Education Innovation

Thinking Better: The Productive Thinking Model Part 2

Continuing with my examination of the Productive Thinking Model laid out in Tim Hurson’s book Think Better: An Innovator’s Guide To Productive Thinking. Looking at student discipline with T.P.M.

Step 2 of the Productive Thinking Model is called “What’s Success?” As I lead my staff through an examination of issues related to developing a new discipline plan, we examined what was going on in step 1 and discovered our Target Future, we then moved right into step 2, which focuses on knowing when we have arrived at our Target Future.

Tim describes how organizations tend to view proposed change in one of 5 viewpoints.
1.    Things were fine before. I don’t see what good any of this is going to do.
2.    Anything would be better than the way things are now.
3.    Not as good as I’d hoped but not as bad as I’d feared. In fact, some of these ideas are okay.
4.    This is the (you fill in the ordinal number)  (you fill in the expletive) change program we’ve had in        the last (you fill in the cardinal number) years!
5.    There goes my workload again.

But, Tim adds, “regardless of which camp they are in, most people will also think the following: It’ll never stick.”

The Productive Thinking Model is designed to help pull people from the past and prevent them from getting trapped in former patterns. Tim describes the use of “Future Pull.”

“The purpose of What’s Success? is to create Future Pull: to make you care. Deeply. I like to think of this phase of the Productive Thinking Model as throwing a grappling hook into the future. You wind up and hurl the hook into the most compelling future you can imagine. It latches on firmly, and then you start to pull yourself into that future.”

One of the tools that can be used to establish Future Pull is the Imagined Future (IF). You imagine what it would look like if your Imagined Future was a reality. Basically, you imagine a day in the life of your future. What do you see, hear, feel, think, etc?  What is happening?  This requires some divergent creative thinking ability. Surprisingly, this was an area that we struggled a bit with. We try to teach creativity to our students, but we struggle ourselves. Not wanting to get too bogged down, we came up with a few points to put on our list and continued moving forward.

The next tool we used is called DRIVE. The DRIVE tool is used to define the characteristics of a successful outcome. The DRIVE tool enables us to develop a set of observable Success Criteria.

Do: What do you want your eventual solution to do? What must is achieve?
Restrictions: What changes or impacts must you avoid?
Investment: What resources are you willing to allocate? What are your “not-to-exceeds”?
Values: What values must you live by in achieving your solution?
Essential Outcomes: What are the nonnegotiable elements of success? What measurable targets must be met?

Our Do’s: affect change, everyone on the same page, seamless, clear, fair, encompassing, motivation, and raise expectations.

Our Restrictions: time, attitudes, varying expectations, and perfectionism.

Our Investments (Resources): time, equipment, Multi-purpose room, staff, and people.

Our Values: equity, respect, accountability, moral development, and discipline with dignity.

Essential Outcomes: attitude, buy-in, training, and excellent plan.

So we have now developed a clear picture of where we are and where we want to go with Step 1:What’s Going On and have a sense of what it will look like if we arrive at our imagined future in Step 2: What’s Success.

One of the difficulties I found as we have gone through the process is that many people are tentative to get very creative and divergent in their thinking. We are so used to having ideas judged that we aren’t used to just letting ideas fly free. This is where the ability to ask insightful and thought provoking questions is really useful.

In addition, as a facilitator, it is very difficult to manage the session and also contribute ideas of your own. My brain was on overload as I tried to pull ideas from the staff and also ensure that I was participating my adding my own ideas. I guess that is why organizations often bring consultants like Tim Hurson, Greg Fraley, Dan Roam, or Andrew Razeghi into help with the process. When we were done I needed a nap, but I was so energized. I loved it. I absolutely loved it!

Nobody Reads This Blog...But You Should Because This Is The Relationship Era

Nobody reads my blog. Well, that is not entirely true, but most never leave a comment. On his great blog The Thinking Stick, Jeff Utecht posted about why people don’t leave comments on the blogs they read (Where are the comments?)

I of course, left a comment.

Jeff, your previous post about participating in Web 2.0 and the accompanying diagram provide some meaningful ideas.

As Gary Hayes said, “… that participation in society, politics, online social networks etc: is not either on or off it is a continuum of degrees of influence.”

Many more people fall on the continuum of consumer as opposed to commenter.

Having not have grown up with the ability to comment instantly on what we read, view, or hear, we are simply not used to doing it. In school, we never got to comment on or share what other student wrote or created. We simply created and that was it. Hand your work in, the teacher will make comments, not you.

Maybe we are just selfish. A comment signifies you have more insight than I. Your ideas are somehow more worthy than mine. Why should I help you?

Maybe we are just lazy!

But this got me thinking about something I read in Peter Sheahan’s book Flip. Peter believes that we are leaving the age of the knowledge worker and entering the age of relationships.

So just as we are coming to grips with the fact that we live in a flat world and knowledge workers is the area the education should be focused on developing, we come to find that even the knowledge itself is a commodity that can be outsourced overseas. In it’s place it the ability to create and trust and build relationships that will be the competitive advantage and need we should begin preparing our students for.

