Education Innovation

Moving Past Learning Assumptions to Learning Alternatives?

Do your assumptions about what organizational learning should be leave you with a lack of alternatives?

One of the reasons why many people, including myself, love books like Freakonomics, Super Freakonomics, Predictably Irrational, or The Economic Naturalist is that is takes our assumptions about the world around us and stands them on their head. When what we assumed about our world is discovered to be incorrect, we must develop alternatives in our thinking and our approach to the world around us. 

We have created a model of organizational and personal learning based on our assumptions about it. So let's consider our learning assumptions and models.

As part of the book The Organization Of The Future, James O’ Toole contributed an essay titled “Free To Choose: How American Managers Can Create Globally Competitive Workplaces” In his essay he describes 3 “Emerging Employer Models.” He describes them as follows:

Low-Cost Companies

• They are paid at (or close to) the minimum wage.
• They receive few if any benefits
• They have no job security
• They are given only the amount of training needed to do jobs that have been designed to be simple  and easy to learn.

Global-Competitor Companies

• Increasingly hire people on a contractual basis and, where possible, outsource and offshore work.
• Offer their “contingent” workers no security beyond the time limits of their contracts, and no promises of a continuing employment relationship.
• Often look outside to hire even permanent and top-level employees, carefully limiting how much they respond on developing managers and professionals, let alone on the training of workers.
• Frequently offer “then new employment contract,” in which they commit to telling employees what their strategy is and where they think future jobs in the organization will be, and workers then are told that their continual employment depends on their performance and the fit between their skills and the needs of the business.
• Are constantly searching for workers with the skills needed for today’s challenges. And although they pay top dollar for that talent, they expect employees to work long hours and, especially, to be productive.

High-Involvement Companies

• Challenging and enriched jobs
• A say in the management of their own tasks
• A commitment to low turnover and few layoffs
• A relatively egalitarian workplace, with few class distinctions between managers and workers and relatively small ratios between the salaries of the CEO and the average worker
• Jobs organized in self-managing teams
• A strong sense that every employee is a member of a supportive community
• Extensive, ongoing training and education to all
• Salaries rather than hourly wages
• Employee participation in company stock ownership and a high share in company profits

O’ Toole advocates for the High-Involvement Company as the model of the future.

According to James O’ Toole, the most successful companies now and in the future will be those that choose to address the deepest needs of their employees. 

•    Financial resources and security
•    Meaningful work that offers the opportunity for human development
•    Supportive social relationships

So, to which model would the current system of organizational learning belong?

Does the current organizational model meet the 3 deepest needs of it's employees?

It is our assumptions about what learning is, where and when learning, teaching, and training takes place, and how learning systems should be organized, that control the current organizational face of learning. We have built what we assumed is the best model for delivery of instruction.

What, however, if those assumptions are wrong? 

Have you ever considered the fact that the assumptions you make about what organizational learning is and what is should be are wrong? 

As O’Toole puts it, “Remember, it was once widely assumed that no airline could trust its employees to decide how best to serve customers—until Southwest did. It one was assumed that no company in the discount retail industry could succeed while paying its employees decent salaries and offering them full benefits—until Costco did. It was assumed that poorly educated blue-collar workers in old-line manufacturing firms could not be taught managerial accounting and then left to be self-managing—until SRC Holdings did. Once the conventional wisdom was that employees must be closely supervised and governed by rules—until W.L. Gore proved otherwise. And it was assumed that the first thing a company must do in a financial crisis is to lay off workers—until Xilinx discovered alternatives.” 

Are there alternatives to our current model? 

Do your organization have learning alternatives? Are your organizational leaders willing to honestly explore them? William A. Foster said, “Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives.” Is what we have built the "wise choice of many alternatives", or is it simply what we have ended up with? 

