Moving at the Speed of Creativity

I’m sharing the commencement address for graduating seniors in Howe, Oklahoma, this evening starting at 7:00 pm US central time. Connectivity permitting, I’ll webcast my presentation live on Ustream. I haven’t seen the program yet, but I’m guessing I’ll start around 7:15… I’ll post an update to twitter when I have a better idea of the actual start time of the address.

I’m utilizing some of the slides from Jeff Brenman’s outstanding remix of Karl Fisch’s well known “Did You Know/Shift Happens presentation.” (Thanks to Karl for his post last May about this “stylized version.”)

My presentation slides are available as a PDF. I’m hoping to utilize polleverywhere to conduct an impromptu SMS message survey during the address to get audience input about social networking. I’m just supposed to talk for 20 minutes, and this is my first commencement address to share. It should be fun!
My top 10 list of “advice for seniors” includes:

1. only 1 chance for a 1st impression
2. don’t be afraid to fail
3. seek out yodas
4. be a critical thinker
5. be an entrepreneur
6. seek innovation
7. change the world 1 conversation at a time
8. talk with pictures
9. private profiles (make your social networking profiles private)
10. dream big dreams

Anything else you would add or substitute in this list?

Technorati Tags:
commencement, speech, graduation, oklahoma, howe, seniors, advice

A couple of years ago when our family spent time in and around Jemez Springs, New Mexico, I met several local residents who aspired to “live off the grid.” By “the grid,” they meant the electricity grid to which most of us in the “developed world” are connected every minute of our lives, and without which most of us could hardly conceive daily life. All of these “green living” people I met had “unplugged” from the electricity grid, but several still used propane for cooking and other household power needs. They were not entirely “off the grid.” Yet.

The March 2008 issue of Smithsonian magazine includes a fascinating interview with journalist Doug Fine, who lives off the grid in southwestern New Mexico. According to Doug’s website and blog:

Adventure journalist, NPR contributor and Cosmos-nudger Doug Fine speaks several languages, including suburban American, rural American and Alaskan American. He has reported and sent panicky emails from Rwanda to the Arctic Ocean. At last sighting he was living in New Mexico with too much livestock and just the right smear of stars.

In the article, Doug explains his motivation for wanting to live off the grid in as a public experiment. He relates:

I wanted to see if I could reduce my oil and carbon footprint but still enjoy the amenities that we expect as Americans. In other words, to continue driving a motorized vehicle and have power at my house—not live like a total Grizzly Adams. Can I enjoy Netflix and the Internet without fossil fuels?

Solar energy and a diesel automobile converted to run on waste vegetable oil from restaurants provide the energy Doug’s lifestyle requires. He raises and grows his own food, offering the following advice for those of us who might respond with a comment like, “I’m just too busy to do all of that:”

Growing your own food takes an hour or two a day. But I would suggest that if one doesn’t have an hour or two to work on one’s life, one might be too busy.

Too busy. That’s an affliction I think is all too common these days. It’s refreshing to learn about Doug’s journey and the real possibility of living off the grid. The following five minute YouTube video summarizes much of Doug’s adventure living off the grid, which he has also documented in a new book “Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living.”

Certainly many people might read this entry and view this video with a noticeable air of doubt and even distain. “I could never do something like that.” “That’s just not realistic.” “How could our family ever take such a radical move?” There certainly are folks who take an even more extreme approach to green living than Doug, but personally, I like his approach. He hasn’t given up Netflix or Internet access! Are these life choices sustainable over the long term? Time will tell. I think, however, that technologies SHOULD provide us with options in our lives rather than dictate we live a prescripted existence. Doug Fine certainly is demonstrating that this ideal is not merely theoretical, it can be a lived reality.

Additional video interview segments from Doug are available in the YouTube video, “Farewell, My Subaru - Stories & Soundbytes,” which includes footage not used in the “main” five minute video segment linked above.

Technorati Tags:
dougfine, newmexico, solar, energy, grid, offthegrid, green, vegetableoil, environment

I am reading Rob Bell’s book “Velvet Elvis” along with about 50 other men in our church’s Friday morning men’s group, and came across the following passage recently which resonated with me as a teacher. Rob wrote:

Tour guides are people who see depth and texture and connections where others don’t. That is why the best teachers are masters of the obvious. They see the same things that we do, but they are aware of so much more. And when they point it out, it changes the way we see everything.

I love this analogy, and think this can be a powerful way to frame and structure learning tasks for students. Don’t just tell me about your topic. Become the tour guide. Show me what I could not easily see, identify, or discern for myself. Uncover the stories underneath the surface, the details and connections which weave a tapestry of greater meaning and understanding for listeners and viewers.

When I taught a week-long course for university instructors and professors in the Dominican Republic several years ago about online learning strategies, my wife and I had a delightful opportunity to spend an entire day with the director of the university’s department of travel and tourism who led us around Santo Domingo.

I was struck at the time by what a challenging but rewarding job he had, and helped others learn to do effectively. A good tour guide has broad knowledge about the history, culture, economics, social dynamics, and other aspects of a particular place and the individuals who live there. Spending time with an excellent tour guide is a delight, not because they are simply filled with a multitude of facts, but because they have the ability to stitch and weave those details together in a larger tapestry of understanding.

Perhaps we can benefit from framing our roles as learners, whether we are formally defined as teachers or students, as “tour guides” for others? I think the demonstration of higher order thinking is a required job skill for effective tour guides.

Technorati Tags:
learning, education, theory, tour, guide, tourguide, dominicanrepublic, tourism

I Love Learning. I Hate Schooliness.

–this is my motto. It’s one of the reasons I wrote (in a post, “On Leaving Teaching to Become a Teacher,” with about 70 comments now),

I’m not sure how much longer I want to work for schools. I’d so much rather teach.

So what is “schooliness”?

I have no idea. But that’s not a problem:  I’m a teacher.  I’m quite comfortable speaking with confidence on subjects I know next to nothing about.

Fans of Stephen Colbert will note that “schooliness” riffs on Colbert’s “truthiness,” which won the Word of the Year awards from the American Dialect Society in 2005, and from Merriam-Webster in 2006.

Colbert, in a serious interview as himself, instead of as his Bill O’Reilly satire persona, had this to say about “truthiness”:

Truthiness is tearing apart our country, and I don’t mean the argument over who came up with the word…

It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that’s not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It’s certainty. People love the President because he’s certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don’t seem to exist. It’s the fact that he’s certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?…

Truthiness is ‘What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.’ It’s not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There’s not only an emotional quality, but there’s a selfish quality.

I’ve never tried to define “schooliness,” but so many people are quoting it as “Clay’s idea,” I feel it’s time to try - and to ask for your help in the Open Thread invitation at the end of this post.

The Birth of Schooliness

I first used the word “schooliness” in March 2007 - my third month of blogging - in one of a series of posts on “how to save blogging from teachers.” (I still worry about that danger, and still think-aloud about that challenge a year later.) I was envisioning a future in which all the edtech evangelists got what they wanted: schools full of teachers in every classroom using blogging with their students. But rather than seeing a utopia to celebrate, I saw a bleak dystopia: Blogging as “just another way to turn in homework.” Blogging, like thinking, creativity, and other joys, turned into an aversive horror by the forces of schooliness:

. . . . what reader will ever return to a blog that’s full of homework posts? If Stephen Colbert were here, he’d say such a blog smelled of this: “Schooliness.”

