“How do we know that our innovation strategy is effective?” This question freezes many organizations, including schools, from creating an intentional, systematic approach to changing traditional practices. Organizations with effective innovation strategies have a portfolio of programs that spread resources (time, people, ideas, money) across a range of projects with varying levels of risk and [...]
What can the ricochet of an elusively aimed volleyball teach us about effective innovation in schools? Plenty. How an elite group of athletes and coaches deal with new ideas, growth mindset, organizational vision, leadership, uncertainty, and stress is a near-perfect analogue for other team-based groups, including schools and school districts. Fortunately, I have a window into one [...]
In his year-end summary of innovation best practices, Paul Hobart references discussions and key questions from the annual executive innovation summit held by consulting firm Innosight. The five key questions below are theirs from "Leading Transformation: 2015 CEO Summit"; the commentary on how these manifest in schools is mine. Is our balance of exploitation vs. [...]
Does your school team have a clear view of where and how you will focus on innovation and change? This is a short post with one graphic I just created for two school workshops in January. These three layers are all critical. We have to create an all-school 30K foot vision. Innovation required to adjust [...]
What are the common obstacles to innovation in a school? What are the characteristics of a leader who can routinely overcome those obstacles? In my book #EdJourney, I identified fear, inertia, silos, and college admissions as some of the key obstacles to innovation and school. Now we can drill down into, and learn lessons from, similar studies [...]
How do you know if your school is increasingly innovative? How do you know if innovation is changing the school culture? How can we improve our chances that innovation actually results in positive outcomes for our students and our school's future? Paul Hobcraft, a thought leader on innovation practice, has published a summary of authoritative reports [...]
How can your school best create the conditions that support innovation? There are essentially three broad levels of concern that take up the attention of innovation-oriented educators: The 10,000 Foot Level: creating a powerful, value-laden, forward-leaning vision, and building towards it through long-term strategies. The 3,000 Foot Level: creating and sustaining the processes and practices [...]
How might we best capture and build upon the swirl of talent, ideas, and knowledge within our schools? How might we build and sustain systematic distributed idea creation and collegial feedback as a core function of an evolving school? I have previously written about, and use in my workshops, elements of the brilliant book Creativity, [...]
Think of all the discussions, decisions, work, and meetings and that take up "free" time at school, those precious prep periods and colleague collaboration windows that you have managed to carve out of the busy school day. Imagine those times as forming a cube. That cube is packed full, right? You are not wasting any of that time [...]
I have added an important new arrow to my quiver. What if you (if you are a school leader) or you and your teaching colleagues (if you are in the classroom most of the day) had a "map" of your school's overall affinity for "deeper learning"? "Deeper learning" is the term that many of us are [...]