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Resources and Reading #MondayBlogs

Reading is so much more than an enjoyable pastime.

Reading can broaden the foundation we use to build our knowledge, taking our learning to the next level.

Tonight, quickly, I want to share with you all that we have resources available.

For quick bites, if you’re pressed for time, we have an entire library of articles available to you here.

If you have a little more time at hand, we also have an entire reading list of books that are we highly recommend.  That reading list can be accessed on this page.

I hope you find some ideas and thoughts that help you along the way.

The time is now.

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Making Sense of the Numbers

When we look at our businesses, our numbers need to add up.  But how do we calculate the potential represented within a sales territory?

It begins with the potential business we can earn from each of our customers.

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Learning #MondayBlogs

Education has undergone many changes over the years.

From the 1800’s to now learning has changed dramatically. From the days of Aristotle, Plato and Socrates, the heroes of teaching and learning we have been on an interesting road. The quality of education has appeared to be based on the number of PhD’s on the faculty. Nobody talked abut the quality of the TEACHING. That has been one of the flaws of the education system.

In the 1960’s Clark Kerr gave a series of lectures at Harvard that were put into a book called “The Uses of the University.” Harvard had created the “elective” system whereby the student chose the curriculum. This resulted in a lot of people who graduated with very little “learning.” Kerr developed the California system with the UC system on the top, then private Universities, then Junior Colleges. The UC system for the ‘smarter” students to the others at the private to the lower skilled to the Junior Colleges or Technical schools. Imagine.

Yet there still exists a HUGE hole.

Who is it that qualifies the teachers?

How do we measure learning?

Today we have HUGE student loan debt.

How did we get here? When I went to University I paid less than $500.00/year plus books and lab fees. Today we are talking about more than $25,000/year plus, plus, and I am being very gentle. This level of tuition inflation is becoming ridiculous.

There was something else going on at the same time. Parents in the US had been convinced that their children would be better served if they went to a University. They would make more money over their lifetime. As a result, less than 10% of the population had a bachelor’s degree in 1960. That passed 20% in 1970 then 25% in the 1990’s and over 33% today. At the same time, it is said that 50% of the technical schools in America closed for lack of attendance. Quite a commentary isn’t it?

Many ideas of how people think and learn are a mystery to most people. However, at a few Universities learning scientists and computer engineers came together and started to develop educational tools that could be far more effective in teaching and learning. Mark Kamlet, the provost of Carnegie Mellon University, opines that 25 to 50 Universities are the total of the Universities that will survive over the coming decades. That is because teaching and learning are changing. The current universities are creating their own destruction. They are conducting research and they are trying to make things better.

In 1955 Herbert Simon attended a conference at Dartmouth where he and a small group of scientists gave a name to a new field of research called “Artificial Intelligence.” Learning is not a matter of accessing information but rather a matter of organizing and making sense of it. Cognitive scientists started asking the fundamental question. “How do people think and learn?” It is clear that our brain is a very complicated tool. The importance of thinking patterns and expertise means that learning needs to be looked at in different ways. The trouble with this is that this making developing courses very difficult. It is not easy to simulate working environments. Believe me we are in that business. But that is where as a society we are going. The University of Everywhere is here now and will become even more significant going forward.

We are perpetuating the class society with our education system.

Clark Kerr institutionalized this within the California system. If you have access to money you can get into a different school. Not a good approach to anything.

The new barriers of entry should be based exclusively on ability. Wouldn’t that be a nice change? That is where learning Management Software is taking us. That is where non-traditional teachers are coming from. We have to be extremely alert to the changes in learning.

We are mindful of these changes and watch the result of the student assessments from our online programs, not just to evaluate the student but also to evaluate our ability to transfer information. That is where we all have to go. Making learning easier and more effective.

The Time is NOW.

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Where Do We Go From Here?

In our last post, we talked about thinking outside the box (or triangle).

For those of you who have previously taken our classes, you know I often ask about “the box.”  Why is there a box?  Who decided to get me into this box in the first place?  I hate the idea of being penned into one set of ideas and one way of thinking nearly as much as I HATE discounts.  You are all well aware that I hate discounts immensely.

I think that doing things the way we have always done them is what constitutes the box we find ourselves stuck in so much of the time.  It is human nature to find a routine to follow.  It’s against our nature to reassess that routine and push for change.

