading academic publisher in education, publishing a wide range of books, journals and other resources for practitioners, faculty, administrators and researchers. They have welcomed Stylus publishing to their publishing program, and are thrilled to enrich their offerings in higher education, teaching, Student Affairs, professional development, assessment and more. They are proud sponsors of Student Affairs now podcast. View their complete catalog at routledge.com/education and Huron is a global professional services firm that collaborates with clients to put possible into practice by creating sound strategies, optimizing operations, accelerating digital transformation and empowering businesses and their people to own their future, by embracing diverse perspectives, encouraging new ideas and challenging the status quo, Huron creates sustainable results for the organizations they serve as always. A huge shout out to our producer Nat Ambrosey, who does all the behind the scenes work to make us look and sound good. We love. The support of these important conversations from you our community, you can help us reach even more folks by subscribing to the podcast on YouTube and joining our weekly newsletter announcing each new episode on Wednesday mornings. If you’re so inclined, you can leave us a five star review. It helps us reach more folks with these great conversations. I’m Keith Edwards, thanks again to our fabulous guest today, Jess Pettit, and to everyone who’s watching and listening. Make it a great week. Thank you.

–