Archibald MacLeish once said, "What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice." Will your organization and those in it ever have the freedom to develop and create alternatives to the current model. Will we be free to pursue the The High-Involvement Company or the Global-Competitor Company, as described by O' Toole, or a hybrid of the two, or even something not yet discovered?

As O’ Toole says, “The statement ‘I have no alternative’ is one of the surest indicators of leadership failure.”

 

9 Signs of a Non-Learning Organization

From the Idea Management Systems blog comes this post  The 9 Signs of a Losing Organisation

1. Fuzzy Vision
2. Lack of Leadership Skills
3. Discouraging Culture
4. High Bureaucracy
5. Lack of Initiative
6. Poor Vertical Communication
7. Poor Cross-functional Collaboration
8. Poor Teamwork
9. Poor Idea and Knowledge Management

Do any of these jump out at you? These are the signs of an organization that is having trouble learning. 

 I have been thinking a lot about #'s 6-9. Technology allows teams to connect to islands of expertise located in any geographic location. Technology allows teams to archive their learning and share with others. Knowing what others know and sharing what you have learned is what I refer to as Wisdom Stewardship. Technology makes it easy for individuals, teams, and organizations to be good stewards of available wisdom--to “Know What Others Know” (K.W.O.K.).

No staff knows how much they know until they know what each other knows. And I can guarantee that you know more than you think you know. (Read it again!)

Problems are another source of learning and knowledge in an organization.

New Problems = New Questions = New opportunities to share and collaborate = New learning = New Ideas = New solutions = New Knowledge

How is your organization doing? 

Catalytic Questions:

What places are you failing to look for ideas or answers to problems?

In what ways could you get curious about what your staff knows?

How might your assumptions about knowledge and ideas be getting in the way of learning from your staff?

What if you were able to know everything your staff knows?

What might you have done in the past that could be applied to Idea and Knowledge Management with your team? With your organization? 

What resources or solutions are available to you that you may have overlooked?

 

 

Leaders are Learners

Leaders are learners. Great leadership is demonstrated by leaders who display and model learning behaviors. One of the easiest ways to model learning behavior is asking questions. Ask yourself...

How can I personally demonstrate that "asking for and seeking help from others" is a sign of effective learning and a strength rather than a sing of weakness? 

When I am thinking about and looking at various projects, proposals, and ideas, have I ensured that knowledge from other projects, proposals, ideas, and departments have been brought to bear on this?

When I encounter a problem, how can I reinforce and model the importance of learning from others rather than providing the answers? 

How do I react to the failure of those around me. Is it a just chalked up as a loss or as an opportunity for valuable learning? 

How often do I ask, "What have you learned from others recently?" 

Am I curious about who is teaching others and who is seeking new learning in my organization? 

^{(Adopted from the book Learning To Fly by Chris Collison and Geoff Parcell)}

A simple set of questions for a leader to use to model learning behaviors as a leader. 

11 Traits of Highly Creative Learners

Dean Rieck is a highly creative and successful direct marketing copywriter. He posted this piece “Do You Have These 11 Traits of Highly Creative People?” on the wonderful site Copyblogger.

As my title suggests, these 11 traits should be encouraged and developed in our personal and organizational learning. Creativity is an edge personally and organizationally. We need creative learners and we need to do our best develop it.

So with thanks to Dean, here are 11 highly creative traits that learners need to develop.

1. "Have the COURAGE to try new things and risk failure. Every big breakthrough starts as a harebrained idea. This doesn’t mean you should constantly go off the deep end, just that you should balance your routine portfolio of solutions with an investment in the new and untried. Over time, the risk is usually worth the reward."

2. "Use INTUITION as well as logic to make decisions and produce ideas. When Matt Drudge designed his Web site, he listened to his gut instead of the Internet gurus. He kept it simple, small, fast, and some would say ugly and primitive. But it works for him, making The Drudge Report one of the most recognizable and popular sites in the world."