Every time someone tells me that change isn’t all that difficult, I tell them to go home and suggest to their spouse or partner that they switch sides of the bed.

Change is tough.  Pushing for change and constantly striving to stretch and grow has a lot to do with changing our way of thinking.  To gain a different perspective, we must see differently.  To see differently, we must look, as Proust said, with new eyes.  To have those new eyes, we need a new mindset.

Education is key.

This year, let’s challenge ourselves to grow and stretch and move our paradigms with ongoing education.

That’s the way to find constant growth and improvement, both within our careers, and within ourselves.

The time is now.

Outside the Box

Welcome 2018!

After my assessment of how far we’ve come in 2017, I wanted to have the first blog post of this new year focus on where we are going.

Thinking Outside of the Box.

It seems I have been looking for the guy who first said “thinking outside of the box” and I finally found him. His name is Edward de Bono and he is a very accomplished individual. He qualified in Medicine at the University of Malta, then he was award a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford where he read Psychology and Physiology, followed by a PhD in Medicine, and another PhD from Cambridge. Suffice it to say this is a very well educated and intelligent individual.

He is a speaker at some of the most prestigious institutions in the world and has written more than 60 books on various subjects. He is a thinker and is very critical on our abilities to think. He goes back to the big three of teaching in Plato, Socrates and Aristotle, the men who were celebrated as “Absolute” heroes. They applied logic to discover what was deemed to be the truth. De Bono suggest that is a dangerous road. It has led us somewhat astray.

In 1967 de Bono wrote a book called “The Use of Lateral Thinking,” a phrase that struck a chord with the public. Lateral Thinking is the notion for changing perceptions.

This is the thesis of many people one of whom is Rory Sutherland.  The circumstances of our lives may matter less than how we see our lives, says Rory Sutherland, and he makes a compelling case for how reframing things is the key to happiness. From unlikely beginnings as a classics teacher to his job as Vice Chairman of Ogilvy Group, Rory Sutherland has created his own brand of the Cinderella story. He joined Ogilvy & Mather’s planning department in 1988, and became a junior copywriter, working on Microsoft’s account in its pre-Windows days. An early fan of the Internet, he was among the first in the traditional ad world to see the potential in these relatively unknown technologies. An immediate understanding of the possibilities of digital technology and the Internet powered Sutherland’s meteoric rise. He continues to provide insight into advertising in the age of the Internet and social media through his blog at Campaign’s Brand Republic site, his column “The Wiki Man” at The Spectator and his busy Twitter account.

The point of highlighting these two gentlemen is that as people we seem at times to get stuck in ruts. Joel Barker called them Paradigms. This is the social equilibrium that we experience in our jobs and at times even in our lives. Everything is just OK.

Well all of us have goals in our lives. We want to leave a mark somewhere and somehow. That is not going to happen if we are just OK.

Edward de Bono says quite bluntly that “Schools waste two-thirds of the talent in society. The Universities sterilize the rest. Does that strike a chord with you? It sure does with me.

I have been blessed in many ways in my life and career. I was raised in a family that valued school and education, my maternal grandmother got a Masters Degree in the early 1900s, rather unheard of at the time. I had a wonderful childhood which led me to teaching and leadership positions with amazing mentors who inspired me. When I finally got into a career I had incredible men take time to counsel me and encourage me and push me. I was, and still am, a very lucky guy.

I have never been a particular fan of the status quo. That made me very impatient as an employee and let me to a much better career as a consultant where I could move from one business to another and thus never get bored. It led me back to teaching when we started Quest, Learning Centers in the early 1990’s and it is now moving me to Learning Without Scars with my daughter in developing and producing dynamic internet based learning programs.

To me it is all about putting information in front of people and then helping them implement change. Learning is a voyage, it has no end destination, it has no end point. But once you see the lights go on with an individual and watch the excitement grow, well to me that is a wonderful thing.

So, in 2018 I want you to consider thinking, not outside of the box, but outside of the triangle. Look at everything you do and see if you can make everything just a little bit better. Read more, think more, laugh more and have more fun. Don’t forget that all work and no play will make all of us very dull indeed.

Happy New Year to each and every one of you.

Out with the Old and In with the New.

The Time is NOW. If not now WHEN?