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George Couros's List: Book - On Innovation
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- J Robinson, on his blog The 21st Century Principal, asks: What would a school that has a culture that makes obsolete impossible look like? I feel I can answer this question, because I am now working in such a place. Here's J Robinson's suggestions:
- an expectation of personal and professional growth, a culture of lifelong learning and professional development. This is certainly true of ASB and I think I have mentioned in previous blog posts how many opportunities I've been given for professional development both inside and outside the school.
- the school culture values risk-taking more than playing safe. At ASB our culture of research and development means we are prototyping new things (some of which we may decide we don't want to adopt). J Robinson points out something very important here: leaders can't ask others to take risks if they themselves aren't willing to do so.
- leadership in the school includes more than the principal. Teachers at ASB are encouraged to be leaders and every single committee that exists does so because teachers have volunteered to be part of it. J Robinson write that having teacher leaders means that peers are the ones who are pushing other teachers to grow professionally.
- collaboration is the norm - everyone is part of the solution, everyone owns the future of the school which leads to teachers feeling that the school is "their school" and that they have a voice in its direction.
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So how do you get a school culture like this? Well clearly it is mostly down to the leadership of the school and here our leaders are forward thinking and inspirational: I can feel their energy and passion and their commitment to the school's mission, values and goals. I love listening to our school administrators, I love reading the things they are writing and the questions they are asking, I love the way they are thought-leaders. I love the honesty and integrity that is shown in the way they live their beliefs and values. I love the way they listen to us and communicate with us and value us all and the contribution we are making to the education of the students. I love their passion for what they are doing. I love the way that they say that great just isn't good enough. I appreciate that they are real and not fakes. If we all admire these things (which it seems we do) and all aspire to emulate them, then clearly we are striving to move forward, to be the best we can be, and obsolescence is therefore impossible.
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Dec 07, 12
"I believe that blogging and other social media are breaking down some of our social barriers and hierarchies, but I never had quite as definitive proof until this morning.
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Dec 30, 12
"Consider a typical 28 year-old. From the moment she was born, her world has been rich in feedback. When she presses a button, something happens. When she plays a videogame, she gets a score. When she sends a text message, she hears a sound that confirms it went out. She's lived her whole life on a landscape lush with feedback. Yet when steps through the office door, she finds herself in a veritable feedback desert."
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Consider a typical 28 year-old. From the moment she was born, her world has been rich in feedback. When she presses a button, something happens. When she plays a videogame, she gets a score. When she sends a text message, she hears a sound that confirms it went out. She's lived her whole life on a landscape lush with feedback. Yet when steps through the office door, she finds herself in a veritable feedback desert.
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Feb 12, 13
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Inside big companies, we take organizational boundaries for granted. Traditional organizational logic suggests that most employees of big corporations should primarily only talk to other people at their organization to do their work and should only engage with "competitors" when a deal is being brokered or there is a particular need for cross-sector collaboration. In this frame, companies are quite protective of their intellectual property and company secrets and see any knowledge sharing between "competitors" as a weakening of their core assets.
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To a teenager growing up in a networked world, this model makes absolutely zero sense.
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“The coming capitalist era is that of the Facebook generation, in which the values and behaviours that pervade the internet and social media will also be adopted by innovative and disruptive businesses. With half the world’s population under the age of 25, this may happen sooner than many think.”
Social media will break down the walls between a business’ leadership and its staff, customers, suppliers and other interested parties, the report predicts. The constant dialogue between these groups and the business via social media will result in them having a stronger and more direct influence on a businesses’ decision making and strategy than today.
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Jun 09, 13
"As new digital marketing tools and systems are implemented they must be balanced by even more analogue systems than before. The ability to reach out, in a human way, to a Sara or Harry can quickly create either positive or negative momentum for your brand. That makes human interaction more important than ever."
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Jun 23, 13
"But as we fast forward to today’s business world shaped by rapidly evolving technology and the far greater importance of institutional knowledge, creative thinking and sophisticated collaboration, the value of each employee has grown exponentially more important. Companies are focusing on innovation and unique differentiation – and almost exclusively are looking at people, not machines, to provide it.
As workers have become increasingly more critical to the overall success of their organizations, what they need and expect in exchange for their work also has profoundly changed. Money no longer inspires performance as it once did. Being paid equitably will always be important as a driver of job engagement and productivity, of course, but people across the globe now have aspirations in their jobs that were virtually unimaginable in an earlier age. "
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