Architecture of Ideas

Urgent Attention. Action Required.

A recent post about effecting change generated some interesting comments and sparked an email commentary from my dad. I keep thinking about each of these comments, and I want to highlight them here, offer my reflections, and hopefully nurture further discussion of the factors which will create a successful viral message.

In the late June post, I outlined Andrew Zolli's guidelines for framing our ideas in a way that will get the audience's attention. He said to "bake every idea" with a message that is:

• Personal (Individual Stories, not Impersonal Facts)
• Tangible (vs. Intangible)
• Present (What does this mean for me today?)
• Desirable (What's in this for me, rather than is this the responsible choice)

As we talk particularly about education and the shift required from teacher-centered classrooms to student-centered, project-based, constructivist learning (supported by web 2.0 tools), Willy Kjellstrom added that the message needs to demonstrate that "it is possible." If you want me to change my behavior (pedagogy, business process, communication methods), then you've got to show me where it fits into my endless list of things to do. How does it become a priority? Does my supervisor lighten my workload so it is possible to make it a priority? Is my performance based on my acting on this "idea"? I suppose that goes hand in hand with Zolli's point about it being "desirable": To make it possible we've got to wrestle with basic human behavior and show "what's in it for me." Perhaps it would be valuable to conduct focus groups in various schools (public, charter, needs-improvement, private) to determine the factors required to make the change. Certainly from observation we see there are teachers, executives, and others who are adopting the tools and philosophy to construct their classrooms and businesses for the shifting paradigm. However, they are in the minority and I wonder if they represent a population that is more willing to take a risk, is more open-minded, and (dare I say) more committed to their own learning (perhaps willing to "grow" is a better way to say it)?

My Dad (Jim Walker) is a former researcher for DuPont with a PhD in Applied Mathematics. He has spent the last 10+ years as president of a retail/wholesale/online business my mother started 25 years ago. He argues that the issue in changing behavior is to show that the problem is more immediate and requires urgent action. Though he is the first to say he finds himself more at home with academics than marketers, his email to me would have made marketing guru Seth Godin proud:

As you know, the problem is how to present the issue (that is not necessarily immediate) so that the individual sees it as immediate. How do you use the technology to show an individual the effect of some issue, such as global warming, on them? In the same way that a medical person can create an image of how a missing person might look today (based on a photograph from 10 years ago), can we show an individual how their life will "appear" 20 years from now as a result of some phenomenon? The "phenomenon" might be sociological in nature or physical.

Cool idea. How might we visually demonstrate what an individual's life will look like if he or she does/doesn't make this shift in education and/or enterprise? And what are the steps that he/she can take NOW to move toward the more desirable outcome? Show what success looks like..and show failure. And then give the roadmap to succeed. Hmmm...

Finally, I want to address the question of the pace of change. I have mentioned that there is frustration in the edublogger community with the slow pace of personal understanding and the adoption of new practices. Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach comments:

According to John Seely Brown, it took 20 to 50 years for electrification to take hold and for society to enact new social practices that leveraged the potential of that infrastructure, and so it will be for the reculturation of schools. (my emphasis)

I cannot disagree that real change--systemic change/paradigm shifts--takes time. Some might argue that to effect a change you've got to start small and then grow it like a "rolling stone grows moss". OK, I hear that as well. However (and I will note that this is both a "good" and a "bad" thing), isn't the power of the web and its network of connections just the right framework for social practices that can leverage the idea and rapidly increase the speed of change? We aren't talking about an industrial revolution or an evolving information age; we're talking about something that is more personal, social and behavioral in nature: the age of the network.

My passion is to harness the viral nature of that network for meaningful change in human behavior such as greater understanding, improved communication skills, and the fostering of creativity, collaborative problem-solving, and life-long learning as "the norm."

Lots to keep thinking about...and read. I've just reread parts of The Tipping Point and all of The Art of Possibility. And I'm probably late to the game on this, but The Starfish and The Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations is really compelling.

Thoughts, books, ideas always welcome...

Laura

Made to Stick

Two weeks ago a friend and I went to hear Andrew Zolli give the keynote address at NECC. Zolli's presentation, though long and a bit over-the-top with jokes, was spot-on in many respects. I've just listened again to  Creativity, Innovation, and the Forces of Change, and I wonder if perhaps the endnote about messaging is where we need to focus. How do we craft a message which inspires participation and creates a Tipping Point in education?