Peter says, “Being a knowledge worker is not going to offer competitive advantage in and of itself…In the years ahead, two things will count the most. The first is your ability to unlearn the things that are losing relevance, to flip yourself free of old scripts, and to learn the things that are gaining relevance. The second is whether people come to know and trust you as they struggle to bring their own learning forwards. That is do you really care about and respect them?”

So I ask what things are our students learning today that they will have to unlearn to be successful in the flat world of tomorrow?

Also, what sorts of skills and experiences must we provide for our students so that they are able to build relationships?

What are the tools of the relationship era? Blogs, wikis, podcasts, Twitter, Skype, YouTube, Wikipedia, Google Earth, Flickr, FaceBook, LinkedIn, My Space, and many other Web 2.0 technologies are certainly all examples of tools of the relationship age. How many teachers or principals are “literate” in these tools and technologies?  How many of our students are? 

Are we asking the right questions? What is literacy in the relationship era? What does educated look like in the relationship era? What will our students need to be able to do?

Peter says, “If you are betting instead on a lifetime of learning and unlearning, and of leveraging relationships with valued customers and clients, you should be confident of your ability to make your way.”

So, coming back to Jeff’s post. Wouldn’t posting comments on blogs we love or find interesting be a useful skill in the relationship era?

But then again I could be wrong. How else could we are still banning cell phones, blogs, and YouTube from our schools. So where is the real job preparation happening. In the school from 8 to 3, or in the Web 2.0 technology rich lives of our students outside of the classroom.

Speaking of Web 2.0, take a look at this YouTube video.

Brain Rules

Yesterday I posted on the book Brain Rules by John Medina. Seems I am not the only one enjoying the book. One of my favorite blogs is The Engaging Brand by Anna Farmery. I have been reading her blog for over a year and I always find some interesting tidbits.

In her recent post, she pulled these points from the book... (I've added my own commentary)

• The brain on average is 2% of body weight but takes 20% of the energy that we consume.

           (One more reason we need to ensure our students' eat a good breakfast and lunch.)

• The learning performance is deeply affected by the emotional environment in which the learning takes place.

            (So, students don't learn if they are being screamed at, are afraid to fail, or worried.)

• We lose attention every 10 minutes.

             (Uh oh, teachers, make sure you change it up, or re-direct because you don't have long.)

• Emotional arousal focuses attention on the gist of an experience at the expense of the details.

            (So again, we don't learn well when we are afraid, nervous, worried, or mad.)

• We need to derive meaning from the words to recall the details

            (Teachers, make sure you connect vocabulary to meaning in memorable ways.)

• Interruptions cause a 50% increase in how long it takes to complete a task and will lead to 50% more errors

 (Principals, quit with the announcements over the P.A.)

• People usually forget 90% of what they learn within 30 days

             (Wow, state tests go back at least 8 months. That's a problem.)

• When presenting, the audience needs to be hooked in the first 3 minutes.

            (So, "Open your book to page..." is not a hook. Try something original please!)

• The brain can hold 7 pieces of information for less than 30 seconds.

    (Students need some think time to digest your instruction.)

• A 26 minute nap can increase performance by 34%

 (So kindergarten had it right all along.)

• People learn better from a combination of words and pictures

   (Teacher, quit talking so much. Use pictures and make it visual.)

• Vision takes up half of the brains resources

 (We like to look at things. Refer to above.)

Anna will be interviewing John Medina for an upcoming podcast. I recommend you check back into her blog for it. Thanks Anna.

Education vs. Your Brain: Whose Side Are You On?

“Though we have been stuffing them into classroom and cubicles for decades, our brains actually were built to survive in jungles and grasslands. We have not outgrown this.”

So says molecular biologist Dr. John Medina in his new book Brain Rules.

After reviewing conducting his own research and studying many others’ research he has some interesting thoughts.

“What do these studies show, viewed as a whole? Most this: If you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a classroom. If you wanted to create a business environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you would probably design something like a cubicle. And if you wanted to change things, you might have to tear down both and start over.”

TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!

21st Century School Pedagogy

21st Century learning is going to require 21st century teaching. We have an educational "empire" surrounded by "walls" that seek to prevent change to how the empire operates. But the walls are slowly crumbling, assailed by the forces of change from outside and aided by technology. One of the leaders of the "assault" is Greg Whitby.

Teacher Replaced By a Laptop And RSS Feeder

The time had finally arrived, today, we the made the tough decision to replace our teachers with laptops and RSS feeds. Sadly, the teachers understood that it had to happen.

Of course I am kidding, but imagine your students reading books you assign each day in their RSS readers or through email. There would be nothing for the district or school to buy, nothing to track, nothing to shelve, and nothing to take up space in a backpack. Just small portions of books selected by the teacher or student.

I did come across a new website that will deliver small portions of books to your email or your RSS feeder. DailyLit brings books right into your inbox in convenient small messages that take less than 5 minutes to read.

Here is a portion from 100 Ways to Succeed/Make Money by Tom Peters.

"Here's the Big Word I want us to obsess on in today's Tip: WE! (And: US!)

