Archives For Change

How to Face the Digital Future Without Fear

Dwayne Harapnuik —  December 10, 2012 — Leave a comment

Ben Hammersley editor-at-Large for Wired magazine and guru of the digital age points to the realities we must face as a result of the impact of Moore’s Law. For example he discusses the impact of disruptive innovation and the Kodak example of inventing the digital pictures but not seeing how the initially substandard technology would grow to eliminate film photography.

If you see something coming down the line and you are dismissing it because it is not very good it is going to kill you in 10 years time. The inevitability of the tides of Moore’s Law make this so.

Hammersley argues that this very rapid rate of change puts us in a position of alway having to prepare for a future that we won’t be able to fully imagine. This rapid change is a fundamental force that is driving society forward. He offers the following example and challenge:

These weird fundamental forces are of the fact that every time you get a new phone it is out of date, every time you get a new laptop it is out of date… this is a fundamental driving force for the future of humanity. For those of us who understand it or learn to understand it, it is our responsibly to go out to other people, to go to our friends, colleagues relatives and specifically go to our politicians and our elected officials and tell them about these changes in the way we have to think.

These fundamental forces of change are part of our present reality and Hammersley argues that we are not doing a good job of preparing for the future because most of our leaders are confused by the present. His closing statement summarizes this challenge that we face:

“Right now, we have entrusted our future to those who are confused by the present and that is no way to go forward into the future.”

Are you doing your part to warn those in your sphere of influence about these fundamental forces of change? Are they listening?

In Change, Innovation
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When is Homework Worth the Time?: Evaluating the Association Between Homework and Achievement in High School Science and Math

Dwayne Harapnuik —  December 4, 2012 — Leave a comment
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2012/11/26/homework-an-unnecessary-evil-surprising-findings-from-new-research/

Homework: An unnecessary evil? … Surprising findings from new research via kwout

Alfie Kohn reviews a Indiana University School of Education survey that finds little correlation between time spent on homework and better course grades for math and science students. The survey did reveal a positive relationship between homework time and performance on standardized tests but all this demonstrates is a correlation not causation. Furthermore, the correlation was modest and the resulting one to two hours of homework only result in an increase of two to three points on a test. Kohn warns:

Thus, a headline that reads “Study finds homework boosts achievement” can be translated as “A relentless regimen of after-school drill-and-skill can raise scores a wee bit on tests of rote learning.”

Kohn also points out that while the survey revealed a modest correlation between homework and standardized test scores he reminds us more importantly that the survey revealed

There was no relationship whatsoever between time spent on homework and course grade, and “no substantive difference in grades between students who complete homework and those who do not.”

Perhaps the most accurate prediction that came out of this article was that despite the data showing the homework is not worth the time or effort many people would offer platitudes about its importance and would be afraid to give it up. The concluding paragraph is following by comment confirming Kohn’s prediction:

many people will respond to these results by repeating platitudes about the importance of practice, or by complaining that anyone who doesn’t think kids need homework is coddling them and failing to prepare them for the “real world”… Those open to evidence, however, have been presented this fall with yet another finding that fails to find any meaningful benefit even when the study is set up to give homework every benefit of the doubt.

This is a sad commentary on our educational system. Even when the data is clear study after study that homework is not beneficial you still have people in the system commenting that they would not be willing to take the risk of NOT assigning homework and having to deal with irate parents or school administrators. Fear is holding back our children’s and our future.

Read the full WSJ article…

In Change, Learning 2.0
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Recommended Readings on Leading Change In Education

Dwayne Harapnuik —  November 21, 2012 — Leave a comment

I have been involved in formally leading change in a wide variety of educational settings for the past 20 years and inevitably following a guest lecture, webinar or conference presentation I am asked to recommend a book or two or three on change. The following list is a response to those requests.

I will not be numbering the list because I don’t want to rank the books because they have all played a special role in my development.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
 by Daniel Pink.
Pink’s summary of the power of intrinsic over extrinsic motivation is unmatched. He points to major and extensive research that reveals that autonomy, mastery and purpose are more powerful motivators than the carrot and the stick.

Leading Change, With a New Preface by the Author
 by John P. Kotter.
Kotter points to many years of research that reveals that more than 70% of organization change efforts fail. His Eight Steps to Leading Change are the best way to insure that your change efforts will be successful.

A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix
 by Edwin H. Friedman
Friedman makes the argument that the poorly self-differentiated leader at any level in an organization will undercut their subordinates because these types of leaders lack the courage and confidence in themselves to effectively lead. This is perhaps one of the most challenging and controversial leadership books because it calls for a leader to take responsibility for the emotional health of an organization.

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t
 by Jim Collins
This has to be the contemporary research based classic on building a successful organization. Collins reveals that good isn’t good enough when you wish to build a great organization.

Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative
 by Ken Robinson
Robinson makes the argument for why we need to promote creativity or, more importantly, create the environments were creativity can flourish. He points out how our educational systems overemphasis on Math, Science and related discipline has all but killed creativity in our schools.

Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns
 by Clayton M Christensen, Michael B. Horn & Curtis W. Johson.
Christensen applies his well-researched theory of disruptive innovation to K-12 education and points to online learning as the disruptive catalyst that is about to finally change the educational system in North America. In the four years since the book has been published Christensen’s predictions are not only being realized, his time table for the culmination of this disruption may yet prove to be too conservative.

Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World
 by Don Tapscott
Tapscott builds on the ideas he presented several years earlier in Growing Up Digital and Wikinomics and expounds on how the Net Generation thinks, learns and socializes differently and how we can leverage these differences to improve our society.

What Would Google Do?: Reverse-Engineering the Fastest Growing Company in the History of the World
 By Jeff Jarvis
Jarvis applies Googles way of thinking to: media, advertising, retail, utilities, manufacturing, service, finance, public welfare and public institutions and offers suggestions on how these industries need to change in order to survive in the age of the Internet.

The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion
 by John Seely Brown, John Hagel III & Lang Davison
Seely Brown and colleagues point to the fact that the industrialized world has begun the move from assuming or estimating what we want and pushing out these products and services to a world where resources and services are pulled together in a just in time fashion to respond to our individual needs. The ability to build these powerful pull networks will be key to determining success in the digital age.

A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change
 by Douglas Thomas & John Seely Brown
Thomas and Brown shatter the myth that teaching is necessary for learning to occur by revealing the power of learning environments that are all around us. They further upend the notion that learning only happens in the classroom or in a mechanistic fashion by pointing out learning is more often a messy, social, playful and constant activity that is more effective in an informal setting.

I can easily add another ten to fifteen books to this list but more is not necessary better when you are just starting out or if you are trying help your organization move forward in using technology as a tool to enhance the learning environment.

In Change, Learning 2.0 ,
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Culture Trumps Vision

Dwayne Harapnuik —  October 11, 2012 — Leave a comment

“Toxic culture is like carbon monoxide: you don’t see or smell it but you wake up dead! Senior pastors do a lot of good things, but they fail to understand the impact of the existing organizational culture on their new, exciting vision for the church. It is like changing the engine on a sports car to make it faster, but it’s spinning its wheels in the mud. Or to use a different metaphor, they try to transplant a heart into a patient whose body rejected the foreign organ. No matter how perfect the new heart is, the patient had no chance at all unless the body accepted it.

Culture — not vision or strategy — is the most powerful factor in any organization. It determines the receptivity of staff and volunteers to new ideas, unleashes or dampens creativity, builds or erodes enthusiasm, and creates a sense of pride or deep discouragement about working or being involved there.”

Sam Chand author of Cracking Your Church’s Culture Code: Seven Keys to Unleashing Vision and Inspiration (Jossey-Bass Leadership Network Series) points out that culture not only trumps vision but once you understand that it is the most powerful factor in an organization that new shinny vision will not be realized until steps are taken to bring about cultural change.

To get at the heart of where your organization culture is at Chand recommends examining the answers to the following questions:

http://cl.publicaster.com/SocialMedia.aspx?pubids=8365%7C326%7C7&digest=wXBoVOSSDDd8%2FT9GWFliCQ&sysid=1&1=1QA&2=CLK

The Pastors Coach – Culture Trumps Vision, By: Dr. Sam Chand via kwout

Chand also recommends forming an informal group to examine these and related questions. Identifying just how toxic your organization culture is a crucial first step, but you will still need to create the circumstances that will bring about the changes needed to move your organization culture to a better place. Unfortunately, this takes time and if an organization’s competitive advantage is its small size and ability to respond to new opportunities then a toxic culture will neutralize this competitive advantage. Furthermore, a toxic resistance to change may mean that it is too late for this particular organization. Seth Godin the author of Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us encourages leaders to recognize when it is too late and it is time to move on.

This can be a very tough pill to swallow for the people within the organization, but we all know it is often much more cost effective to build from scratch than it is to renovate. We are seeing the demise of many organizations across many industries so before we blame the economy, market, government or other external factors perhaps we need to take a closer look at the organization itself and, in particular, its culture.

The solution to this problem is to not let the culture get to the point where it is toxic. This requires balance of compassion, character, strength of conviction and sound leadership skills. Unfortunately, as Edwin H. Friedman points out in his book A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, there is a severe shortage of character and nerve in our society. In a rapidly changing world that is being projected forward by one disruptive innovation after another the difference between an organization surviving or thriving may be this strength of leadership and the ability to foster the circumstances that contribute to a strong, vibrant culture that motivates people to collaborate, serve and be and do their very best. What type of culture do you have in your organization and what are you doing about it?