Zolli notes that we're becoming connected at an exponential rate, the cost of that connectivity is plummeting, and "we are all going to be involved with each other for a very long time." However, computers are going to be doing most of the work, thus begging the question "What will we do?" Our role will be to work from our unique, creative centers and add value. (See Mitchel Resnick of MIT's presentation on "Sowing the Seeds of a More Creative Society.") We will be asked also to master all five ways of approaching a problem: think, look, play, imagine...and NETWORK. Network refers to our ability to work collaboratively in groups--to develop partnerships. It will be a key factor. Our level of participation in that network will be the exponential factor determining a network's value. Many of us have not learned to think in terms of the network, and therein lies our challenge and opportunity--not to mention the challenge in education to master the other approaches!

How do we in education (and enterprise for that matter) get our communities (e.g.,teachers, students, parents, administrators) to participate in the network? How do we realize the value of all this connectedness? Certainly the practices of many dedicated professionals, widely dispersed as they may be, move us along incrementally. But, I sense a lot of frustration out there among the edubloggers (Will Richardson, Chris Lehmann, David Warlick) at this "inching along." We need something to "tip it", and that something is what Zolli left us to ponder: It is about taking the message from the abstract and making it personal.

Zolli contrasted society's passion for hunting down Bin Laden and Hussein to our limited interest in environmental issues such as global warming. The abstract nature and future orientation of the environmental issues cannot compete with the concrete, present reality of a couple of terrorists. Zolli argues that in order to get people focused on the right variable (the societal impact of global warming is far greater than two terrorists) we need to take a Chip and Dan Heath-like approach (see Made to Stick) and  "bake every idea" with a message that shows it is:

Personal (Individual Stories, not Impersonal Facts)
Tangible (vs. Intangible)
Present (What does this mean for me today?)
Desirable (What's in this for me, rather than is this the responsible choice)

In the end, it all comes down to the marketing of the message. At the Edublogger Conference (the day before Zolli spoke) we wrestled with coming up with the elevator pitch for what it is we "see." If we want it to be something that "sticks", then we've got to move out of the abstract ivory tower and onto the personal reality page. I am anxious to explore this, and so I ask: How might this group use the tools in a way to create a powerful message that shows why all of this is personal, tangible, present, and desirable?  "Did You Know" was a nice viral start, but it is still too fact-based and too long. If we are going to have the crucial emotional appeal, we need the story angle...thoughts?

Change: Harnessing the Right Attitude

In the third grade I wrote a one page essay for my teacher, Ms. Pelham. We had just finished reading an article about the destruction of our forests. A photo of a single tree standing in a felled forest followed the article, and Mrs. Pelham asked us to write about that tree. She didn't ask us to regurgitate the facts; she asked us to look at the image, reflect on it, then write. I recall writing about how the tree felt: its loss of its friends (trees); the change in the community since there was no longer a forest for the birds and wildlife; and the tree's ensuing loneliness. And, I wrote about its hope: That new trees would be planted around it and once again the forest would be lush and green and home for so many.

How do we bridge the gap between reality and what we believe or hope to be possible? How do we react to change or create the change we want to see?

Enterprise and education are struggling with these very issues. Web 2.0 brings the ability to connect, collaborate, create...and without question "change." In this new paradigm, the walls of our institutions can no longer confine us, and a rich, participatory world is emerging. It seems that there are pockets of understanding, and certain people and institutions that are bringing great attitudes and aptitudes to this changing landscape. But for so many I wonder when they will ask the question "Who Moved My Cheese?"

I spent Saturday listening to-and to a limited extent participating in-conversations at the first EduBlogger Conference (a kickoff event to the week ahead at NECC). There are so many thoughts swirling around in my mind. Although it will take a while to process all that I heard, I see the passion and commitment this group has to harness the connective, collaborative, creative energies and move the conversation beyond "the choir". Systemic change is what we're all after (in this case in public and private education but equally as important in enterprise). I believe that this change is going to come not only from our practice/our example ("Be the change you want to see" -Ghandi) but also from our work to dispel the "fear factor" in most of the over 30 crowd-fear that has been embedded by the media and reinforced by the natural human tendency to resist change. We started talking about how that might be  accomplished, and I'll probably write more about it in coming posts.

Ms. Pelham exuberantly scrawled "A+++" on my essay; and, 35 years later, my mom still has that paper in her "special drawer". I honestly don't know how well it was written, or if I really deserved such high praise. But, I wonder if maybe that essay reminded them of something: We must be empathetic to the effect of change, but most importantly we must respond to change with an "attitude of possibility" not fear. Harnessing that hope I think we have the foundation necessary to begin the work of bridging the gap between what is real and what is possible.