3. "Like to PLAY, since humor and fun are the ultimate creative act. Which is to say you just have to lighten up. We all have goals, and quotas, and deadlines, but it’s not life and death. When you enjoy yourself, your brain relaxes and is able to produce more and better ideas. One of those ideas may be just what you’re looking for."

4. "Are EXPRESSIVE and willing to share what they feel and think, to be themselves. Blogging is the ideal arena for injecting your personality into your work. People are emotional creatures and respond better to people who appear real, honest, and open. Not only is it more interesting, it can also be more persuasive."

5. "Can FIND ORDER in confusion and discover hidden meaning in information. Research and critical thinking are key tools for the creative person. Information is to the brain what food is to the stomach. So-called “writer’s block” or creative burnout almost always results from a lack of fresh information and having nothing meaningful to say."

6. "Are MOTIVATED BY A TASK rather than by external rewards. You must like the challenge of writing, explaining, teaching, and persuading. Sure, you can make money along the way, but if you’re in it just for the money, you’re not going to be a fountain of new ideas."

7. "Have a need to FIND SOLUTIONS to challenging problems. Even the most creative writers won’t have a solution for everything. If they claim to, they’ve stopped thinking. Highly creative people are those whose eyes light up at a question they can’t answer. That’s the opportunity to learn something new and produce remarkably creative content."

8. "Will CHALLENGE ASSUMPTIONS and ask hard questions to discover what is real. Writing, blogging, or business rules aren’t really rules, only rules of thumb. If you want to wield true creative power, you will always take what others advise with a grain of salt. (That includes all of us gurus who love to don our pointy wizard hats and pontificate on the secrets of success.) If you don’t know something from personal knowledge or experience, you don’t know it at all."

9. "Can MAKE CONNECTIONS between old ideas to produce new insights. Combine the little doodles you make on a white board with online video and you get CommonCraft, a new approach to explaining things to people in a way they can easily understand. Sometimes the best solutions are simply two old ideas jammed together."

10. "Will PUSH THE ENVELOPE in order to expand the boundaries of what is possible. There was a time when no one thought you could make money on the Internet. Now it’s a huge, multi-national business platform. Instead of dividing the world into the possible and impossible, it’s better to merely divide it into the tried and the untried. What have you not tried yet?"

11. "Are willing to TEST new ideas and compete with others based on results. Isn’t that what they mean by the “market of ideas”? Isn’t that what business competition is about? If you’re afraid of being wrong or losing, your creativity will suffer."

Core knowledge, literacy, the ability to think and learn should be combined with creative traits to create creative learners and creative organizations.

 

Pursuing “Elegant Solutions” in Education

What is better than a solution to a problem? The answer is an elegant solution.

Matthew E. May, author of the Change This Manifesto titled Elegant Solutions: Breakthrough Thinking The Toyota Way explains that, “An elegant solution is one in which the optimal outcome is achieved with the minimal expenditure of effort and expense.”

Each day educators confront a myriad of problems. The increasing complexity of the world around seems to create ever increasingly complex problems, be it problems of teaching, learning, curriculum, pedagogy, behavior, finances, collaboration, technology, etc., educators must create solutions to complicated problems every day.

Clearly, we need and want solutions. According to Matthew, “And when it comes to solutions, simple is better. Elegant is better still.”

“Elegant solutions embrace the overarching philosophy of doing far more with much less.” Education certainly has been called upon to do far more with less in recent years. The elegant solution is about finding that wonderful solution within the restrictions of our resources.

The problem, as Matthew points out is, “…elegant solutions aren’t obvious, except, of course, in retrospect.”

So what to do then? The answer is to make your classroom, your Professional Learning Community, your school, and your district more innovative.

Now innovation is a powerful word that elicits all sorts of ideas and reactions. Many believe that innovation is the realm of inventors, research and development departments, technology companies, or lone geniuses. While that may be the image, it is not the reality.

David Neeleman, founde of Jet Blue says, “Innovation is trying to figure out a way to do something better than it’s ever been done before.”

