Education Innovation

The Strategy of Imagination

Umair Haque shares these thought on Harvard Business School blog.

"Today’s economics are in shock – numerous shocks are rolling across the global economic landscape.

"As economics changes, so must strategy. What was “strategic” yesterday is less and less strategic today.

"And that requires us to have strategic imagination: to be able to imagine fundamentally new possibilities for truly strategic behaviour.

"Now, that’s hard work. Very few companies are able to tap – let alone master – strategic imagination.

"Why not? Strategic imagination is tremendously difficult because it requires us to put aside yesterday’s tired assumptions and orthodoxies, and begin to actively rethink from scratch the way value can be, should be, must be, will be created.

"The surest, most lethal killer of strategic imagination is being reined in by orthodoxy: thinking that tomorrow must be like yesterday."

One of my favorite blogs is Principled Innovation by Jeff De Cagna. Jeff discusses Strategic Planning vs. Strategic Imagination.

Jeff says, "This is the definitive explanation of what is wrong with strategic planning in any form:  it is grounded in the belief that tomorrow must be like yesterday. Above all else, it is this deep-seated assumption that has made strategic planning an enduring feature of the association landscape. The vast majority of leaders in our community are terrified by the prospect of imagining a future that looks radically different from a past many still revere and a present they find disquieting but familiar. Associations have always been more comfortable with incrementalism, despite the fact that it is a total mismatch with the times, and thus threatens our community’s future prospects."

Jeff address a common problem for any organization. Education is no different. But we should be. We spend all day with students who have amazing imaginations. Who better than the kids we teach each day to come up with the most wild and fantastic stories. Who better than our kids to imagine some of the most outlandish ideas, machines, inventions, and situations.

We spend all day teaching students, but the time has come to take a lesson from our students.

It is the educator, who above all, should be able to imagine a new future, a new tomorrow. It is the educator, the one who encourages the imagination of students everyday, who should encourage the imaginations of each other to embrace a new strategy. It is we who teach students how to think, who should be able to think about what it is we will have to do in the future to be successful for our students.

Maybe we aren't experts at strategic planning, but we should be the experts of strategic imagination.

Should Education Ever Imitate Business?

In his new book, The Six Secrets of Change: What the Best Leaders Do to Help Their Organizations Survive and Thrive, author and change expert Michael Fullan warns we should be very careful to follow the latest and greatest theory and to view these theories with a critical eye.

Fullan quotes from the book The Witch Doctors: Making Sense of Management. "Management theory...has four defects: it is constitutionally incapable of self-criticism; its terminology usually confuses rather than educates; it rarely rises above common sense; and it is faddish and bedeviled by contradictions."

Sort of reminds me of educational theory too. But, can education learn something from imitating business theory and models?

A great post by Tim at Intended Consequences blog titled The Business of Education is Business has really got me, and based on the comments, others thinking. Why is education imitating business? Does business have something to offer education?

Tim wrote, “So over the years, I have seen many examples of how education has tried very hard to imitate business models. How many pieces of business jargon have made their way into the culture of education?”

I am sure we can all relate to this. Statements like, “Get the right people on the bus” are now part of our daily conversation.

Tim continues…“What interests me here is that it seems that education is quick to jump onto the business bandwagon, but we have seen time and time again how these business models do not stand the test of time. Even “Good to Great” which highlighted 12 businesses that were examples of greatness and what made them “great” has major flaws. The businesses in that book, since it has been written, have almost universally all gone through major management changes, or have had to restructure due to business losses.” What ever happened to Circuit City? 

This is where the differences between education become stark and clear.

Business
Required to make fundamental internal changes in response to external factors, such as opportunities created between competition, innovation, ideas, global changes, technological changes, and talent levels, etc.

Education
Education is not required to make fundamental internal changes in response to external factors.

Business
Must market to attract customers and create awareness of their service or product.

Education
Students come to us.

Business
Customers’ desires and needs are ever changing, thus driving fundamental organizational changes as necessary.

Education
Do not have to make fundamental organizational changes.

Business
Competition

Education
No competition

Business
Every person in the organization can be held accountable.

Education
Only management can be held accountable.

Business
Paradigms, theories, methods, strategies, and organizational styles change to meet changes and needs in the external environment.

Education
Educational model has not fundamentally changed in a century.

Business
Faces an organizational cost for failure to adjust to external environments, failure to meet the needs of customers, and failure to innovate and capitalize on opportunities.