"Here, for example, is my re-write of the above script: "We often hear the following Objection blah blah blah. What if it weren't an objection at all? What if it provides us with an Opportunity to get our oar in about this blah blah blah [product benefit, say]..." Note, obviously, in my rewrite the three uses of "we" and "us." From long experience, I suggest that this changes the Fundamental Nature of Community-Interaction between the Instructor and the Student. Instead of being an imparter-of-knowledge to the Unwashed, I/trainer am now a fellow-toiler-in-the-trenches hunting for a fruitful solution to "our" shared dilemma. Right?

"Student and teacher are now--via Pronoun Power!--engaged in a Joint Venture toward Excellence. (Or some such.)”

Just another blow to the “walls” surrounding the “empire” that is the old model of education, which is slowly crumbling before our eyes due to forces outside of the walls.

21st Century School Design

From Flux..

“Why do schools look the way they do? Why is there a chasm between widely acknowledged best practice principles and the actual design of a majority of school facilities? Why has the disconnect between learning research and learning places been so difficult to repair?”

"These  are some of the questions posed by American architects Prakash Nair and Randall  Fielding – who call themselves both School Architects and ‘Change Agents for Education’. Nair and Fielding’s take on the built environment is that it’s not only the place of learning but also ‘the psyche of learning’, impacting people’s emotions, relationships and behaviours and ultimately the teaching and learning methods that are employed.

"Nair and Fielding feel that one of the biggest barriers to innovation in school design is the lack of a common design vocabulary that all school stakeholders can share. They’ve developed an approach and a resultant book called The  Language of School Design: Design Patterns for 21st Century Schools."

The school of the 21st century might be composed of various designs to meet specific needs. The authors listed 3 example terms that help identify the concept.

• Cave Space –       places for individual study, reflection and quiet reading
• Watering Hole       Space – places to learn from peers
• Campfire Space       – places to learn from experts and storytellers

Working at a school site that is over 50 years old has created some interesting problems. The layout, design, and infrastructure are simply not able to meet the needs of the 21st century education.

I was intrigued by this article on the Economist website. It seems that architecture is going through a change to meet the demands and needs of the 21st century.

“The fact that people are no longer tied to specific places for functions such as studying or learning, says Mr Mitchell, means that there is ‘a huge drop in demand for traditional, private, enclosed spaces’ such as offices or classrooms, and simultaneously ‘a huge rise in demand for semi-public spaces that can be informally appropriated to ad-hoc workspaces’”.

Could you imagine a school campus that looks like this?

“FRANK GEHRY, a celebrity architect, likes to cause aesthetic controversy, and his Stata Centre at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) did the trick. Opened in 2004 and housing MIT’s computer-science and philosophy departments behind its façade of bizarre angles and windows, it has become a new Cambridge landmark. But the building’s most radical innovation is on the inside. The entire structure was conceived with the nomadic lifestyles of modern students and faculty in mind. Stata, says William Mitchell, a professor of architecture and computer science at MIT who worked with Mr Gehry on the centre’s design, was conceived as a new kind of ‘hybrid space’”.

“This is best seen in the building’s ’student street’, an interior passage that twists and meanders through the complex and is open to the public 24 hours a day. It is dotted with nooks and crannies. Cafés and lounges are interspersed with work desks and whiteboards, and there is free Wi-Fi everywhere. Students, teachers and visitors are cramming for exams, flirting, napping, instant-messaging, researching, reading and discussing. No part of the student street is physically specialised for any of these activities. Instead, every bit of it can instantaneously become the venue for a seminar, a snack or romance.”

I can hear directors of Maintenance and Operations groaning now. I am sure janitors across the country are reaching for the Excedrin. Principals are readying for the ulcer from all the worry that this architecture design will create. Or, maybe, we could see past the potential problems and embrace the potential benefits of the architecture of our schools meeting the needs of the flexible, cooperative, collaborative, tech-savvy students of the 21st century.

"Death of Education, But the Dawn of Learning"

"Every turned off device is potentially a turned off child."
"We have a classroom system when we could have a community system."
These are just a few of the thoughts shared in this great video called Learning to Change.
(Thanks to Scott and Dangerously Irrelevant)

Here are some more ideas from the video.

Relationship, Community, Connectivity, Access, Content Developers, Communicators.

"Nearly Now"

• Reflect
• Retract
• Research
• Repeat

The New 21st Century Set of Literacies

• Find Information
• Validate Information
• Synthesize Information
• Leverage Information
• Communicate Information
• Collaborate With Information
• Problem Solve With Information

Now take a look.

Here is a list of the speakers in the video.

Keith Kruger

Greg Whitby

Greg Black

Julie Evans

Stephen Heppell

Yong Zhao

Cheryl Lemke

Susan Patrick

Chris Dede

Karen Greenwood Henke

Daniel Pink

Ken Kay

and Deborah Baker & Barbara S. Nielson

Big Word Project: The Intersection of Education and the New Approach to Meaning

These words are mine. I bought them. Let me explain. I came across the Big Word Project from one of my favorite blogs Ugly Doggy. It is an interesting idea dreamt up by two creative thinkers in Northern Ireland. Their idea was to let people redefine a word by linking it to a particular website.