Like Colbert’s “truthiness,” “schooliness” stuck with me. It was a word without a dictionary definition that still seemed to identify something we all know, all too well.

Schooly Student Leadership

The next time I used the term was this past September. With a few other teachers around the world, I’ve started a Green Schools movement called Project Global Cooling. The project’s purpose is for student members to research waste-reduction measures, and their cost benefits for the school, and then present them for adoption in a formal proposal to the school administration - and to have, ideally, an Earth Day concert in cities around the world, student-promoted, on the same day, which will be filmed and uploaded to the Project Global Cooling website (it’s ugly right now, but it’s starting, finally, to grow legs - see my blog for future focus on this as it nears its April 19 climax).

One of the PGC students, a student council member, was ordered by the student council teacher-leaders to drop our club. It conflicted with the student council meeting times. That sent me into my second rage against the schooly in my post, “Student Council: Creating Tomorrow’s Followers (or, “Smells Like School Spirit”)“:

Me: “So what are you guys going to be planning in the Student Council that’s so important she’s forcing you to drop all other activities?”

Student: “The Haunted House for Halloween. And the next Student Assembly.”

Me: “The Haunted House….so, like, getting the pumpkins and doing some Halloween thing in the gym?”

Student: “Yeah.”

Me: “And the Student Assembly: what are you planning for that?”

Student: “Introducing the Sports teams. And raising school spirit.”

Me: “And how many people do you have meeting twice a week to plan a Haunted House and a 40-minute assembly to introduce the basketball players and give a few speeches and such?”

Student: “Seventeen.”

Me: “Seventeen?”

Student: “Yeah.”

Me: “Seventeen people meeting twice a week for the next 20 weeks to plan a haunted house in the gym, and an assembly to introduce sports teams? How long can it take to come up with a plan to introduce sports teams?”

Student: “I know.”

Me: “I hate school. Look at how trivial it makes you, even when you want to make a difference in the real world.”

Student: “I don’t have any choice. The Student Council teachers won’t let me out.”

Me: “And look how powerless you suddenly are. You’re 17. You’re a young adult. You know physics, calculus, and history far more than most of your teachers, but have zero power in school despite that. ‘They won’t let me.’ I hate school.”

* * *

So, your advice: I want to suggest he quit Student Council, since it’s clearly one very school-blindered, trivial waste of time for all these poor students seeking election in order to show they can handle power effectively - like adults do.

Another idea is to instead advise him to wage a bit of a rebellion inside the Student Council, by asking the very sensible question - “Is this the best we can do? Jack-o-lanterns and basketballs? Can we give the StuCo some teeth? Extend it into the real world? Isn’t it pathetically fay right now? Trivial? Irrelevant? Infantile?”

The sad thing is, it’s institutionalized. The Rat-Race for college admissions puts a high premium on silly bullets like holding a class office. College counselors, administrators, parents, students, teachers - the whole school culture - treat the Student Council like it’s an honorable thing. In reality, it limits the horizons of the 17 most motivated leaders from each grade level to the paltry world of the schoolhouse. It’s outrageously trivial and infantile.

I don’t know if it’s “consensus trance,” blind traditionalism, or winking condescension (”Let the kids play like they have power”), but it smells really bad to me.

Schooly Ethics

Schooliness raised its ugly head again when I considered the moral “offenses” schools choose to punish at school. Drive a gas-guzzler? Promote the bloody diamond trade with your flashy jewelry? Enjoy murder in video games or on your favorite movies? No worries. No punishment.

But use certain taboo vowel-consonant combinations, or look at the human form with certain taboo portions visible? We’ll throw the book at you, in our duty to teach you the difference between right and wrong. Schooly morality seems to have been held back since the mid-Victorian era. That was a fun post: “To Curse or Not to Curse: On Teaching the F-Bomb and Other Colorful Words.” Read it before you judge it. It’s about Shakespeare’s mastery of cursing, as an art form. Here’s a snippet:

Lear curses with style and grace, as befits a king. But Kent, his chief knight - Lear’s “Army Chief of Staff,” as it were - curses, as befits a career soldier, with much more salt and directness. Check out his classic “cussing out” of the slimy Oswald, servant of Goneril –

OSWALD:
What dost thou know me for?

KENT:
A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a
base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited,
hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a
lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson,
glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue;
one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a
bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but
the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander,
and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I
will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest
the least syllable of they addition. (Act II, Sc. 2, ll. 14-24)

If your Elizabethan English is rusty, and you don’t hear the vulgarity and sexual insult sloshing in practically every line, download the free “Answers” Firefox addon, and click the unknown words while holding down “alt” on your Mac for an instant popup definition and more (PC users, you’re on your own - maybe “ctrl”?). Kent calls Oswald a pimp, son of a bitch, bastard, son of a whore, “wussy,” a suck-up, and more, and then says, in today’s language, “Deny one word, and I’ll kick your disgusting little donkey” (substitute the King James Bible word for donkey here).

It’s depressing, isn’t it, how the art of cursing has degenerated in our own modern age? Our four-letter words are so unimaginative and artless by comparison.

So if you were me, how would you guide students to translate these curses? Having Kent abuse Oswald by hissing,

You bad person, I’m going to kick your bottom.
You son of a bad woman, you sissy, you person born out of wedlock,
You big meanie, etc

just doesn’t strike me as a faithful literary adaptation. (It does strike me as schooliness, though. Some teachers, like Wilde’s classic Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest, would give such a bowdlerizing an “A,” I’ve no doubt.)

Schooly Imagination and Curiosity

I’m battling with schooliness now, most distressingly, in the very people I thought would battle it with me: my high school seniors. It seems they are so unfamiliar with having their own ideas, and writing about them, that they simply cannot do it with any engagement. Their free-choice blogs are, overall, schooly imitations of authenticity. Pretending to have ideas they pretend to care about. Thank Goodness, there are exceptions. But the rule is so distressing, it’s led me to believe that, by high school, it’s too late to unlock the creativity and engagement Wes so often champions. Twelve years of schooliness seems to have beaten the desire to learn - the pleasure of learning - completely out of most seniors. It seems to me now that, if we’re going to feed fires for learning, we have to do it before they’re snuffed out. And that means, to be clear, focus on school reform in primary and middle years. (How to reform secondary school, so in the grips of the SAT and AP and College Admissions - not to mention high school teachers living out college professor fantasies - is beyond me.)

Here’s a snippet from, “From the Classroom Blogging Doldrums: What Would Teacher 2.0 Do?“:

The problem? Little vision, little connective writing.

It’s partly senioritis, I think. College applications, SAT’s, too many commitments to too many extra-curricular activities (got to have those bullets for the college application, even if they come at the cost of destroying both my learning and my GPA), too many week-long sports trips, too many AP classes that were chosen not for interest but again for careerist reasons.

It’s partly Korean culture: parents sending students to night and weekend schools for SAT prep, AP prep, tutors. Students confusing memorization skills with academic excellence, trained to “be instructed” rather than to “construct” meaning themselves. Having no time to be, reflect, explore, wonder (or having no energy, rather).