Education
No cost to the organization.

Business
Compete with other businesses globally.

Education
Not in competition.

Business
Better ideas are a source and force for organization change.

Education
Better ideas are not a force for organizational change and are often prevented by regulations.

Business
No guarantees.

Education
Guaranteed “customers”, employment, raises, and benefits.

Tim asks... “Should we, as educators, really be emulating the world where failure is not only an option, it is a way of life?”

It seems to me that business books are constantly in flux or changing because business itself is constantly in flux. This is a result to stay competitive and productive in an environment that can fundamentally change in a few decades, as evidenced by how the Internet has created whole new businesses, customers, methods, strategies and impacted nearly every facet of how business operates.

This, in turn, would create and ever changing list of books that are written to meet these ever changing environments.

Tim asks… “Should we, as educators, really be emulating the world where failure is not only an option, it is a way of life?”

We don't have to. Education, while educating people who will go on to work in places that will fundamentally change internally to meet external changes every few decades, does not itself have to undergo fundamental internal changes even in light of major external changes. The fundamentals of education have not changed in nearly a century.

Elementary, junior high, and high school are still very similar to how it was when I went to school, but business has seen the rise of the Internet, globalization, and many other external forces, and has had to adapt to them.

Education doesn’t have to change in response to failure, because the very definition of failure is subjective, subject to change, and varies from school to school, district to district, and state to state. Business has a bottom line. Make it and you stay in business for another day. Education has no such bottom line. The kids will keep coming, the schools will stay open, and teachers will keep teaching.

Conventional Leadership vs. Lateral Leadership

Is this the sort of leadership that your school or district needs? More from from Paul Sloane’s list of Conventional Leaders vs. Lateral Leaders found in his book The Leader’s Guide To Lateral Thinking Skills.

and

See more of these traits here (Do You Need Better or Different? )

Howard Gardner calls for "indirect leadership."

"A leader is an individual (or, rarely, a set of individuals) who significantly affects the thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors of a significant number of individuals. Most acknowledged leaders are "direct." They address their public face-to-face. But I have called attention to an unrecognized phenomenon: indirect leadership. In this variety of leading, individuals exert impact through the works that they create.

Whether direct or indirect, leaders fashion stories: principally stories of identity. It is important that a leader be a good storyteller, but equally crucial that the leader embody that story in his or her life. When a leader tells stories to experts, the stories can be quite sophisticated; but when the leader is dealing with a diverse, heterogeneous group, the story must be sufficiently elemental to be understood by the untutored, or 'unschooled,' mind."

Which does your school or district need?

Catalytic Questions:

In what ways is your communication style growing to meet the needs of your school or district?  Will the way you communicate change in the future or remain the same?

What problems are you working on that would benefit from empowering someone else to solve it?

Are you current hiring practices bringing in the most talented candidates? Are there alternatives to you current hiring practices that might improve your results?

How might you look to the past to find new approaches to your current issues?

In what ways might you combine ideas from outside of education to develop new and innovative ideas in education?

How might you encourage and empower your staff to share their ideas?

Which sort of leadership will help you reach your goals, more of the same or lateral or indirect leadership?

More Educational Wisdom From Sir Ken Robinson

Excellent wisdom and insight from Sir Ken Robinson in this interview by WPSU-TV as part of their series called "Conversations From Penn State." Enjoy.

Educational Edgecraft

What do you get when you combine the ideas of John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, Lang Davison, Seth Godin, and Michael Michalko? Into the Education Innovation blender they go. The result-- Educational Edgecraft

Let's talk about edges.

John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison, authors of The Power of Pull, defines edges this way.

“Edges are places that become fertile ground for innovation because they spawn new unmet needs and unexploited capabilities and attract people who are risk takers. Edges therefore become significant drivers or knowledge create and economic growth, challenging and ultimately transforming traditional arrangements and approaches.”

Seth Godin, author of Free Prize Inside, defines edgecraft this way.

“Edgecraft is a methodical, measurable process that allows individuals and teams to inexorably identify the soft innovation that live on the edges of what already exists.”

So in one sense the “edge” is that place where what you do in education meets ideas, knowledge, and needs of what others do outside education transforming the core of your school or classroom.  In another sense, the “edge” is an innovation of what you are already doing in your school or classroom that is so far from the current reality that it becomes remarkable.