I chose Intersection and approach because for me they represent the philosophy of this blog. It is an intersection of many ideas and education. It is also about having a different approach to what we do in education. (Innovation and Education were already taken!) Ugly Doggy conducted an interview with the creators.

Here is one of the interview questions and answers...

Are the words pre-approved (you have a list and what is not there can't be used) and therefore finite? Or ANYTHING that is in a dictionary can go there?
- Lee: Not at all, anything that's a real word can be used. We're using the Oxford English Dictionary as reference. We have about 180,000 words on the site but we're missing loads so feel free to suggest more. We're not including places or names (unless the name is in the dictionary).

This got me thinking about its relation to education. If a word can take on multiple meanings and even take on locations on the world wide web, then what else could a word be connected with? A word could be connected with a picture, a sound, a smell, a country, a person, a movie, a song, a poem. If you think about it, this has some pretty powerful implications for education. We are moving from a "there is one right definition of a word" to a "a word can mean multiple things and those things will be specific to each individual." Word and meaning will take on many more meanings and concepts, and those can be individualized from a country, a culture, a group, or an individual.

One right answer for the question "What does approach mean?" or "What does Intersection mean?" is evaporating into links and tags meaning, unique to every person. This is getting very interesting.

Writing With Ideas That Stick

So what is good writing? I used six concepts to help my students improve their writing, make it fresh, and interesting. Take a look…

Concept 1: Simplicity
We need to find the essential core of our idea. We must eliminate and prioritize to create simple, yet profound ideas. The focus should be on effectively communicating the core idea, but to do so without going on and on. The less amount of information needed to communicate the core idea the better. We shouldn’t forget to include great leads. We need to mix in metaphors, proverbs, analogies, and relate it to the reader’s own experiences.

Concept 2: Unexpected
We need to get our reader’s attention. Do the unpredictable or unexpected (violate the reader’s schema). Use surprise, or high interest ideas to keep the reader’s attention. The more unexpected, the more attention you will get from the reader. Surprise keeps the reader hooked looking for the answer. We need to remember to keep it focused on the core idea, but be unpredictable. Don’t let your reader guess what you are going to say next. A little bit of mystery can keep it interesting as well. Another great technique is to ask a question the reader can’t answer and go about answering it.

Concept 3: Concrete
Concrete language helps the reader understand your core idea and concrete ideas are easier to remember. Try to avoid making your ideas too abstract. Use a lot of sensory language to make your ideas “living things” so people can relate to them. The more concrete you are with your language, the more likely you will be able to communicate your core idea.

Concept 4: Credibility
Use information gathered from experts to make your writing credible. If you are relating you own experience or knowledge, use a lot of vivid details to boost your validity.  Using statistics is a great technique to increase the credibility of your writing.

Concept 5: Emotional
People will care more about your idea if you can connect with them emotionally. Your writing can connect with ideas that people get emotional about by appealing to things that matter to your reader. Show the reader why your idea is important to them and why they should care.

Concept 6: Stories
Stories help to show your reader how you want them to act and then motivate them to act. The story is part entertainment, fun to read, and part instruction, what to do. The reader should be able to “see” the story as they read it. A great plot will present the character(s) with challenges, or connect people who would never usually meet, or your characters can be very creative and do new things. Your story can get people to think in new ways and then get them to act on those thoughts      

These concepts have produced some truly interesting pieces of writing in my class this year. One student’s opening line caught my attention when she told me she would be dead or living in the streets if not for her “favorite person.”  Now that is a “Favorite Person” essay I want to read.

So, where did these concepts come from you ask?  What writing program did I use?  No program, just business marketers. Marketers develop some of the best ideas. After all, it is their job to get your attention and to make sure you remember what they said.

Chip Heath and Dan Heath are the authors of Made to Stick, Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. It is a fantastic book about how to communicate ideas that “stick” They build the book around the six key qualities listed above.

So, why not bring the qualities of communicating great ideas used in the business world into my classroom?  Some of the best ideas for education can be found out in the “world.”  Education Innovation is all about thinking differently about approaching education and looking for way to innovate and teach creatively. Thanks to Chip and Dan, my students learned how to make their ideas “stick.”

Rob Jacobs

The Best Advice I Ever Got

Leaders take note, here is some sage advice from some very talented leaders. From Fortune Magazine interviewed several successful people to find out whats the best advice they have ever received. Here is a sample..

Gen. David Petraeus: Commanding general, multinational force - Iraq
"The bottom line is that seriously bright folks thought very differently about important issues, and the debates on various topics were wonderful. All in all, in fact, the experience was invaluable. It may sound trite, but experiencing that not everyone saw the world at all remotely the same was good preparation for many of the experiences I've had since then."

Tina Fey: Actress; creator and star of 30 Rock
"Always be the only person who can sign your checks."

Mark Hurd: Chairman and CEO, Hewlett-Packard
"An NCR executive was giving a presentation; he had great slides and an even better delivery. The CEO, Chuck Exley, listened to the entire presentation in his typically gracious, courteous manner. At the conclusion, he nodded and said something brief but profound: "Good story, but it's hard to look smart with bad numbers." And as I reflected on it, the presenter, articulate as he was, as good as his slides were, simply had bad numbers.