And it’s partly my own fault: all the macho posturing of Advanced Placement courses as “college-level, rigorous,” etc - and Wes Fryer’s etymolological connection, in Shanghai back in September, of “rigor” with “rigid” and “rigor mortis” echoes here - led me to buy in to what now seems a sadistic and pedagogically pathetic imperative to overload AP students with A Mountain Of Homework.

Schooly Critical Thinking: An Oxymoron

This is from, “Teaching Grammar on the Titanic: On Fear and Irrelevance in Education“:

So: the problem with me, as a teacher, is that I design units that don’t address anything important. I’ve been trained to think that my job is to stuff the headpieces of the next generation with such irrelevant things as the definition of litotes and onomatopoeia, to write cute little stories about nothing, to know Stratford-upon-Avon. To be able, paradoxically, to think critically about safe subjects. And above all, not to think about anything that might, god forbid, rankle the status quo. And let’s not even start to think about taking any sort of action.

Again, so: As soon as I stop thinking like a teacher, designing units derived from an institutional culture that defines me as a teacher, and subconsciously makes me far more traditional in my teaching than my progressively-posing ego likes to acknowledge….as soon as I re-define myself as a community leader - as that once-upon-a-time American thing called a citizen - instead, maybe the young adults of my community might have an opportunity to learn how to function in the world they’ll inherit from and manage for us all-too-soon.

Schooly (Anti-)Science

When Bulgaria is, per capita, more scientifically literate than America about biology, geology, and genetics - and when even science teachers are afraid of the “e-word” - little more needs to be said. I say it anyway, in this post that got 1,000 hits in 8 hours (a record for me): Truly Critical: On Science, Religion, and Goodness.

Schooly Writing Lessons

Under the influence of Oscar Wilde’s aphorisms and Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary, and in order to battle evil with wit and thus smile a bit more in hell, I’ve decided to slowly compile twitter-like definitions of all things schooly. Here’s my first effort, from a post last week:

Schooly writing (noun): Assignments by teachers who don’t want to read them, to students who don’t want to write them; a perpetual and unnecessary misery upon which hinges the student’s future, and the teacher’s present, livelihood; an oxymoron.

Open Thread Invitation to Play: Your Definitions of Schooliness?

Readers of my blog will know about the Open Thread idea. It’s simple: A topic or question is proposed in an Open Thread post, and all readers are encouraged to write comments as long as they would like, to copy them to their own blogs if desired, and to converse with each other in the thread. It’s fun.

I’d like to do an Open Thread here: Questions:

1. List the topics that come to your mind when you think of “Schooliness.”

2. Write your own “Devil’s Definition” and give us all a wicked laugh. I’ll carry them over to Beyond School and add them to a page there.

We know what schooliness is. We teachers live it daily. Let’s have some fun with it.

(Other comments are fine too, of course.)

–

Photo Credits:

• Colbert Motivational Poster by Louisville Joe
• Oscar Wilde Action Figure by -sel

The “Daily Motivator” quotation from Ralph Marston on October 3, 2007 resonates with me:

Do you understand where you are right now? You are in a place, a time, and a set of circumstances toward which you’ve been moving your entire life.
Do you realize the enormous opportunity that now exists? You are more experienced and better prepared than ever before.

Each past failure is now a positive and valuable lesson that you’ve learned about what works and what doesn’t. All the disappointments you’ve ever known have now combined together to create a powerful and meaningful determination that permeates your life.

By this point in your life, your dreams and desires are more in line with who you truly are than they’ve ever been before. And now you’re perfectly positioned to actually achieve them.

Do you realize how truly unique and powerful this very moment is? This is the moment when you can begin to fulfill your greatest possibilities.

This is the moment you’ve been working your way toward for a long time. You are here at last, so fill your world with the lifetime of richness that you’re able to give.

In a world filled with people who say “sometime I hope,” “maybe next year I can,” “if only I could,” and “yeah but I can’t because” these words speak to my heart.

Seize the day! You’ve likely never been better prepared to face and leverage both the challenges as well as the opportunities of this day.

Thanks for the inspirational words, Dad!

It is quite challenging to return to “normal life” and work after a week-long trip and face email inboxes.Since starting David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” several months ago, I’ve started applying several of his core organizational principles with limited but positive results. Since it is quite hard to change long-established organizational and information-processing habits, I’m not overly frustrated at the slow pace of my success with his “GTD” strategies, but I am optimistic that I’m on a constructive road of more efficient behaviors.I was interested to read about David Allen and his new age roots in the article “The Guru of Getting Things Done” in the October 2007 edition of Wired magazine. (Which incidentally doesn’t appear to be online yet.) The article, in addition to providing surprising background about David’s past life and work, provides a succinct summary of Allen’s GTD philosophy as a single axiom and three basic rules. One of the key elements of GTD in the context of digital information processing is “inbox zero,” or an empty inbox. I continue to work toward this goal in both my personal and professional inboxes. Since getting an iPhone and connecting my personal Yahoo email account to it, keeping my personal inbox empty has become an achievable goal. Staying away (largely) from my email inboxes last week when we were in China led, of course, to a stack-up in emails, but I am hopeful to return to “inbox zero” early this week.Merlin Mann is another vocal advocate of the “inbox zero” philosophy. In July 2007 Merlin shared an hour-long “Google Talk” titled “inbox zero: action-based email” which gave him an opportunity to share his thoughts on this and other subjects related to organization and “getting things done.” Merlin is the founder of the 43 Folders website and this presentation was based on work Merlin has done in the past on this topic for 43 Folders:The slides Merlin used in his presentation are also available on SlideShare. His actual presentation is 32 minutes long, followed by about 30 minutes of Q&A.Like Merlin, my involvement with email started in earnest in the mid-1990s with a PINE email account. In 1988 at the US Air Force Academy, we had an internal email system, and I remember that someone in my 4 degree class got in trouble for accidentally emailing an unprofessional message about our commandant of cadets (a 1 star general) to the entire wing using wildcard characters– but other than that incident my memories of using email in the late 1980s and early 1990s are very limited. Email was sharply limited then in its inter-operaibility with other email systems, so its use was less widespread and it was inherently less powerful as a communication modality. That changed in the mid 1990s, and has certainly continued to morph as we enter the closing months of 2007. I never took a course or even a workshop on email management, yet being able to efficiently manage email has become a critical life skill for me and many others.Merlin contends that “one of the most important soft skills you can have in business today is being able to deal effectively with a high volume of email.” To do this, Merlin contends (as David Allen does) that you must be able to put in place a simple, effective system that allows you to have “a life outside of email.” Merlin suggests that an email system needs to “build walls” so people will NOT “live in their inbox.” Merlin defines knowledge workers as “people who add value to information,” and proclaims the sanctity of “edges” when it comes to dealing with all sorts of information, and in this presentation, email specifically.Merlin points out that there are NO BOUNDARIES inherent in the demands and requests which other people can put on your TIME and ATTENTION. He is absolutely right about this. In my last job at a university, I experienced this dramatically in the five years I worked as a support staff member for both faculty and staff. The lack of natural boundaries in the time and attention DEMANDS which others placed on my plate became, at times, quite overwhelming and almost debilitating. Thankfully, for much of my time at the university, I had excellent folks working with me on my team, and that was a great asset. The dynamics which I experienced are likely similar to those experienced by many others, and this can be a challenging situation to say the least.The key, according to Merlin, is making sure your time and attention are always “mapping” to the things you “claim are important.” Merlin acknowledges that many of his ideas around “inbox zero” come from David Allen and his GTD philosophy, which David calls “advanced common sense.”I heartily agree with Merlin that for those people who think every email needs a response, “that is 1993 talking.” He is SO right about that. Over-responding to email is a common problem, and leads to more problems in the form of more email!Merlin’s five “verbs” which he applies when processing email do sound like advanced common sense.” These are:

