Innovation | It's About Learning

Progressive Optimist

Dwayne Harapnuik — August 21, 2014 — Leave a comment

Simon Sinek’s quote:

“The primary ingredient for progress is optimism. The unwavering belief that something can be better drives the human race forward.”

has made me change the way I view being optimistic. My wonderful wife reminds that not everyone appreciates my constant pursuit of the “better way” and that I often come across as a bit of a delusional optimist. As a result I don’t mind joking around and calling myself a delusional optimist because to many people my optimism may appear unrealistic.

But when I accept Sinek’s assertion that optimism is fundamental to progress then perhaps I am not delusional I am simply progressive. Progress does require that we push the boundaries of reality so being unrealistic is actually a necessity.

Fortunately, I am not alone in this type of thinking. George Bernard Shaw wrote:

“a reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him. The unreasonable man adapts conditions to himself…therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

In Innovation optimism, optimist, progress, reasonable, unreasonable

Why is Innovation so Hard?

Dwayne Harapnuik — August 12, 2014 — 3 Comments

Why Is Innovation So Hard? via kwout

Edward D. Hess, professor of business administration at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business provides the following research based arguments for why innovation can be so so hard:

…we are highly efficient, fast, reflexive thinkers who seek to confirm what we already know.

Laziness is built deep into our nature. As a result, we are cognitively blind to disconfirming data and challenging ideas.

Emotionally, we seek to affirm our self-image (our ego) and we use the 3Ds—deny, defend, and deflect—to ward off challenges to it and to our views of the world. Fear is one of the emotions that comes all too naturally to most of us—and makes it hard for us to engage in the messy work of innovation. Fear of failure, fear of looking bad, and fear of losing our job if we make mistakes all can lead to what Chris Argyris called “defensive reasoning”: the tendency to defend what we believe. This makes it hard to get outside of ourselves in order to “think out of the box.”

Our educational system and most work environments have taught us that good performance means avoiding failure, not making mistakes…most organizations exist to produce predictable, reliable, standardized results. In those environments, mistakes and failures are bad.

Despite all these odd against innovation it still happens all around us. What does it take to be innovative? Hess does provide some examples of exceptionally innovative companies and suggests that the best way to be innovative is to follow these companies lead I believe that he touches on but doesn’t fully explain the key solution to this challenge when he suggests that “innovative thinking requires the right kind of organizational environment.” Hess also suggest that because we are essentially confirmation machines, looking to affirm the status quo, we need to be taught how to take our normal thinking to a higher level or to think outside of the box.

This is where I think Hess misses a wonderful opportunity to point to the fact that instruction on how to be innovative will not work unless one conducts this instruction within a significant learning environment that promotes and supports innovative thinking. We are also learning from the past 25 years of research in neuroscience, psychology, behavioral economics, and education that fear is a powerful natural emotion that inhibits our ability to embrace the disorder that change or innovation bring about. That is why we need to structure our learning environments to be safe havens for the uncertainty and failure that are intrinsic to the innovation process.

In a previous blog post I have argued that we need to embrace uncertainty if we want to have innovation. I have also argued that you practice change by living it and this takes us back to importance of creating learning environments where people can catch the openness to change.

In a nutshell we have to be and live the change that we are hoping to see in our learning environments.

In Innovation Change, Innovation, significant learning environment

Art and Science and Making Things – Seth Godin

Dwayne Harapnuik — July 23, 2014 — Leave a comment

There has never ever been in the history of mankind a better moment to be someone who has something to say…The Internet was not design so you could way yet another Justin Beiber video…[the Internet] is capable of giving you a platform for a real sort of making for the making of connections, making things that matter and making a difference. I hope you will do that. 21:41-22:29

In Innovation, Video - Wednesday Watchlist connection, Innovation, maker, platform

The Cost of a Missing “Why”

Dwayne Harapnuik — February 20, 2014 — Leave a comment

When a clear vision, what I will refer to as the “Why”, is missing people easily lose sight of their primary responsibility and get caught up in pushing priorities that may be important but when placed in context of the bigger picture result in a completely different focus. Let me explain…

My priority as an Instructional Development Consultant is to help faculty create the most effective learning environment. Therefore, I look for ways to use technology as a tool to enhance learning and create a more engaging environment. When I run into challenges, obstacles and the day to day bureaucracy of higher education I deal with those challenges or obstacles in such a way that they don’t hinder the faculty from creating significant learning environments and look for ways to ensure that we are still effectively serving our learner.

In contrast, if a person doesn’t have a clear understanding of Why we do what we do then they are left to focus on their own priorities and that usually means getting caught up in the details and minutia of their job. Institutions like BCIT have a FOIPOP policy and generally the purpose of these types of policies are to:

– Ensure compliance with the Freedom of Information and Protection and Privacy Act
– Define the roles of employees and contractors in complying with the Act
– Reduce the institutions liability and risk of litigation due to inappropriate handling of information
– Protect the institutions reputation

These are all admirably and necessary purposes and it is good that we have a policy and office which is concerned with these issues. Depending on your Why, something like a Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIPOP) can be dealt with in two different ways.

First way
Without a bigger Why the people tasked with ensuring that these purposes are upheld make these purposes the top priority and all activities are weighed against these priorities. The best example of this in higher education is the debate of using the cloud, social media and other collaborative and distributed resources which the institution does not control. If a person’s Why is to enforce the policy then free software that is based in the cloud, social media tools and other resources cannot be used because these tools contravene the policy. If people are adamant about using these tools then explicit hoops must be jumped through or the institution will create its own cloud based tools that they can control. The first and most common response is to abstain or restrict for fear of the consequences. Fear becomes the driving force. Fear is the factor that is preventing all of higher education from moving to Google Docs or Office 365 and providing their students access to the most widely used collaborative tool, not to mention saving millions of dollars each year.

Second way
In contrast, if an institution and all members hold that their Why is much bigger than a policy and the top priority is to create the most effective learning environment for its students, when they come up against a policy like FOIPOP the response will not be reactive and based on fear. It will be proactive and creativity will be used to explore how can we use these engaging collaborative tools and still adhere responsibility to FOIPOP. With the right Why, people are automatically looking for ways to use these tools and still satisfy the FOIPOP requirements. More importantly the right Why can motivate people to explore creative solutions like revisiting the legislation to see if the interpretation that is being made is really the best interpretation that will help us to insure that we are creating significant learning environments.

IF everyone in an organization from the housekeeping staff on up to the President all hold the same Why—something like:

We are committed to creating significant learning environments that will help prepare our learners to face an uncertain future and enable them to learn how to learn and ultimately solve problems that don’t even exist.

then FOIPOP and other bureaucratic obstacles are not dealt with reactively in fear but are proactively managed in such a way that they do not hinder the bigger Why.

The change of perspective that a clearly defined and well communicated Why can move an organization from being fearful and reactive to being creative and proactive, assuming an organization has the leadership wisdom to value proactive workers (see my post The Paradox of Being Proactive.

Does your institutions have a clear and well communicated Why? If it doesn’t what can you do about it?

In Innovation learner centered, proactive, reactive, service, vision, why