"That comment has always stayed with me. You have to focus on the underlying substance. There's just no way to disguise poor performance. I've tried to follow that advice throughout my career. Deliver good numbers and you earn the right for people to listen to you."
 
Indra Nooyi: Chairman and CEO, Pepsico
"Whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent. You will be amazed at how your whole approach to a person or problem becomes very different. When you assume negative intent, you're angry. If you take away that anger and assume positive intent, you will be amazed. Your emotional quotient goes up because you are no longer almost random in your response. You don't get defensive. You don't scream. You are trying to understand and listen because at your basic core you are saying, "Maybe they are saying something to me that I'm not hearing." So "assume positive intent" has been a huge piece of advice for me."

Sam Palmisano: Chairman and CEO, IBM
"I've noticed that some of the most effective leaders don't make themselves the center of attention. They are respectful. They listen. This is an appealing personal quality, but it's also an effective leadership attribute. Their selflessness makes the people around them comfortable. People open up, speak up, contribute. They give those leaders their very best."

Thomas S. Murphy: Former CEO, Capital Cities/ABC
"I got two pieces of advice I have always remembered. The first was from my father, Charles E. Murphy, who was a justice of the New York State Supreme Court. It was a point about ethics. He said, "Doing the wrong thing is not worth the loss of one night's good sleep."

"The other came from Benjamin Selekman, a Harvard Business School professor who taught labor relations. The last thing he said, at his last lecture to my class, was, "Here is something to remember for the rest of your life: Don't spend your time on things you can't control. Instead, spend your time thinking about what you can."

What is the best advice you ever got?

 

White Lines Go Away: Creative Idea for Innovative and Greener Paper

Last night I was reading Peter Sheahan's book Flip. Chapter 4 is titled Absolutely, Positively Sweat The Small Stuff. His theory is that all businesses have to be fast, good, and cheap, but they must offer an x-factor in addition to the other three. A business must be all all four, that is they must be fast, good, cheap and green, or responsible, or beautiful, or easy, or fun, or healthy.

Today I came across a great example creativity, innovation, and, in this case, being green.

Whitelines is a paper company that used the creativity of thinking the opposite and came up with a great idea.

"Writing paper with dark supporting lines has been around since medieval times when iron gall ink was used for its lasting dark colour. It took until our recent time before the idea of making a writing paper with white, “non-conflict”, lines got known from an idea of the designer Olof Hansson. Writing paper with white lines is now a patented solution."

There X-factor is being green.

"Whitelines is glad to announce that a great step to reduce our environmental impact has been taken through a deal with the paper producer Stora Enso. Whitelines will by that be able to offer a carbon dioxide neutral paper as base in our products."

A great example of doing the opposite as a way to get to a new idea. Being green is a wonderful bonus.
Check out their website for more info. WHITELINES

The Four Forces of Change: Increasing Complexity

“Increasing compression of time and space produces increasing complexity.” Increasing Complexity is the second of the four forces of change impacting on us, as described by Peter Sheahan in his book Flip.

There are six factors driving increasing complexity.

1. Rapidly interconnecting networks of ideas and people.

“Did you know, for example, that 20 to 25 percent of daily searches on Google are unique? We are generating content—opinions, survey results, perspectives, ideas, or just pointless garbage—so fast at any one time more than one quarter of the World Wide Web is brand new.”

We are going to have to develop standards and practices to teach our students how to navigate through all this information, make informed and appropriate choices, and judge content for usefulness, bias, authority, etc. We will certainly do our students a disservice and our country a disservice if we don’t provide our students with the skills and knowledge to navigate through this environment. It is not a skill most of us needed as we grew up. One trip to the library or flipping through the World Book Encyclopedia was enough.

Times have changed and we need to adapt to ensure we are meeting our students’ needs.
According to Time magazine, the world produced 161 exabytes. That equals 161 billion gigabytes. Imagine that. In other words, the world produced three million times the amount of information contained in all the books ever written in one year. Understanding how to type a search into Google is not providing our students with the tools they need to succeed in the future.

2. Disruptive technology—innovations in product and process almost always have unintended consequences that challenge our ability to adapt, and reward those with flexibility to flip into new modes of acting and thinking.

Cell phones with built in cameras and texting capabilities are nice features, but of course our students use them to cheat. That is the law of unintended consequences. Social Web 2.0 technology is a wonderful tool that connects students, but then we fight against cyber-bulling and Internet stalkers. As technology is rapidly developed and adopted by our students, we are going to face the challenge of adapting to the consequences they bring to our schools and classrooms.

3. Explosion of choice—in a globalizing economy, no one has a monopoly on any product or service for long, and the consumer’s biggest problem is often choosing among apparently identical offerings.

Teachers and administrators are faced with increasing choices in curriculum, teaching materials, educational software, and technology. Being able to sort through all these choices requires an enormous amount of time, energy, and use of resources. Teachers and administrators are being asked to be savvy enough to make informed and fiscally sound decisions in an environment where the amount of choices is growing daily. 

