Here is something I bet we can all agree on: simple is almost always better than complicated. What if we could take those messy problems at our schools that always seem to circle back on us, that confound us with inertia, dead ends, and multiple stakeholder turf battles, and find some simple guidelines to sort [...]
What a dream come true it would be to go hang out at Pixar Studios, a place where the only real goal is to "make the product great", where they not only say that, but demonstrate it in a deep culture constantly evolving to "be great" in new, undiscovered ways? I think that dream, though, [...]
For those who don't follow me on Twitter or follow so many that it has become a waterfall, here is a link to a blog I wrote published on Edutopia today. In it I offer some specific recommendations on how schools can "gain comfort with the discomfort" of school change. In fact, we find that [...]
What would it look like if you started with an elephant and tried to turn it into a whale, piece by piece, without starting over? Imagine an artist's image of this process: first changing the right front foot into a flipper, then the tusks into a wide sheet of baleen, then the wispy little tail [...]
Group creativity and performance, what will make a school organization successful in times of challenge and change, is not driven by a few superstars. It is driven by the sum of interactions of diverse groups with time to share and build in relatively equality. Thanks to Bo Adams, my primary filter for TED talks, for [...]
Regardless of whether you work within a public or private educational system, the unsustainable rise in private K-12 and both public/private university tuition costs, is cause for serious attention. This graphic, just released by the National Association of Independent Schools highlights that: Tuition has become less affordable even for the nation's wealthiest families in the [...]
Our schools are built around a quantum packet, a "box", formed with rigid sides that assume learning takes place in a confined physical space, during a defined period of time, along subject-based thought lines, via the transfer of knowledge from a teacher to a group of students. The boxes move along an assembly line calibrated [...]
If I had to pick a single piece of advice for school leaders it would be this: if you keep asking questions rooted in your past you are never going to get to your future. Bless the hearts and minds of those who have come before, but so much advice given to schools rests on [...]
This is the fourth post in a series that asks "why is Silicon Valley the Magic Kingdom of innovation, and what lessons can K-12 schools learn about how innovation succeeds in times of rapid change?" If you have a management team or board that is asking "how do we know we are actually becoming more innovative [...]
This is the third post in a series that asks "why is Silicon Valley the Magic Kingdom of innovation, and what lessons can K-12 schools learn about how innovation succeeds in times of rapid change?" If you have a management team or board that is asking "how do we know we are actually becoming more [...]