Read that carefully. He didn’t say we must do it better, but that we must try to do it better. Innovation in this way is a process, not a destination. Every educator I know is capable of trying to figure out how to do something better than its ever been done before. Most educators are constantly tinkering with their instruction methods, plans, etc. They are innovating. Professional Learning Communities try to do things better. Schools try to do things better. Doing things better provides solutions to problems.

Matthew says, “…when I refer to innovation, I mean solving the problem of how to something better than ever.”

It is important to remind ourselves that innovation, doing something better than its ever been done before, is susceptible to a few “big traps.”

According to Matthew there are 3 big traps to avoid on our way to finding elegant solutions.

1. Swinging for fences
“This is the ‘homerun or bust’ trap, which invariably destroys a strong batting average over time. It carries with it huge risk, usually accompanied by high cost.”

Education has seen this trap time and time again. Instead of changing how we deliver curriculum, we scrap the entire curriculum and buy new curriculum, spending thousands of dollars and causing a ton of frustration in the process. Instead of figuring out who is actually using technology, we buy dozens of laptops and LCD projectors. We keep swinging for the fences.

2. Getting too clever
“This is the ‘bells and whistles’ trap, which can easily get out of control in an effort to outdo competitors. It carries with it the danger of complexity and customer alienation.”
Teachers are notorious for trying to come up with the next great project, the one that outdoes the teacher next door and gets their picture in the paper. Too often, what happens is parents get upset at all the work they end up doing, students are confused, and administrators get frustrated.

Administrators love to create the next big “program” that is going to take learning to the next level. Schedules are created, new curriculum purchased, complicated plans and procedures developed, meetings are scheduled, etc. They get so clever, they outwit themselves, and the students don’t benefit.

3. Solving problems frivolously
“This is the ‘brainstorm’ trap, which is misguided creativity far afield from company direction. It’s a symptom of poorly defined work, and fraught with waste. There’s a reason we call it an organization.”

Sounds like the ultra-new behavior management and tracking program, which includes staff development, new forms, and a computer database to solve a student behavior problem that doesn’t really exist. Solving a problem that doesn’t exist.

Maybe it’s the new 8-step purchasing request process, when the teachers could simply just shoot an email or ask the principal in person. What problem did we solve?

So now that we know what traps to avoid, what are the key principles for creating or discovering and elegant solution?

Matthew explains there are 3: ingenuity in craft, pursuit of perfection, and fit with society.

1. Ingenuity in craft
Ingenuity in craft means that we accept limitations. Education is filled with limitations, rules, regulations, laws, bureaucratic thinking, corrosive or inflexible cultures, limited resources, etc.  We use limitations to our advantage by viewing it as a challenge to overcome and a problem to solve. “No challenge, no creativity.” Limitations challenge our minds to find the elegant solution, without challenges what motivation would we have?

It also means we, “…pursue the simple question that drives the thinking behind every breakthrough, big or small: Is there a better way?”

2. The pursuit of perfection
“If ingenuity is the starting point, perfection is the vector. Approached as a process, it can drive breakthroughs. Approached as a goal, it can actually block innovation.”

It’s all about the chase. The mantra should be, “No best, only better.”

We need to embrace the twin wins of ideate and initiate.

3. Fit with society
The goal of innovation and the pursuit of the elegant solution is meaningless if it doesn’t fit with what your school needs. The solutions need to fit within the larger system of the school’s needs and function.

Does the innovation solve a problem in the context of the classroom, the professional learning community, or the school? A great idea that doesn’t fit within the context of the school is going nowhere.

These three principles are the signposts that guide creative and innovative thinking and energy toward the pursuit of elegant solutions. Being careful to avoid the 3 big traps, educators can discover solutions to problems that are optimal for the context with minimal expenditures of valuable effort, time, and expense. Any solution that can do that in education is definitely elegant.