4. Increasing intangible desires of the market—rising affluence shifts the business imperative from supplying customer needs to meeting customer desires for emotional fulfillment, no matter how mundane the product or service.

The increasing  desire for school choice and schools that specialize in the arts, science, or technology is all a part of fulfilling customer needs. This will only increase in the future.

5. Increased sophistication of technology, systems, and processes—complexity begets complexity.

For example, many schools purchase educational software that becomes obsolete in just a few years or is not functional on quickly aging computers.  The effectiveness of the technology becomes more difficult to measure as we struggle to integrate it into our literacy plans while managing all of the technical issues.  Should you go web-base or buy a server? What is the long-term service agreement? What about software updates? Is this something teachers or administrators should be forced to spend time working through?

6. Legislation—whether it’s financial transparency, safety, the environment, or human rights, the world’s governments are regulating it.

No Child Left Behind, Quality Education Investment Act, High Priority Schools Grant Program, etc, etc. Need I say more? We have binders full of legislation monitoring everything we do. Make a mistake, and have it printed in the papers or posted on the web for the world to see.

As you can see, we in education are facing the same extreme forces that businesses and organizations around the world face. The challenge will be to adapt quickly and successfully. It is going to take some creative and innovative thinking, because what we have done so far, will not take us past where we need to go. One thing is for sure, it's going to get more complex.

HOW Week Part 7: You Must Be TRIPing!

Tripping
In my previous post I introduced the acronym TRIP. As explained by Dov Seidman, TRIP stands for Trust, Risk, Innovation, and Progress. According to Dov, there is a second level of meaning for TRIP.

HOW: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything...in Business (and in Life)

By: Dov Seidman

T “The T stands for transparency, which creates trust. Interpersonal transparency is a necessary power to thrive in a connected world, and not coincidentally, it creates trust."

When the teachers you work with can see that you are being open and transparent with your ideas, lessons, plans, etc. then they develop trust in you. For a department or grade level to be successful, a condition of transparency must exist. If others think you are hiding something, then they are not going to share what they know. We have all seen or know teachers who are hoarders of ideas. We have all seen and know teachers who are territorial about ideas, or committees, or duties, etc. When these teachers are not transparent, then the others they work begin to feel they need to close up and keep their ideas or territories. We become little islands or silos, each trying to keep their ideas to themselves in hope that they will be perceived as a, “great teacher.”  Meanwhile all the kids at the school suffer from this lack of transparency. We must open up and share our best practices and ideas. All of the students deserve the best, not just the ones in my class.

R The R stands for Reputation.

Do you know what your reputation is?  It may not be what you think. Perception is reality, as they say, so your reputation is largely going to be determined by the perception of those you teach and work with. It may not be what you intended it to be, but it is what others think it is.

I  The I stands for Instinct.

When there is trust, this can unleash you instinct. “When you are in a trust-filled situation, these synapses are strong. The various centers of your brain communicate seamlessly and rapidly, and you can then make split-second decisions that often pay off.” 

Wouldn’t it be easier if you worked and taught in a situation that allowed you to make quick decision without all the second-guessing yourself due to lack of trust in your students, your co-workers, or your principal. To work in an environment of trust will allow you to make decision in the best interest of the students each and every time without going through all the machinations that those who work where there is no trust will likely go through.

However, I took the liberty of adding another meaning to the I.

I The I can also stand for individual. We in education are being told exactly what to teach, when to teach, and how to teach. There must be room for the individual talents and ideas of each teacher or administrator. In an environment of trust, each individual teacher or administrator can offer his or her unique ideas and viewpoints.

P  The P stands for perennial prosperity.

Prosperity can mean performance. Prosperity can be translated to mean results. Trust brings results. Results from the teachers and administrators, which, in the end, translates to results from the students and the school. Performance increases steadily in the direction of great results.

Trust is key. We need to have trust. I get so tired of people who want to just talk about what has to be done without ever spending to reflect on the HOW it will be done. If we don’t figure out the HOWs then the “whats” won’t be accomplished. Is it worth our time as teachers and administrators to take some time to get our HOWs right?

So how do we get a TRIP going? You figure out where you are, where you want to go, and most importantly, you listen to each other. Our students are counting on us to get going on the TRIP.

Rob Jacobs

Thinking Better: Using The Productive Thinking Model Part 1

I read Tim Hurson’s book Think Better: An Innovator’s Guide to Productive Thinking and have been dying to have an opportunity to experiment with The Productive Thinking Model that he so skillfully describes in the book.

“One of the problems with problems is that they usually begin with a mess.”

I found a mess to work with.

“But if things weren’t messy or getting messy, there would be no discontent, and there wouldn’t be a need for productive thinking in the first place. The mess comes when we begin to realize that things might be better than the are..”

The mess I found centered around the problem of student discipline. While discipline is not officially a part of my job description, I had spent many months watching staff and students get more and more frustrated at the “mess”, so I volunteered to take the staff through The Productive Thinking Model to see what we might find at the end of the process. I was limited to one staff meeting, so we only able to get through steps 1 and 2 of the process, so we will be re-visiting the rest of the process at another meeting.

