Reverb Consulting

created for the 24 Hours of Innovation event

I work with independent schools.  In the first half of 2009, their worldview has been disrupted dramatically due to the shift in the economic climate.  While this new environment is stressful and exhausting because each leader is having to work hard to understand the New Normal, I think this environment presents many unique opportunities if you can see them, if you can sell them to your organization, and if you have the courage to implement them.  Big if’s because they all involve fast and furious adaptive thinking.

1) The most important conversation to have and act upon internally and externally right now:  how do we create value for our users?  Sounds easy enough?  Who are all of your users? What are their wants and needs? What are their unarticulated wants and needs? What are their current value expectations? Are they purely transactional? How can you exceed them?  Can you make your value arguments authentically - will the user experience what you say he or she will?  Can you seed value thinking throughout the organization, top to bottom?

2) The second most important conversation to have right now is how can we do more with less - across the board in every department, every employee, every job function etc etc.?  This calls from expansive creative thinking and most organizations are not well-practiced in thinking or creativity.  Not practiced in thinking because schools are habitually bad about running on automatic pilot and their industry model has been unchanged for decades.  Not practiced in creativity because besides being status quo guarders, school leaders/people are dangerously risk and change averse.  Ask why not? a minimum of 50 times a day! You will benefit from it. New efficiencies are necessary and good.

3)  The world has changed and no industry is immune.  This is not a disputable idea anymore! Look at GM, Chrysler, the newspaper industry, book publishing, etc.  What are the destructive forces nipping at your heels that you just don’t want to see? Time to face the nightmare!  I would be asking this every week and trying hard to adapt to the many New Normals that are emerging proactively and strategically.  I would look to young and pliable companies like Google and Linux and Wikipedia and new pricing models/partnerships like Priceline to see how they  think and build new organizational intellectual capacities that are more aligned to the needs of the new economic marketplace.

The first half of 2009 is a great wake-up call for the education industry. Those that work to solve the puzzle, will benefit greatly for many years to come. Those that play the victim role are creating their own future.

Act wisely.

We might reinvigorate our lives by learning to ask new questions. Asking large questions seeds the ground with new possibilities. While at first glance this may seem to be un-strategic work, I suggest that inviting senior leaders in any setting to reflect on the deeper questions that animate them, and that animate our organizations, is some of the most important work they can do. This is because it forces them to think about their choices, many of which are often made unconsciously, out of habit, and out of fear. Choices sown with these energies inevitably collapse. Think of inquiry of this sort as the ultimate act of efficiency: dealing with problems far upstream, before they surface and require expensive rework and change.

– William Isaacs, Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together

I recently picked Isaacs’ book off my shelf to consult a diagram that I knew was in there. The book fell open to the passage above which was circled boldly by me a few years ago when I read it. Wow! How great for me to re-read this beautifully written passage that confirms the importance of holding the tension of resistance steady with every leader that tells me, “We just don’t have time. This is a lovely idea but we just do not have time to indulge in those sorts of thinking activities.”

No time is the first reaction of most leaders to whom I recommend deep, systematized organizational reflection. I am always amazed at how rushing to do more of the same feels better and more productive than thinking divergently, from whole to parts, questioning original assumptions in order to do better, more effective work. I think we as leaders get sidetracked from our purpose by feelings of comfort and efficiency. We lose our sense of intention in order to get items complete. The result is our work becomes rote and develops a diminishing relationship to the declared purpose.

How sad that we exchange comfort for the invigorating work of developing depth and meaning.