Category: Thinking

Second hand courage is still courage

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Have you ever felt like you might not be able to face it? Sometimes you just don’t have all the energy that you need to get through. It is OK not to have all the answers. There are times when we fall short of the line or just lack that spark we need. That’s OK. It was during 2010 and early 2011 that I realised I was suffering just such a deficit.

My career seemed to be happening to me and I felt helpless to some of the issues I was facing. I tumbled from one urgent/important item to another. I was out of balance. During my time in schools I had never had to deal with compromise. And here it was. With such an energy deficit I had to ration where I put my efforts. I wanted to be the best classroom teacher I could be and at the same time develop as a school leader. But compromise stretched its tendrils around both endeavours. This toxic time eroded my mental health and I suffered.

There were days when I had to stop the car on the way to work and take a few deep breaths.

It wasn’t my own courage that pushed me on. It was the second hand courage of people close to me. Their unwavering support helped steady my nerves, their energy topped me up. Also through some teary discussions I managed to get some distance and realised that it wasn’t me. It was OK. The situation I was in could change and I could change it.

If you are in that struggle consider these things I learned. Surround yourself with people who can share their energy and courage with you — their courage is still something that can carry you. Find perspective by discussing things with someone who will understand your experience. Plot your way out, find a course that puts you back making decisions about what is next.

The ebb and flow between divergent and convergent thinking

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I thought I would take the opportunity to return to an article I wrote a few days ago. My blog post outlined a few of the key issues for developing creative teams. The article that inspired it from HBR[1] gave a broad definition of innovation and creativity which resonated strongly with my own experience in schools.

According to the author, Roger Schwarz[2], researchers commonly make a distinction between the definition of creativity and innovation.

Innovation involves two stages—the generation of new ideas and the implementation of the ideas. Creativity is considered to be the first stage of innovation.

I would call implementing ideas Prototyping and this typically comes after a range of ideas have been sorted, filtered and judged in different ways during Ideation. I always see a change in the energy levels during Ideation as people begin to flex their creative muscles more intensely.

Later in the article Schwarz outlines a conflict in factors that affect innovation, explaining that a different type of thinking is needed.

Creativity and the second stage of innovation require different individual skills and team structures and processes. The idea generation stage is often referred to as divergent thinking or exploration. The implementation stage is often referred to as convergent thinking or exploitation. Unless you plan to have your team hand off its creative ideas, you will need to create a team that can operate in both modes, switching among them as appropriate.

This whole area is invariably complex and more research is needed. However even from my own experience the requirements on an individual are much more intricate. I agree that we need to be in a divergent thinking state when we generate ideas, but this changes when we have to decide on which ideas are worth investing further in. It changes to a convergent thinking state. In order to identify our choices we have to narrow our field, we have to purge the ideas that don’t make the cut. For us to successfully judge a set of ideas we have to be able to converge and begin to make choices. Thinking big (divergently) and generating ideas at this stage would certainly be counterintuitive.

The ebb and flow between divergent and convergent thinking at the ideation stage is quite important and much more frequent than is suggested in the article. Idea generation is but one part of Ideation. Of course we may identify Emergent thinking as well at this stage which is exploratory and helps when we want to develop our ideas further. I see Ideation being made up of the sequence below:

  1. Generate Ideas (Divergent or Open Thinking)
  2. Explore and develop ideas (Emergent or Exploratory Thinking)
  3. Judge and shortlist (Convergent or Closed Thinking)

It is extremely useful to have a language for the thinking state or mindset needed. I would highly recommend sharing the definitions and helping others understand them. Talking explicitly about the thinking that is needed to be most successful helps signpost people to such expectations, and has helped countless teams of adults and students I have worked with. Don’t let this be a wishy washy stage, identify a process, like the sequence above and stick to it. Trust in the process.[3]

Once ideas have been explored and narrowed down then a team would move on to implementation. Taking a concept into a working or minimal viable prototype phase. Again the type of thinking here is not simply convergent as Schwarz outlines, in my opinion it is equally fluid and perhaps also made up of the combination of divergent, emergent and convergent thinking states.

  1. Harvard Business Review  ↩
  2. Roger Schwarz is an organisational psychologist, find him on Twitter @LeadSmarter  ↩
  3. And the force.  ↩

Cobbled stones and the fickle sea

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There was a time when I thought the sea was always angry. We would visit my Gran in Old Portsmouth where some of the roads around her flat were still cobbled. In fact her single paned windows looked out over the Grand Parade. On our weekends normally we’d look down on a few rows of cars as people found a spot and decanted onto the coast, hot toddlers and dogs in tow. My Gran used to say that the old cobbled parade ground was filled with American and British troops just before D-Day. She would have looked down on the young faces as they looked out to sea. Round the corner was the Round Tower which has guarded the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour for six hundred years. Smashing up against it was this beach of pebbles and to get to the beach you had to walk through the old walls of the harbour. Fortified and steadfast they seemed rooted into the very depths of the earth. I’d always hear the sea before I caught sight of it, that was the way. The volume always seemed higher there, in amongst the stone walls and towers with their pebbly foundations. The salty spittle of the channel would be another signal you were getting close. We would tiptoe to view the waves and judge their mood, expectant and wondering. On those angry days we’d step into the wind and listen to our tiny voices being swept into the wash. Holding tight to each other or the railings we counted the rollers and tried not to get too wet. The walls buttressed the pulse of the waves and I would be swallowed up by the billowing sound. It was always a thrill. Somedays the temper had abated and the skies clearer and we’d jump down onto the pebbles ready to skim some stones.