Step 1: What is Going On?
Sub-step 1: What’s The Itch?
An Itch is described as the discontent or irritant that compels us to want to change.

Most of the staff had and “itch” to be sure, but we needed to go through the process of discovering all the itches. So I facilitated a listing of all the itches that we could come up. I put no limits on what was considered and itch. If it bothered them it went up.

Some of the itches we listed were:
No system, student behavior, “Broken Windows” theory, paper work, before and after school, parents.

We then tried to makes clusters of itches based on common themes or characteristics.

(picture of our partial list)

Sub-step 2: What’s The Impact?
In this sub-step our goal was to discover what it is about our itches that concerns us. Which itches are a priority? Why?

We again made a list and then selected which seemed to be the most important to work on. What I found interesting was that after just two sub-steps we were talking in a way that was very different from what most of the staff expected and we were discussing ideas that may not have come to fore if we had just a “normal” discussion.

(sample list)

Sub-step 3: What’s The Information?
In this step we tried to understand what we already knew about the issue and what we needed to know about the issue. I used a thinking tool called KnoWonder. Essentially I made a T-chart with the word “Know” one side and the word “Wonder” on the other. For those of you who teach, think of a KWL chart.

We listed things that we knew about the issue and things we wondered about the issue. It is a very useful tool for getting some perspective on the problem. I found that some creative questioning helped to generate a good list. I did my best to ask questions that would generate ideas for the list.

(sample list)

Sub-step 4: Who’s Involved?

The next sub-step was getting a clear idea of all the people involved in this itch.
“How we see things depends on where we stand…”

We generated a list that came up with the typical stakeholders: teachers, students, parents, administrators, support staff, and community.

Sub-step 5: What’s the Vision?
In sub-step 5 we attempted to create a vision for the future or what the model calls the “Target Future.”

“The Target Future is the place you want to get to. It doesn’t tell you how you’ll get there; in other words it is not a solution. Rather it’s a brief description of a future in which your issue is resolved and your Itch no longer irritates you.”

I listed sentence stems on the board that said, “I only we could..”,  “I wish…”, and “It would be great if..” I used these sentence stems to facilitate a list of Target Futures. This was one area where I had to be more active in encouraging ideas. Some were hesitant to state their Target Future because the immediately started to think about how it might be accomplished. I reinforced the fact that we are simply stating what we hope for, and not worrying about the details. I think the staff was surprised that what they listed on the board was is some ways very different from what they might have walked into the room initially thinking.

Once we were done generating our list, we then used a thinking tool called I3.

“I3 allows you to determine which items on your list will be useful to work on. I3 stands for the three criteria you use to evaluate the items in your list: Influence, Importance, and Imagination.”

We used symbols (check mark, triangle, and a flower) placed next to the items on our list to get a visual sense of what we had influence over, what we thought was important, and if it would require some imagination.

Some of the Target Futures that seemed to hold a lot of promise was the creation of a flow chart, acknowledging  positive behavior more frequently and systematically, and staff training.

(sample list)

After completing all 5 sub-steps of Step 1, we had a great sense of what was going on with our discipline “Itch.”

I will discuss the result of Step 2 in a later post. I might add here that one of the most useful things for me as a facilitator was having some one who would chart the ideas for me. It was hard to do both and stay in the flow.

Coming Up Step 2: What’s Success?

This Just In...It's Confirmed, I Am A Genius!

I previously posted (Apple On The Rise) about being a committed Apple user. Seems many people in business are tired of being just a Mac user for everything but their work computers.

But as I was reading Keith Sawyers blog about creativity and innovation, he posted this...

"Apple’s corporate image is one of the creative iconoclast; their motto, “Think Different.” Their products look great. Artsy people like graphic designers, photographers, and film directors choose Apples."

"Does the ad campaign work?  Does the average person-in-the-street think of Apple computers as being more creative? A recent study done at Duke University’s Fuqua school of business provides some evidence that it does. This research has been all over the newspapers and even on NPR, so you may have already heard the take-home message: research subjects were shown an image of either Apple’s corporate logo or IBM’s corporate logo, and immediately afterwards they were given a creativity test. The subjects who’d seen the Apple logo scored higher on the creativity test."

So there you have it. Confirmation of what I have always known. I am a creativity genius. I think it is about time I get a little recognition. I would like to thank all the team back in Cupertino, CA who made this possible. ;-0 

HOW Week Part 6: Take A T.R.I.P.

In my previous post, Trust Issues, I discussed the impact of our HOWS with regards to trust. So, how do we get to this place called Trust?

Dov Seidman came up with the acronym T.R.I.P. After all, “It takes a journey to envision and learn about trust, but trust also propels it own trip.

 

HOW: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything...in Business (and in Life)

By: Dov Seidman
T R I P

Trust
Risk
Innovation
Progress

Trust
“Trusting in a sense, means giving something away and ceding power to others, an essential step in achieving the outward focus needed in a hyperconnected world. Trust empowers others, but because it is a virtue.” 

In the classroom that means taking the first step to give away our perception of control and trust the students. As an administrator, you must give power away to others to develop trust in them and their trust in you.