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Change Before You Have To

Dwayne Harapnuik —  May 1, 2012 — 2 Comments
http://watch.bnn.ca/bnn-fall-series/investing-by-demographics/#clip543161

BNN Fall Series : Investing by Demographics : Demographics Special: Investing in Demographics [10-03-11 2:50 PM] via kwout

In the above Business Network News interview David Foot reviews his predictions from his book Boom Bust & Echo 2000 published back in 1999. Particular salient are his predictions about enrollments in education.

Foot asserts that:

Demographics explain about two-thirds of everything. They tell us a great deal about which products will be in demand in five years, and they accurately predict school enrollments many years in advance.

Foots predictions about a significant drop in higher education enrollments by 2012 are disturbingly accurate. The disturbing part is that we were warned but we just didn’t head the warning.

Foot further states that:

…if decision-makers really understood demographics, Canada would be a better place to live because it would run more smoothly and more efficiently.

Well if we are to heed Mr. Foot’s advice on education we need to look to demographics to help us understand who our future students will be and where they will come from. According to Foot, Canada has the most expensive Education system in the world (and unfortunately not the best) because we have repeatedly ignored the hard facts of demographics and have not moved education dollars from primary, to secondary to post secondary education to match the demographic trends. He says that if we had a flexible and responsive education system and good planning based on demographics:

…we would have taken the money out of the high schools in the 1980s and transferred it to the universities and elementary schools. In the mid-1990s, when the university enrollment was slipping and high school enrollment was rising we could have transferred some of it back from the post secondary system to the increasingly crowded elementary and high schools.

Foot challenges us to not repeat the mistakes of the past and manage the education system more effectively. His book was published in 1999, so he was only able to offer predictions (based on demographic information) on what the future of post secondary enrollment would look like. According to demographics at the turn of the century the echo generation (boomers children) will be on the verge of entering colleges and universities and the because the children of the busters (children of Gen-X) will be a much smaller cohort so elementary and high schools will need much less resources than post secondary institutions. We are now 12 years past the turn of the century so it would seem logical based solely on demographic information that post secondary enrollments will once again drop and they have.

When you factor in the booming economy of Alberta, and the reality that a high paying job may be more attractive then the cost of post secondary education we shouldn’t be surprised to see enrollments drop. Foot also pointed a huge opportunity for higher education in distance/online, adult and alternative education.

So what does this mean for Concordia University? If we want to shore up our declining enrollments we not only need to focus on online, adult and international education, but we also have be very purposeful on promoting our unique learning proposition and use analytics to assess the effectiveness of our marketing and recruitment strategies. We are a high quality Learner centered Liberal Arts University that prepares leaders for a better world. We equip our graduates with the skills, abilities and insights to be able to deal with problems that we don’t even know exist.

We have a choice…we can be reactive or proactive. We can either promote the fact that we offer a remarkable education or we can be like every other institution and offer a course for this or a course for that. In the article on “How to be Remarkable” Seth Godin stated: “If it’s in a manual, if it’s the accepted wisdom, if you can find it in a Dummies book, then guess what? It’s boring, not remarkable.” I also added that we could add or even interchange the word remarkable with innovative.

Dummies books and Idiot’s Guides are wonderful examples of being reactive. These books are written to convey information on very generic or standardized systems or processes. They help people to react to technology around them. I would argue that there is nothing proactive or innovative in the Dummies or Idiots Guides approach to dealing with technology or learning in general.

Before someone equates the notion of being proactive or innovative with being on the bleeding edge I want to emphatically state that this doesn’t have to be the case. One can still be proactive and innovative with technology and not be on the bleeding edge. Being proactive or innovative can be as simple as recognizing that social networking tools like instant messaging, blogging, Facebook, Twitter, podcasting etc. are also tools that education can use to communicate with learners and share information. Being proactive or innovative can be as simple as recognizing that online learning is not just hype and there are a plethora of web-based tools (Content Management System, RSS readers, gmail, Google Docs, Youtube, online forms of all kinds etc.) available that make communication, collaboration and learning much more effective.

I have been teaching my 14 & 16 year old sons the difference between being proactive and reactive. More specifically I have been try to help them understand the importance and advantages of being proactive and I believe they are starting to understand. My boys are also starting to understand that you really have to be innovative to be proactive. It takes hard work, planning, and a commitment to really being and doing the best to be proactive and innovative–it’s not easy but it is worth the effort. To help my boys understand the significance of this issue I ask them the following questions:

Do you want to be proactive or reactive? Do you want to be perceived as being innovative or idiots?

Perhaps these are the questions that we all need to consider.

Like people, Universities don’t plan to fail; they can just fail to plan. Good leadership and good planning can insure that Concordia not only remains the high quality institution that it is but that it will continue to grow and prosper.

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