1. delete (or archive)
2. delegate
3. respond
4. defer
5. do

The key is getting into the mindset of converting email data into actions. Merlin uses the software OmniFocus to keep “ticklers” of things he has delegated and needs to follow-up on later.Merlin contends “your inbox should be for emails you haven’t read yet.” Simple, straightforward, but probably a concept many of us are not applying.”Liberate activities out of your inbox.” Merlin exhorts his audience to use a software application to serve as a task manager / task list.”If you keep your email box tidy, you will respect it more.” Merlin contends keeping your email box clean is a way of showing your own respect for your time and attention.Merlin summarizes “life hacking” as overriding the things the dumb part of your brain wants to do, and instead doing the things the smart part of your brain tells you to do.The key to all of this is regularly processing email according to a set of sharp edged rules. Merlin suggests turning off your email for periods of time while you go and work on something else. Merlin suggests scheduling “email dashes” when you check email on a periodic basis, maybe 10 minutes every hour. As much as you can, try to “shut off” email and then periodically check in with it.Merlin encourages us to periodically consider, throughout the day, whether or not we are spending our time and attention on things that map to our priorities. If there are ways we can make email “less noisy” and still remain productive, then we should do those things. We need to recognize the negative, disruptive function of email and limit or remove entirely its attention-demanding tyrannical nature from our daily lives. This dovetails nicely with thoughts I’ve written about previously relating to “digital discipline.”The dynamics of “access” to people, their ideas, and their attention have shifted with email, and Merlin addresses this in the Q&A time following his presentation. As he observes, email somehow conveys an idea to people that they have unlimited access to your time and attention. Where people would not likely call you after 9 pm on the phone to ask a question, they have no problem sending you an email about it. These are important issues to consider, and then decide how to “process” and handle with those “sharp edges” Merlin discussed earlier in the presentation.Managing people’s expectations of your response time to email is also important. Merlin relates his own history of learning how “over-delivering” in advance of deadlines can create negative feedback loops. I resonate with this as well. It’s as if being highly responsive and highly skilled creates a negative feedback loop of ever-increasing expectations for ridiculously short time suspense responses that require an enormous quantity and quality of work. That feedback loop is not sustainable for knowledge workers. Here is my attempt at a visual of this dynamic:Having boundaries with sharp edges is an essential skill. Perhaps this has always been true, but the near-ubiquitous access many knowledge workers now enjoy (?) or experience has likely multiplied the importance of this skill in the last ten years. I am writing about these ideas not because I have mastered them or found a “solution” to all these issues, but because I am actively working on them and seeking solutions.I think both David Allen and Merlin Mann have a lot to offer in the elusive quest for “inbox zero” and the larger goal of living a life characterized by peaceful effectiveness, despite the chaotic cauldron of information and attention demands which is constantly storming the gates of individual consciousness.Technorati Tags:merlinmann, attention, email, inbox, gtd, davidallen, gettingthingsdone, organization, overload

I’m about a fourth of the way through David Allen’s outstanding book “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity.” I mentioned this book to a friend yesterday with the comment, “This book is going to change my life by helping me really get more organized and efficient with my use of time,” and I wasn’t kidding.On page 23 of the book, David shares the following paragraph which I think really defines “stress” for me and perhaps many others today, and also provides good insights into how that stress can be best managed. I don’t say “eliminated” because although we often use the word “stress” in negative references, we all do need a basic level of stress in our lives to keep our lives interesting and ourselves challenged. It’s only when perceived levels of stress get out of balance (or even out of control) that problems set in. Here’s what David writes:

The big problem is that your mind keeps reminding you of things when you can’t do anything about them. It has no sense of past or future. That means that as soon as you tell yourself that you need to do something, and store it in your RAM, there’s a part of you that thinks you should be doing that something all the time. Everything you’ve told yourself you ought to do, it thinks you should be doing right now. Frankly, as soon as you have two things to do stored in your RAM, you’ve generated potential failure, because you can’t do them both at the same time. This produces an all-pervasive stress factor whose source can’t be pinpointed.

As I’ve noted before, I think we often over-estimate the ability of young people to multi-task cognitive challenges and accomplish them with high levels of quality. Just because a young person is carrying on instant message conversations with six different people, watching the television, listening to an iPod, playing a GameBoy, and attempting to read a chapter in a school textbook does not mean that s/he is accomplishing anything which is cognitively challenging with a high degree of intellectual quality. The fact that a clown can juggle three balls while spinning a hula hoop around his/her waist and another one around his/her foot does not mean s/he is capable of simultaneously thinking original thoughts that might win them the Nobel Prize, or composing an original musical composition that will win a Grammy award next year. I think at many educational technology conferences, the apparent “awe” with which attendees are invited to regard the young for their abilities at multi-tasking is misplaced. Being able to be simultaneously distracted by six different sensory inputs does not necessarily mean thoughts or ideas of quality or lasting value have been conceived or communicated.Those thoughts on multi-tasking aside, I think David Allen’s point about stress being related to the number of “open loops” which your brain is trying to track at once is an excellent one. The solution he proposes to this challenge is a system which permits people to “take control of their lives” with a five-stage workflow model: collecting, processing, organizing, reviewing, and doing. I’m really enjoying his book, and think his ideas may have a great impact on my immediate as well as future “productivity” both professionally and personally. The July 2007 issue of MacWorld included a favorable review (on page 42) of the software program Midnight Inbox, a software implementation of David’s GTD (Getting Things Done) principles. I’ve downloaded a copy and will give it a spin.If you know of other GTD-based software programs you’d recommend, please let me (and others) know about them by commenting here and sharing a link.Technorati Tags:organization, gtd, gettingthingsdone, davidallen, information, overload, informationoverload, stress, solution

I’ve almost finished reading Carl Honore’s book “In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed,” and I discovered his 20 minute TED talk video today recorded in July 2005, and posted online in February 2007. These are a few of my notes from that presentation.

We are marinated the culture of speed today, our “roadrunner form of life” takes a high toll on our lives, our relationships, our communities, and our world.

We often need a wakeup call

Are we hurrying through life rather than living it? Are we living the fast life rather than the good life?

How do we think if time itself in our culture?
- in the east many view time in a cyclical way
- in the west we generally view time as linear, “use it or lose it,” time is money,” etc.
- that creates an equation where we try to speed everything up, make everything into a race to the finish line
- is it possible to break free from this mindset?