Risk
If there is no trust, “We drive slower, act cautiously, shrink our circle of friends and associates, and generally default more conservative impulses. When there is trust in the room, however, all of these tendencies are reversed. We are secure and so can act boldly. We feel free to invent new process…”

We experiment and try new things. Imagine how a student would feel if he or she was secure enough to try new things, stretch themselves, and take a risk.

Teachers who feel trusted will be more likely to innovate and create and share better ideas and practices.

Innovation
“In a trusting environment, everyone feels emboldened to take more risks. They challenge the system more, they solve problems, and they don’t stay in small boxes afraid to venture into new territory for fear of criticism (by bosses or colleagues). Innovation flows from this creative spirit.” 

In a trusting environment teachers would be more open to trying a new grade or teaching a class. With trust, a teacher will be more open to sharing new ideas or insight with colleagues. Administrators, if you felt more trust, you would be more willing to experiment with bold programs.  Teacher and administrators innovating new ideas without fear of criticism could generate great benefits for students.

Progress
“What happens when you innovate? You create progress.” 

Progress is not just limited to higher test scores. Progress extends to personal progress.

“We go on TRIPs because we want to accomplish big things. We go on TRIPs because we want to solve real problems and because we want to create lasting value.”

We go on TRIPs because helping build minds and making a difference is why we got into education in the first place. We go on TRIPs to make an impact.

Good luck on your TRIP!

Rob Jacobs

Do Those Who Teach, Learn and Innovate?

No organization should be better at learning than the organizations that teach people how to learn. Therefore, it would follow that education should be the best organization in terms of learning ability of capability.

On his post (Innovation = Learning) on his blog, Keith Sawyer discusses an article in the Fall 2007 issue of Sloan Management Review, by Joaquín Alegre and Ricardo Chiva. They studied organizations high in organizational learning capability (OLC) and identified five core features of high OLC companies:

1.    Experimentation
2.    Risk taking
3.    Interaction with the external environment
4.    Dialogue
5.    Participative decision making.

Keith shares some of his thoughts from his research on each of the five core features.

(1) Experimentation:
“Experimentation as defined by these authors, produces a flow of new ideas that challenge the established order.”

Does education tend to toward challenging the established order or supporting the established order?

(2) Risk taking:
“Risk taking is just what it sounds like: the tolerance for ambiguity and errors.  And as I’ve found, innovative organizations foster idea generation and tolerate failure.”

Does education posses a tolerance for ambiguity and errors. Does education foster idea generation and in what ways does it to do this. How about tolerating failure? Where does education fall on the spectrum or encouraging or discouraging ideas with the potential to fail?

(3) Interaction with the external environment:
“Interaction with the external environment is what I call “collaborating with customers” and is associated with innovative networks that I call collaborative webs in my book Group Genius.  Deborah Ancona, in her 2007 book X-Teams, has likewise discovered that successful teams have an outward focus, and strong social network ties with people outside of their team.”

Has education developed an outward focus? In what ways has education collaborated with its “customer base?” How has education fostered strong social networks with people outside of their classrooms, schools, and districts?

(4) Dialogue and (5) participative decision making:
“Dialogue and participative decision making are what I call improvisation–a style of communication and an organizational culture that is egalitarian, open to flows across status levels.  Improvisational organizations excel at a type of dialogue that opens up possibilities, a style of conversation in which new and unexpected ideas emerge.”

In what ways has education embraced dialogue and participative decision making? How could education benefit from a greater use of dialogue and participative decision making? Does education encourage idea sharing across job functions and management levels?

Keith concludes by saying, “I firmly believe that organizations high in learning ability are more likely to be innovative organizations, and I’m delighted to read of this fascinating study confirming the link.”

I too hope that education has developed a high learning ability because we need all the innovation we can get. I think the jury is still out whether we who are high in teaching ability are also high in learning ability.

Please take a look at this great post on the
Freakanomics Blog-  How Can We Measure Innovation? A Freakonomics Quorum

HOW Week Part 5: Trust Issues

No one has ever asked me during a staff meeting, staff development session, or a grade level meeting (Professional Learning Community) if I trust the others I am working with. I am sure most teachers  consider trust to be an important part of getting good test scores for their students. But, if we have to work together to succeed at our goals, isn’t trust a key element?  I believe it is and it is not being talked about near enough.

HOW: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything...in Business (and in Life)

By: Dov Seidman

Dov Seidman said, “Trust is a funny thing, one of those soft things that we often rush by. What’s not so funny is how often it lies at the center of our challenges and opportunities.” 

If it lies at the center of our challenges, why aren’t we talking about it?  Why aren’t we focusing on it?  Can you look across the table and honestly say that the people you are working with to accomplish your goals or solve a problem are people that you trust? 

Warren Buffett said, “When it’s present, nobody really notices. But when it’s absent, everybody notices.” 

We notice an absence of trust by some of the obvious dysfunctions between teachers, or between schools and districts. All the forms you are filling out...somebody doesn’t trust you. All those great ideas that are not being shared within a grade level or department…somebody has some trust issues. Think about it. Isn’t this really at the core of a great many of the problems we face at school an