Ideas from outside and or remarkable innovations from inside can be, as the author of ThinkerToys creativity expert Michael Michalko would advise, “SCAMPERed” (Substituted, Combined, Adapted, Modified, Put to other purpose, Eliminated, or Rearranged) into powerful ideas and innovations.

 Chart inspired from Seth Godin

Edge
Network	KWOK- Know What Others Know Share what you know with others. Learn what you can from others. Get outside of education and bring back ideas that will work in education. Understand the power of the network to bring new ideas from outside in. Become the Twitter of schools.
Ergonomics and Design	Change the look of the school and or classroom. Put couches or bean bags in your lounge. Use special paint so students and teachers can write on the walls. Change your office to better suit parents. Rearrange the desks in the classroom to create more collaboration. Think about the ergonomics and design of your school. Be the Herman Miller or IDEO of schools.
Make It Noticeable	Make everything a work of art the tells the world who you are. Show off the learning. Put it online, podcast it, videocast it, or SlideShare it. Make the learning noticeable and people will notice you. Become the Etsy of schools.
The Senses	Display something beautiful or thought provoking, make the school smell good, bring food that tastes good, put on some great music, use some furniture that feels good. Hook into the senses. Become the Starbucks of schools.
Time	Manipulate time. Add time here and take it away from there. Give the gift of time to a teacher. Turn your staff meeting into a speed dating meeting for ideas. Find some creative ways to "waste time." Give teachers an entire staff meeting to choose a problem of their choice and work on it. Become the Google of schools.
Emotion	Hook emotion into your work. Make someone laugh. Surprise and thrill someone. Make them angry to take action. Empathize. Inspire someone. Just do it. Become the Nike of schools.
Technology	Use technology that makes work easier to share, collaborate, and communicate with others. Prepare for and begin discussing the technology that will be, not what is. It's about the user not the hardware. Make technology simple. Become the Apple of schools.
Marketing	Learn how to "sell" ideas by making them memorable. Learn how to connect through ideas. Make your ideas "stick." Become the Chip and Dan Heath of schools.
Safety	Make things safer than people would expect. Become the Qantas Airlines of schools.
Differentiate	Give student, teacher, and parent just what they need in the way they need it. Customize the school. Become the "Amazon Recommends" of schools.
The System	Change the system, modify the system, or adapt new ideas and technologies to the system. You can change how you deliver instruction in a way that people will demand and expect from then on. Become the Netflix of schools.
Interactive	Involve parents in ways they never expected. Involve students in ways they never expected. Give them immediate feedback so changes can be made immediately. Give them a say. Become the Threadless of schools.
Do Less	Do more by doing less. Let parents and students do more. Let the district do more. Let volunteers do more. Empower others to do for themselves and the school. Become the Salvation Army of schools.
Change the "Who"	Bring the office manager into the classroom to work with the students. Have a teacher run the school for a day. Let the student teach the lesson. Involve others in new ways. Change who does what and you will change their perspectives. Become the Wikipedia of schools
Fix What Is Broken	Don't ignore it, fix it. Be willing to spend time on fixing even the little things. Little things can make a big difference. Believe you can do it. Use soft innovation. Become the Seth Godin of schools.
Make It Cheaper	Drive down the "costs" by becoming uber-recyclers. Reuse- adapt it. Think of better ways to use what already exists. Become the First Solar of schools.
Focus On The Tough Problems	Create a school culture that loves the challenge of solving the tough problems. Let the other schools do the easy stuff. Work on the things that no one is doing because they think it is to hard. Become the Novartis of schools.

The mash-up of these three concepts provides Lateral Wisdom and Lateral Wisdom is Education Innovation.

Because Friends Don’t Let Friends Stay Ignorant- The Professional Networked Learning Collaborative

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously said, …”there are known 'knowns.' There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns.”

He was basically describing 3 levels of ignorance. (Lack of knowledge or information)

The 3 Levels of ignorance look like this.

Level 1-There are things you “know.” 

For example, I can use an LCD projector in my classroom. I know where the school cafeteria is.

Level 2-There are things you “know you don’t know.” 

For example, I don’t know how to use Wolfram Alpha. I don’t know what the cafeteria will be serving next Tuesday.

Level 3- There are things you “don’t know you don’t know.” 

Sorry, hard to provide an example for that one.

But Innovation expert Steven Shapiro in a recent post, thinks there might another dimension, another level if you will.