By slowing down at the right moments, people find that they can do many things better
- the international slow movement
- the slow food movement
- the slow cities movement (rethink how the urban landscape is organized, to encourage connections and slowing down)

Working hours have come down in some workplaces, and in some cases are finding higher levels of productivity without people being workaholics
- value of employees unplugging at times: turning off black, letting the brain recharge and enter a creative mode

Children are overworked now
- I am amazed how kids race around now with more homework, more activities, etc
- I get emails on my website from adolescents on the border of burnout
- some communities have declared days where all extracurriculars are banned

there are homework bans springing up in the developed world
- people discovering less can be more
- Scottish school banned homework for children under 13

Elite universities are noticing that caliber of students is falling in some ways, kids don’t know how to dream, they have lost their “spark”
- Harvard is sending a letter out to freshmen to encourage them to slow down, and do less, letter is called “Slow Down”

Message is the same: less is often more, slower is often better

That said, it is not easy to slow down: It is hard!

Speed is fun, sexy, it has adrenaline appeal
- there is a metaphysical level to this psychology
- slow is a byword for lazy, slacker, it has bad cultural baggage

Purpose of the slow movement is to tackle that taboo
- there is a “bad slow”
- but the new idea, the revolutionary idea, is that there is a “good slow” - eating a meal with your family with the TV turned off, tackling a problem at work from all angles with a team

just slowing down and taking time to savor your life

Many are starting to realize there is too much speed in the system, too much business
- this is not just in the developed world, also in the developing world
- many are looking at certain aspects of “The West” and liking some of what they see there, but not everything, especially not liking the high costs of all the speed

Is it possible to slow down?
- yes, the answer is a resounding “YES”
- I still love speed, I work as a journalist, I love to play squash and ice hockey
- over the last few years, however, I have gotten in touch with my “inner tortoise”
- my default mode is no longer to be a rush-a-holic

Upshot: I feel much happier, healthier, and productive
- I feel I am living my life and not just rushing through it
- most important: I feel my relationships are stronger and deeper
- litmus test: bedtime story time with my own children, not rushed

Children don’t do ‘quality time’
- they need you to move at their rhythm
- I find that when I move at that tempo, sharing opportunities open up
- bedtime stories have become my reward at the end of the day, rather than just something I must do or I dread

For more, check out Carl’s website “In Praise of Slow.”

Technorati Tags: qualityoflife, slowmovement, speed

This are my notes from Dr. Lynell Burmark’s presentation at TCEA 2007 on 2/9/2007.

Lynell’s website: www.educatebetter.org

All of us know that just because you fail one test you are not a failure, right?!
Hopefully we’ll have some laughs and some serious moments today
- also we will talk about some tools we can use to deal with stress

Book “Enlighten Up! An Educator’s Guide to Stress-Free Living”
- there may be a few of you who don’t need to be here, so if you need to give me a walking ovation that is no problem

Cartoon: teacher at the front: No talking, smiling, wearing weird clothes, more….

One rule: “If you’re having fun, you’re not learning”
- motto from the Disney movie, “Mathilda”

Surveys have showed that when we are stressed, 9 out of 10 times stress complaints have to do with TIME
- putting your schedule on a palm won’t solve your problems
- picture of someone’s hand with appointments written all over it!

To Do: Can Do. Will Do. Must Do and Deep Do list

Cartoon: “Due to airline cost-cutting, this is your dinner, pillow and air sickness bag”

Advertisements have us convinced “we are entitled” to everything money can buy
- images of diamonds, real estate, Porsche cars, etc.
- and entitlement of a place to keep it
- conflict between these messages and our paychecks

I used to work at at California’s service center
- image of huge house
- now: picture of a house on the back of a truck
- computers and phones situated in the bathroom, with a padded toilet seat

Testing, testing
- another area of great stress for
- reducing our kids to #2 pencils

Gary Stager had a movement at one point called “Pencils Down”

When you are stressed, the cortisol shrinks the
- their brains are 14% smaller (literally) and physiologically
- so we are literally making kids more stupid with all this stress

Techno Trauma: sometimes it can drive you nuts

Image of a computer monitor thrown out of a high rise building

Cartoon asking expecting parents if they want to email their zygote!

Technology is there at all the major events of your life
- groom leaving the church, saying to another woman dressed in a wedding gown: “Didn’t you get my email?”

Cartoon of console with login and username at the gates of heaven!

This technology was supposed to save us time
- how many of us spend 8 hours a day at a computer
- my record was 22 hours one day

Dogs on the computer: “Let’s see if we can’t scatter the trash all over his desktop”
- image of a desktop filled with files

Kids have no stress with technology or angst
- using the Pearson knowledge box in Southern California: kids lining up to use the computer during their recess time

You can use technology to make things more visual, that can be much less stressful for many learners
- for me math didn’t make as much sense when it was just numbers, but when you can

the “figure this” math site does things visually
- company “mind institute” in the exhibit hall is focused on visual math

Activity you can replicate: Progressive Story
- make a PPT slideshow with fullscreen images, and pass the kush ball and have people tell a story light you would tell a flashlight story
- example
- this can be used to test prior knowledge, to review, can even be used as the test
- I love this creative idea!!!
- this progresive story idea and

those who put the toilet paper over rather than under make an average of $32,000 more per year

Serious definition of stress: “stress is not the presence of something, it is the ABSENCE of something”

[THIS IS AN INTERESTING DEFINITION. ACCORDING TO THE FLOW AUTHOR STRESS IS A PERCEPTION.]

Stress is the absence of resourcefulness
- continuums of dark — light, stress — resourcefulness
- stress is a guage of PERCEIVED personal resources

[GOOD, I'M GLAD THIS INCLUDES THE IDEA OF PERCEPTION]

In WWII orgpanages, they would give kids a piece of bread at dinner and the kids would squirrel it away
- the psychologists learned if they gave them 2 pieces, they would eat one and save one
- they were perceiving that there wouldn’t be bread in the morning

The Dell Booth yesterday had bubbles
- a bubble bath is good for stress relief
- there are times when medication is called for, certain situations (I don’t want to make light of that, but if that becomes a lifestyle that can be a problem)

Cartoon: “The St. John’s Wort seems to be working, but be carful on the dosage”
Cartoon of dog with his feet in a jacuzzi tub
Snickers bars: there are as many fat calories are there are in 100 apples, so that’s a no brainer: Who has time to eat 100 apples?

Will Smith: “Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people the don’t like.”

Closet organizing ads
- you just have 4 or 5 choices tops
- somewhere between that level of organization and where we are now would be good

I have a new rule: if I buy one new thing, I have to donate five things I have now

Image of a backpacker with a loaded pack, and a TV on top

“What you aren’t willing to give away OWNS you”

Chronic overcrowding in the standards
- Even Robert Marzano who has made a fortune talking and writing about the standards admits we would need a K-22 system to teach them all
- Power Standards” book: says let’s get them down to the ones we really need

“Ask 3 before you ask me” is a good motto in the computer lab
- this empowered the kids, and freed him up
- the kids who are “the three” end up being teachers, we prepare the next generation

Image of Michael Jordan and the passion of making the shot
- he said: “Once the ball leaves my hands, it’s out of my hands” (he didn’t have to watch the basket)
- the ultimate “let it go”

Goeth: “Nothing shows a man’s character than what he laughs at”

humore: the juxtaposition of the unexpected (John Cleese)

Cartoon of a parent mouse in a robe talking to kids: “You were turned into white horses and forced to drive a pumpkin? out after midnight, and that’s the best story you could come up with?!”