Learning in Perpetual Beta

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For today’s post I thought I would explore a little more deeply the themes and overlapping thinking surrounding my previous post about a Mindset of Failing. In particular I’d like to unpack this concept that learning is and always should remain in perpetual beta.

It is actually a considerable challenge to get perspective on the completeness of our work with students. I am not referring to when projects end or when we have finished that piece of artwork with them – the year long (sometimes much longer) development of learning relationships is often hard to wrap ourselves around. Since leaving the classroom I have experienced quite finite projects that have a short timeline and stuff you have to get done. I still find this refreshing.

Perpetual Beta = Prototyping Disposition

vIn an earlier post this month I referred to the mindset we need to take towards the things we create and the way we learn. It is not just about junk modelling or computer aided design or 3D printing or physical building – a disposition towards prototyping means we:

  • Are committed to the expertise and ideas we might gain from others and don’t just simply rely on our own perspective.
  • Believe in the value of feedback and how critique can move our ideas forward.
  • Engineer as many opportunities for feedback as we can as, early as we can.
  • Are willing to share what we create when it is extremely, painfully incomplete.

When a piece of software is being developed it has various stages it goes through, depending on the scale of the product of course. Beta is a time for testing, as defined below:

Beta, named after the second letter of the Greek alphabet, is the software development phase following alpha. It generally begins when the software is feature complete. Software in the beta phase will generally have many more bugs in it than completed software, as well as speed/performance issues and may still cause crashes or data loss. The focus of beta testing is reducing impacts to users, often incorporating usability testing. The process of delivering a beta version to the users is called beta release and this is typically the first time that the software is available outside of the organization that developed it.

Perpetual beta is when this state is extended, sometimes indefinitely, a web service or software product remains in constant development with feedback and testing driving new feature releases. A product remains in perpetual beta.

What does learning in perpetual beta mean?

The links here with the way we think about learning and feedback in particular are quite strong. In my post about the Mindset of Failing I pondered on the mental resilience of tennis players compared to other athletes. Losing points is regular and failing is part of the back and forth of a tennis match, very different to other sports. The post was commented on by Pam Hernandez who remarked that:

This made me think about how we traditionally provide feedback on student learning which is not unlike the analogy to football. I’m thinking American football in this case and getting an A on assignment is much like scoring a touchdown. It’s not uncommon to see teachers use sports analogies and comment “Homerun” or “Touchdown” on good work. I like the idea of rewarding effort along the way and making it okay to make mistakes along the way and be rewarded for the learning. It’s a different mindset for parents, teachers and students. (Pam Hernandez)

And it is here that we have the biggest opportunity to shift the way people are thinking about failure and failing. It is no small feat mind you. There are cultural and ethical stances people have that influence their perception of mistakes and failure in learning. We need to help the whole learning community appreciate this positive prototyping disposition. Learning in perpetual beta is all about continuous improvement with an emphasis on engineering as many opportunities for feedback as we can.

Take a look through some of these other posts from my this blog about assessment and feedback and plan to take some action:

Pic: failure is cool by Steffi Reichert

The Mindset of Failing

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Failing at tennis - ading to a growth mindset

Learning about sport when I was young mainly involved cricket and football, I never really experienced tennis. My son has been playing since he was about 4 and this season has been enjoying playing as part of a local team in a Junior Competition every Saturday. I think he is experiencing what failing feels like through his time playing tennis.

I have been getting to know what it is like being a tennis Dad this season and watching a lot of tennis, naturally. One thing you notice with this sport compared to football is the number of small victories and failures there are. It is much more about the cumulative effort, gradually building up points, overcoming the failures you experience.

If you play tennis you will know that failure and winning/losing points is an integral part of this sport. This is different to the experience of football I had growing up, where the end result was the only thing that mattered, there were not many measures of progress. Sure you could tell which team was dominating play, but it was not as clear as you win a point or you lose a point.

I have always found it fascinating that in tennis you could be one point from defeat and yet still come back to win a match. My son starting his match today losing 3 early games and before long he was losing 4-2, but he suddenly woke up and won the remaining 4 on the bounce to win 6-4.

Do multiple small setbacks during tennis create a more resilient approach? I wonder if the mindset of a tennis player sees failing and losing differently to a football player?