Level 4- The things you “don’t know you know.”

Steven explains it this way. “Inside of organizations, there is so much untapped knowledge.  To combat this, over the past two decades, companies have invested millions of dollars in knowledge management systems.  The objective has been to capture the company’s knowledge."

But as Steven explains there is a problem. “The problem is, the knowledge management databases usually become so large and unwieldy that they are unusable.  I can attest from experience that these systems often end up becoming digital piles of untapped information.  Finding what you want can be like finding a needle in a haystack.  Or, more accurately, it is like finding a specific needle in a stack of needles.”

What’s Steven’s answer to this dilemma you might ask? Reverse Knowledge Management.

“Instead of posting knowledge which sits passively in a database waiting for someone to find it, you post your question to your “community” so that it can be answered at the time of need.”

This is at the very heart of the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative model. The PNLC consists of educators working together in the ongoing purpose of increasing student learning and achievement while sharing physical space, virtual space, or both simultaneously. PNLC members will fluidly move between the physical and virtual networks to communicate, collaborate, and share ideas, data, strategies, knowledge, and information. Education is not immune to the problem of finding the right needle.

As I have mentioned before, Professional Networked Learning Communities use AWARRENESS.

• A student focus
• Lateral Wisdom
• Abilities
• Roles
• Response-ability
• Relationships
• Education
• Networks
• Experience
• Skills
• Scalability

Of those, lets look at Relationships and Networks.

Often times we forget just how important the relationships outside of our grade level or department can be. Each member has a network of relationships that can be leveraged to provide insight, help, advice, knowledge, and wisdom to the work of their PNLC. The relationships developed by each person can provide a myriad of useful outsiders to help the PNLC accomplish its work in improving student achievement.

PNLCs have the advantage of the “network.” The vast array of connections and “weak-ties” that are combined and blended to make the PNLC networked. PNLC members will fluidly move between the physical and virtual networks to communicate, collaborate, and share ideas, data, strategies, and information. Each member being a portal or node to their individual network makes the PNLC exponentially stronger, knowledgeable, and wise.

PNLC are able to maximize individual members’ Relationships and Networks to the advantage of the whole.

Steven says, “Sometimes the solution can be sitting in your knowledge management system…and you don’t even know it because it is too difficult to find.”

The knowledge management system for education is the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative. It is literally each other. The PNLC leverages physical and virtual networks to communicate, collaborate, and share ideas, data, strategies, knowledge, and information. It leverages each other.

The answers we are looking for, the knowledge that we seek, may reside within our relationships, our networks, and ourselves. We may be surprised to find out that we have been dealing with Level 4 Ignorance all this time.

By practicing a little “reverse knowledge management,” we may be surprised to learn what we already knew. And, as G.I. Joe used to say, knowing is half the battle. The Professional Networked Learning Collaborative is the knowledge management system of the future for schools and teachers and combats all 4 levels of ignorance.

Because friends don’t let friends stay ignorant.

 

Learning what you already knew…that is Education Innovation.

A Movement: The Akshaya Patra Foundation

The Akshaya Patra Foundation describes themselves this way. "We feed 1.2 million kids in 7000 schools thru 19 kitchens across 8 states in India." That's a movement. That's Education Innovation.

A Movement: Open Learning Exchange

I tweeted last night that I couldn't find a job description on any of the major job sites that said, "Start, lead, or become part of a movement."

But reading Fast Company magazine lead me to this..it's a movement.

Putting The Learner on ICE- Learning Values for Education Innovation

Too often these days, it feels like the values of today's Big Education system have become things like..

compliance, rules, skills, assessment, formulas, methods, standardization, sameness, facts, norms, operations, practices, and standards.

I have my own set of values. I call them Learner Values. It's what happens when you take the student out of Big Education and place the learner on ICE.

I	C	E
IDEATION	CURIOSITY	EXPLORATION
INTUITION	CREATIVITY	EXPERIMENTATION
IMMERSION	COLLABORATION	ENTREPRENEURSHIP
INVESTIGATION	CROSSING BOUNDARIES	EXAMINATION
IMAGINATION	CONVERGENCE	EMPATHY
INNOVATION	CONTRIBUTE	EMERGENCE
INQUIRY	CONNECT	EVOLVING
INSIGHT	CONTEMPLATION	ENERGY

Gever Tulley's Tinkering School