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people: Victor Borge
- if you have an enemy or you want someone to help you, get them laughing

Kids laugh an average of 400 times per day
- by the time we are adults, we laugh around 15 times per day on average

Hopefully you’ll leave here and work on boosting your average

Tip: if you stick a number 2 pencil… in your mouth, it forces the corners of your mouth up a little so whatever you say will likely make you smile or laugh because your mouth is prepped
- you can also find a pencil when you need it
- this can also address disruption issues

Cartoon: farmer who made a scarecrow of his wife in the field

When you do cruel humor, you get an energy spike but then you dive
- you get briefly juiced but a bad aftertaste
- so use humor that isn’t cruel

The birthday card that says: On they day you were born the angels got together and said:
- Who messed up on quality control?

Between the lion’s series: a BB King series on the letter Y
- great show

Chateau MeddyBemps great website, whimsical humor
- great website esp for younger kids, up to 4th or 5th grade, esp good for

www.amazing-kids.org

Kid cartoon: “I’m never having kids. I hear they take nine months to download.”

I’ve given up on good internet joke sites, because most are ta

ahajokes.com

Clips from TV shows
- the old Cosby shows, the humor was always so sweet
- Bill and his wife on the show discussing if he remembers what he said when he proposed, and what was on the car radio

Shows the power of music
- what you remember, esp in highly emotional moments
- music can be used as a carrier of information to learners

The music of the spheres defined by Pythagoras: the music of the sun and the wind through the trees

Video clip of dramatizing “entrianment” - “toe tapping,” what happens when music plays and rhythm takes over our bodies

having a pet can lower your blood pressure
- a teacher’s smiling face can change the whole day for a child
- having friends you teach with can make such a difference

First connection in life: mother-child
- chemical oxy-tocin (the love hormone)
- that is the last to go in human life

“The heart of the matter”
- physiologically we have a brain in the heart, that sends messages to the brain
- stress or panic, and love / caring / compassion / appreciation
- when you are feeling those positive emotions
- you can only feel 1 kind of emotion at the same time

the fastest way of stress is to think of something you are deeply thankful for, because you can’t think about that and maintain your stressful thought
- think of something that brings tears to your eyes, something really deep
- that will flood your heart and move to your brain, and then you’ll realize you do have a couple resources
- shift your focus really fast from that stressful thing to something you’re thankful for

solution to the whole problem is to shift emphasis

Verse: in all things be thankful
- not “for” all things, that is saying no matter what happens, find the thankfulness in your heart and you’ll be able to rise above the circumstances

Have your kids write a thank you note if they are stressed out

THANK YOU is the big key
- this shows up scientifically, their are salivia tests and PET scans

If you have love, compassion in your heart, it can be felt within a 15 foot radius
- your students can feel what you are feeling
- do you want your students to

Your attitude is always key: you can always choose that
- you can choose who you want to be

cartoon: Moses as a kid, parting the milk

Steve CAse, founder of AOL had multiple paper routes because he knew there were many

Helping kids figure out what they want to be is very exciting

book “what color is your parachute” author says when you are in your highest calling, that is where your greatest passion and the world’s greatest need come together

Lifting kids with humor is hopefull

www.drewtretick.com music
- watch his face as he performs in this video
- playing with passion

My prayer for all of you, that you find this sense of mission and purpose

Technorati Tags: burmark, stress, tcea, tcea07, tcea2007

I am continuing to read “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and am seeing lots of connections for educators and learners. At the outset of chapter 4, Csikszentmihalyi summarizes the “common characteristics of optimal experience” or flow:

• …a sense that one’s skills are adequate to cope with the challenges at hand, in a goal-directed, rule-bound action system that provides clear clues as to how well one is performing.
• Concentration is so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant, or to worry about problems.
• Self-consciousness disappears, and the sense of time becomes distorted.
• An activity that produces such experiences is so gratifying that people are willing to do it for its own sake, with little concern for what they will get out of it, even when it is difficult, or dangerous.

For me, I think reading, writing, blogging and podcasting have often come to constitute a “flow experience.” For that reason, it has been very difficult to embark on a 40 day fast of evening technology use! This experience is proving to be worthwhile, but certainly challenging.

The following graph of page 74 of Csikszentmihalyi’s book communicates a great deal about the conditions required for a flow experience and the dynamical nature of flow:

As we think about the need to engage students in authentic learning experiences inside and outside of school and the conditions of “engagement,” I think this graph and these ideas about “flow” are helpful. As a learner, I am intrinsically motivated to seek conditiions of flow. Csikszentmihalyi identifies “skills” and “challenges” as the two key variables in the flow experience, placing them on the respective X and Y axes of this graph. As my skills (and knowledge) in a particular area grow, I will naturally move out of the flow channel if the level of challenge I am facing remains static. This is shown on the graph by the movement from position A1 to A2. This condition leads to boredom.

If I do not increase my knowledge and skills but the challenges I face increase, I will experience anxiety: This is shown on the graph as the movement from A1 to A3. When we have students in our classrooms facing anxiety, I think this graph may be descriptive of their psychological experience.

As classroom teacher-leaders, I think it is helpful to think about the PERCEPTIONS of skills and challenges that the learners in our care have in given contexts. I think as teacher-leaders, one of our educational objectives should be helping students experience and maintain conditions of “flow” in their own learning. Is this idealistic? Of course. But I think the ideas Csikszentmihalyi is highlighting here in terms of “optimal experience” relate directly to the sort of authentic, meaningful learning experiences that both cannot be faked and are likely to be recorded in LONG TERM memory which we should actively promote inside and outside our classrooms.

Everything we do in school or outside of school may not be able to constitute a “flow” experience, but it is interesting to note that our perceptions of events and contexts are of primary importance in the flow experience. As learners, we can learn to shape our perceptions of consciousness and thereby shape with greater levels of control our own experiences inside “the flow channel.” This may sound like psychological mumbo-jumbo to some, but I think there is a GREAT deal of validity in these ideas. I have not finished the book yet (I’m just about one-fourth of the way through it) but I’m sure I’ll continue to see more connections to the learning process as I read more. Csikszentmihalyi’s view of learning seems to fit well with my own conceptions of “dynamical learning” that I’ve written and presented about previously.

Writing and blogging about what I am reading is an important part of my own effort to “own” these ideas and keep them within my own consiousness– both consciously and subconsciously. It’s amazing how the more we read, talk about, and write about ideas– our minds continue to process and develop those thoughts into new syntheses.

It’s Thanksgiving, and I’m thankful for MANY things– but one thing I’m very thankful for is the opportunity to have access to such rich texts and ideas both in book and electronic form, to think, talk and write about those ideas, and the chance to publish my thoughts here and elsewhere to invite your feedback and ideas! Thoughts like these from Csikszentmihalyi continue to increase my perceived level of “challenges” on the flow graph, and provide incentive to improve my cognitive skill set to understand and apply those ideas within my own worldview. I’m guessing this may explain (at least in part) the reason you’re here, reading this blog post!

Happy Thanksgiving!
(And for more info on “flow” if you don’t have one of Csikszentmihalyi’s books, you can check out the WikiPedia entry on this topic!)

