A Flawed Question

A Flawed Question

I encountered a thoughtful comparison in a recent magazine article. A futurist had written about how difficult it had become to explain one’s job to one’s parents. He wrote, “I think you have to treat the world like one of those drone flights. Drones are small and, although quite feisty, can be blown about by the wind. Getting one to where you want to go involves setting a course, yes, but also reacting to the local conditions as you fly. Sometimes you’ll be blown one way, and sometimes you’ll be blown another, and you’ll never really ever be directly on course” (Business Life, June 2017, 26).

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Toward a New Typology of Professional Learning

Toward a New Typology of Professional Learning

We've spent over 150 years layering a newer 'geography' atop that one by means of trains, cars (highways), and airplanes. We might call each one of these a typology, rather than a geography. They too constitute maps (rail maps, highway maps, flight maps), but these typologies can change as a result of connection (a concept that employs two companions, velocity and time). Allow me to provide an example. How far apart are London and Mumbai? In geographic terms, that would be 4,466 miles [7,187 km], but in typological terms, we'd have to say "that depends." For instance, it could be 10 hours by plane, or it could be 0.6 milliseconds by fibre-optic cable.

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On Imaginative Gridlock

On Imaginative Gridlock

More learning (data gathering and theoretical application of technique) will not, on its own, change the way people see things or how they perceive them. "There must first be a shift in the emotional processes of that institution [in our case, international education as a sector]. Imagination and curiosity are at root emotional, not cognitive, phenomena. In order to imagine the unimaginable, people must be able to separate themselves from the surrounding emotional processes before they can even begin to see (or hear) things differently. Without this understanding, it becomes impossible to realise how our learning can prevent us from learning more." (Friedman, A Failure of Nerve, 31). In the event that this doesn't make sense, consider Galileo, who offered naysayers an opportunity to utilise his telescope to observe the movement of cosmic bodies, to look for themselves. So many naysayers, in those earliest days of his efforts, refused to observe, even when offered the chance. Consider just how much longer it took for things to evolve because their "learning" got in the way of learning, of becoming something more.

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On Moral Potency
Leadership, Learning & Development Kevin Ruth Leadership, Learning & Development Kevin Ruth

On Moral Potency

In the seeming mess that is the contemporary world, leadership demands moral potency. Characterised as "a psychological state marked by an experienced sense of ownership over the moral aspects of one's environment, reinforced by efficacy beliefs in the capabilities to act to achieve moral purpose in that domain, and the courage to perform in the face of adversity and persevere through challenges (Sean T. Hannah & Bruce J. Avolio, "Moral Potency: Building the Capacity for Character-Based Leadership," 2010), this tripartite blend of moral courage, moral efficacy, and moral ownership serves as a compass, providing direction so that we can measure our lives accordingly. Yet it feels in increasingly short supply.

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Future-Back Strategy

Future-Back Strategy

Existing leadership development programmes exemplify the present-forward model of thinking, rather than future-back. We continue to prepare tomorrow’s leaders for today’s schools, with today’s thinking. We might even be so bold as to assert that these programmes prepare managers instead of leaders. That’s an issue.

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