Americans from across the political spectrum were horrified and saddened watching the video of George Floyd's death more than a week ago. And Americans from across the political spectrum are horrified and saddened by the scenes of senseless violence and destruction perpetrated by rioters in our cities. We don't have to agree on everything; heck, [...]
The new normal you are experiencing is not new, but has been "becoming normal" for many years. I first used the term "cognitosphere" in about 2008 to describe the rapidly-growing global neuro-network that increasingly connects everyone in the world who has access to the internet. Others have called this system the "metaverse" or other made-up [...]
High school students gather in cross-grade teams to ideate ways to advance one of four big themes for the future. Strategic plans should reflect the vision of a school community. Most do not. Most plans are the result of relatively shallow input from some school stakeholders, followed by a rapid synthesis by a [...]
Last week I posted Part 1 of the evolving role of a school or district admin leadership team. I want to dig deeper into this: How might we really amplify the power of this team of leaders? Think about your admin leadership team and your team meetings. Like any group within an organization, your admin [...]
What does your administration leadership team actually DO? That is not a rhetorical question. What are the actual tasks of the team that gathers around the conference room table every week or month for an hour or two? Are these meetings just an aggregation of pieces, or is there something that is greater than the [...]
How important is group diversity? If a group is NOT diverse, should we discount the group outcomes? How serious are we as educators about promoting diversity, and why? Adding to this discussion (this one happens to be about gender diversity only) is a study on the impact of gender diversity to group performance published in [...]
We have passed a fundamental tipping point in the evolution of human connectivity. For millennia, big ideas spread through a highly-constricted pipeline. Masses of humanity listened to a handful of political, religious, or social influencers and followed where those few led. Humans were a metaphorical crowd of 10,000 people listening for one good idea from [...]
What does fighting a terror-based insurgency have in common with running a school? Fortunately the daily events are very different. But school leaders can learn critical lessons about managing large, complex organizations from how military, and increasingly business, leaders are learning to adapt to rapidly changing challenges. Retired General Stanley McCrystal led American forces in [...]
There is no American Dream without the possibility of upward economic mobility. Education is, at its core, about preparing young people to succeed in a life to which they aspire, which is almost always at least as fruitful, if not more so, than that of their parents. Today, that dream is more remote for more [...]
Following the lead of my new friend, Seth Godin, short blogs are better. This picture really is worth 1,000 words. Schools that are increasingly faced with the challenge that their students can and might select another school to attend, must develop, communicate, and deliver a winning value proposition or face loss of enrollment, and the [...]