Many people mistakenly seem to equate the terms “courage” and “bravery” with an absence of fear. This is not the case. I remember free-fall parachuting five times to earn my jump wings in the Air Force, and there definitely WAS a fair amount of fear involved in those experiences! People who are brave are not fearless– that would be a superhuman quality. What brave and courageous people are able to do is manage their fears and act in intentional ways in spite of those fears. As Rudolf Giuliani said in reference to 9-11:

Courage is not the absence of fear…It is the active management of fear.

Quoted by D D Ganguly.

Many, many thanks to Dean Shareski for generously guest-blogging the past week and a half as I traveled with my family to a family reunion at Hunters Peak Ranch, Wyoming, and spent four wonderful days in Yellowstone National Park! Dean mentioned in a post that he had not heard of guest blogging till I introduced him to it a few months back when Miguel Guhlin took over as my first guest-blogger… the story there is that I had not heard of guest blogging either before a couple of years ago, when I first found Larry Lessig’s excellent blog that focuses on intellectual property rights issues. Now, I am certainly not a comparable intellectual and national leader like Dr. Lessig– who has written several traditionally published books (my favorite is “The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World”,) teaches at the Stanford Law School, and is a progressive public policy leader as the founder of organizations like Creative Commons and the Science Commons. None-the-less, the idea of having a guest blogger on a popular blog site, however, is a great one I think– dynamic content brings people back for more, and I wouldn’t want my blog to get stale just because I have gone on vacation! So many thanks to Dean. I may end up doing some guest blogging for him in August when he takes a break from writing and also heads towards Yellowstone– and if I do, I won’t be cross-posting as I often do at TechLearning– I’ll let you know if that will happen in a few weeks!
Dictionary.com defines fasting as:

The act or practice of abstaining from or eating very little food. A period of such abstention or self-denial.

The last week and a half, I have been on a spouse-requested vacation “blog fast,” and the experience was actually quite wonderful. I haven’t posted in my “luddite” blog category in awhile, but I remain a huge fan of digital discipline… a skill set which I think includes intentionally choosing when to plug and unplug from digital content. (I actually hope to write a book with that title someday and have even reserved the domain name, but for now I’m occupied with other endeavors.) Check out my post from from February 2005 titled “Snow Days are the Best Days” for more on this.

So, our family reunion and vacation to Wyoming the last week and a half was WONDERFUL. Yes, we had technology on the drive up and back in the form of cell phones, an iPod mini for music and iPod shuffle for podcasts– and a laptop for evening DVD movies for the kids… but after we got there, cell phones didn’t even work– and that imposed technological disconnection combined with my wife’s insistence that I take the time off from blogging led to a very relaxing and enjoyable vacation. I admit I felt a bit like a long haul truck driver– my one way driving distance from Edmond to Cooke City, Montana (close to Hunter’s Peak, we actually went through there several times as we went in and out of Yellowstone) was over 1500 miles!

Thankfully, iPods and podcasts make such a journey potentially much more intellectually stimulating than it might be otherwise… and the chance to just think and talk, without many other distractions, make the drive to and from the destination a very enjoyable part of the journey, rather than just a hassle that must be survived to “get there.”

Last night as I enjoyed the excellent lemonade and food at the Cracker Barrel in Amarillo on my way back home (as I usually do now driving between Lubbock and Edmond), I brainstormed many of the things which for me today, define an “excellent vacation.” Here is what I came up with:

1. Low stress.
2. Lots of time to relax and unwind.
3. Many opportunities to laugh.
4. Few time requirements.
5. Full nights of sleep.
6. Great meals.
7. Star filled skies filled with minimal light pollution.
8. Opportunities for novel, exciting, challenging or unusual experiences.
9. The presence of loved family and friends.
10. Lots of readily available cold beverages.
11. Large, hearty breakfasts.
12. Time to get bored! (idle.)
13. Kids saying, “There’s nothing to do!” (In a natural environment, with a little or a lot of imagination and creativity there are actually 100s of things to do, of course!)
14. No email or IM.
15. No phone service, cell or otherwise.
16. No television.
17. No DVD movies.
18. No work requirements or deadlines.
19. Lots of face to face (F2F) conversations.
20. More time than usual to be alone and be quiet.

Anything else you’d add to this list?

For me, disconnecting from technology has increasingly defined a great, relaxing vacation. That is probably why my family and I have enjoyed camping so much– we have an old popup trailer that is essentially a floored tent… No working electrical or even water connections, just a nicer tent to crash in at night.

So, it’s great to be back at work– I am loving my new job, and looking forward to meeting lots of Kansas educators as well as visiting again with Will Richardson later this week at the 2006 Mid-America Technology Institute in Winfield. The hosts are going to archive both my spotlight presentations on Kan-Ed Live, and I’ll likely podcast as well, so look for more content later this week and weekend!

If you’re interested, I posted a bunch of photos from our time at Hunter’s Peak on my Flickr site. I’ll close my post with an image of Pilot and Index mountains, as seen from the Sunlight Basin on the Chief Joseph Scenic Highway near the turn to Hunters Peak:

I love living in Oklahoma, but I will always remain ready to return to the mountains! Wyoming is definitely God’s country!

This podcast is the first in a series focusing on Guidelines for Educational Revolutionaries. In this podcast I explore the natural tension which often exists between those in charge of K-12 educational technology (IT departments who tend to favor control over creativity) and those advocating for innovation and change. I explore ideas about what might motivate or drive most school district IT departments, and alternatively what drives creativity and innovation. This podcast series could also be titled, Change Agents for Creativity in Education. To change a culture we need to first understand it, examine our reasons for supporting change, and use the results of that analysis to construct effective strategies. A subsequent podcast will be published as part two, including different guidelines for educational revolutionaries. As always, listener responses and feedback are welcome as comments to this post!
Program Length: 31 min, 35 sec
File size: 15.2 MB

(Click here to listen to this podcast)

Show notes for this podcast include:

1. “The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress” by Virginia Postrel
2. “Wagging the Dog in Instructional Technology: Elevating ‘IT’ Into the Classroom” (a TechEdge article from 1998-99)
3. The “IT Guy” column for Technology and Learning
4. Creative Commons “Get Creative” movie/animation
5. Yerkes-Dodson Curve of Stress versus Performance
6. “How Children Fail” by John Holt

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Technorati Tags: creativity, education, podcasting, puppy

Lynn Brewer is the author of “Confessions Of An Enron Executive: A Whistleblower’s Story” and shared these comments at the Texas Tech University Ethics Day on April 6, 2006. Lynn generously gave permission for her presentation to be recorded and shared as a podcast, available on the Texas Tech University College of Education podcast channel.

Intro by TTU President Smith:
For 9 years of my life I worked for the CIA, keeping secrets
- one joke: if you have 3 members of the Hell’s angels, they can keep a secret forever only if 2 of them are dead
- other joke was: if you have 3 CIA agents, they can keep a secret forever if none of them are dead
- think about that

Lynn’s comments:

Went from being asked to overlook to told what was OK for the CEOs was not OK for me
- realized these guys were buying up power in one place and shipping it different places
- California said they needed “decongestion” of power
- Enron was making more off decongesting fees than trading power

I went to the head of public relations

Edgar is electronic reporting system all public companies use
- to violate security on SES
- offered letter or resignation, instead gave her a promotion to NW for Enron Broadband Services
- money was no object, this was technology and we were in the bubble

Enron kept getting into these businesses because they could create these forward price curves
- we had lots of people look at
- we were falsifying the future likely value of things
- if the markets don’t produce what you are predicting, then you have to…

There were no switches, and were going to create a new internet so you could stream MTV
- there were just 2 competitors
- both were going out of business: 1 was laying off lots of employees, the other

To have liquidity in a market, you have to trade
- I told my boss his predications about $40 more per share was not accurate, his response was

I realized this went all the way up to the top, so I did what
- I called the employee assistance program
- I said I have evidence of bank fraud and espionage on the part of Enron ….
- the women said: ma’am, because our fees our paid by Enron I can’t take your call, you’ll have to get a private lawyer

So I submitted my letter of resignation
Left
Heard some stuff on the radio, so I sent an email
Then a syndicated radio talk show called, and I confessed my sins
The radio person said to go to the gov’t

Called a Senator, his staffers said

Enron was bankrupt 3 years before it filed for protection
- this is a 2 part story about those who refused to tell the truth, and also those who refused to listen

Picture of iceberg
- look at corporations and organizations differently
- Enron is the extreme example
- organizations really have 2 parts: the above the waterline
- 2/3rds of what is moving that organization forward or backward are the people who are below the waterline

As a new organizational employee you will be below the waterline for some time

Some COEs
- we had values! (respect, integrity, communication, excellence)
- from leadership, tone was set by Ken Lay (CEO) as integrity
- Jeff Skilling: said don’t cut corners

Average age of employees at enron was 33, tenure in 3 years, you would have 4 positions generally during that time, there was a lot of churning

Enron lost $90 billion in 30 days

Grad students at Cornell: May 5, 1988
- report recommending sell on Enron’s stock
- said Enron may be manipulating their stock value and earnings
- there is no gaining back when you lose value

From that point Enron stock would go up 1400%

I say Enron employees are not victims
- they chose to invest 100% of their retirement in Enron as employees

Jeff said in 2000 annual report
- company reached a record $1.3 billion in 2000
- READ THE annual report written by the CEO for any company you are going to work for or are considering buying, etc.
- Nothing indicated the discrepancy between that figure and….

Below the Bottom Line
- you have a culture in the organization
- you either define it, or it will define you, it is a living, breathing organism based on the values of the employees that make it up

Lynn founded “Integrity Institute”
- attached a CYA memo to the email
- I know that it went on, and I didn’t do

What did the board of directors do?
= Enron’s internal hotline incident reports
- there were thousands of people in this organization blowing the whistle, and 30% of them alleged criminal activities, 40% were fraud

A measure of of success is the measure of your risk!
- 2001: 6,400 whistleblowing reports made every month to the SEC the year Enron imploded

I say young people are more likely to go to work for an Enron or not

Today in 2004: There are 40,000 whistleblowing reports made every month to the SEC
- number of companies is going down, number of whistleblowing reports is going up

[MY THOUGHT: THIS IS VERY SCARY]

You are more likely today to find out that things are wrong in your company from the SEC than your own employees
- these stats tell me that employees don’t trust their leadership

Right and Wrong are Not Black and White
- most of us are and were pretty good people
- we didn’t go to work to defraud people
- they didn’t say: “cook the books” they said “find me the revenue” or we’ll find someone to replace you

Over time in companies, culture changes people
- so over time, I was becoming someone I didn’t like in Enron

If enough people who are positive, trustworthy, and have integrity leave the organization, all you have left are the dark people
- they didn’t want the people who would stand up for injustice

As you go through life, decisions are not about black and white
- they are really about the grey between black and white
- as you begin to see things happening in organizations, you begin to play tricks with yourself and rationalize things

We are moving at such a fast pace in our society, deals of Enron were closed at the 11th hour before attorneys could do the research they needed to do
- the majority of people in corporations are people

Short clip from “Vertical Limit”
- father and children faced with a dilemma
- cut the rope and kill the dad, or not?

the way we describe risk is as something you dont’ expect but you have to plan for
- in Enron, they would do the deals and then manage the risks later

Tulane professors: Art B.
” Good people do horrendous things in the workplace because the don’t see the situation as an ethical dilemma. They see it as a business problem to be solved.”

At Enron, where we couldn’t change the rules we broke them

This next clip is from Friends

If you don’t know the answer, just admit you don’t know the answer and then work to find the answer
- most of these cases are about THE COVERUP
- not about the wrong that was done, about what

Change in federal sentencing guidelines, this 38 year old married and with a baby
- did a structured finance deal with Enron, but there was no legitmate business purpose for doing that deal except boosting revenue
- for that he was sentenced for 24 years in prison with no chance of parole

Andy pled guilty before new sentencing guidelines went in

From Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, successor to Jack Welch: “Our concern that keeps me up at night is that among the 300,000-plus GE employees worldwide, there are a handful who choose to ignore our code of ethics. I would be naive to assume a few bad apples don’t exist in our midst.”

Do not assume that innovation is a good thing, regulation in some cases protects us from ourselves

There is some sort of fraud, more than likely, going on in every organization
- generally you have about 6% of employees reporting wrongdoing, if you have more or less than you should be really concerned

Now clip from “The Apprentice”
- this was very much like being inside Enron
- every day in the board room of Enron was like this

understand this stuff is going on all around us

Beliefs, Behaviors and Boundaries
- we have boundaries in our lives: medians in the middle of the road, etc
- we are supposed to drive down the middle of the lane
- we have mandated speeding laws, etc.

we have VOLUNTARY boundaries as well as MANDATED boundaries
- we have found that for young people, their brains develop more slowly

Beliefs and Behaviors, and objectives
- obstacles come up (we call them “market forces” in business)

First thing that goes is your value system (you are a little drunk but decide to still drive home)
- you know you aren’t doing well driving but you keep going
- regulation is there to save you from yourself

Without accountants, good boards of directors, etc– things can become corrupt
- they can go off course

Short film clip showing how fast things can go bad

showed graph of companies that lost billions in a short number of days

Don’t go to work for a company that has a 63 page vision statement
- don’t just go to work for the most money
- most of these were not startups, these are the companies we invest our futures in
- we have to ask ourselves, “Is there a little bit of Enron in all of us?”

absolutely, the only thing that keeps us on the straight and narrow is that which keeps us is the voice inside us
- I love to call it my GPS

closing analogy: JFK Jr.
- certified licensed pilot
- got warning on way up to a wedding about an incoming storm
- does not pay heed to that, begins to fly
- at some point in time had instruments that would tell him if he was upside down or not, and he decided he knew better– then 3 people were dead

we do have internal instrumentation
- that is the only thing that will keep you out of prison

suggestion: create a new reality for yourself, if there are not great things going on in that company, then leave that company
- most of the misdeeds that happen are a result of shame

Either we are too ashamed to admit we made a mistake, or someone will shame us into doing something we should not

Don Cash is Chairman Emeritus of Questar Corporation, and shared the following remarks at the TTU Ethics Day on 6 April 2006.

He become