Our theme has been Entreprenuerial Teaching. Entreprenuerial Learning. Entreprenuerial Organizing. Now, I realize the flow should be from teaching to learning to practice.
I wrote in the post "Glitch" about feeling, as solo contributor to this Blog, like "one hand clapping". Now, it occurs to me that we who educate for management are all this proverbial one hand when it comes to having an real impact on the quality of human-organized life.
The "other hand" is practice.
This is the hand our Entrepreneurial Learners got to play. Only they can do this.
Our next job is Entreprenuerial Research. We need to listen carefully for the sounds of impact. This means we have to invent ways to put our "ears" closer to the action. Certainly, to the action-takers, asking them what works, what doesn't, and helping each other figure out what makes the positive difference.
Imagine the sheer fun of teaching (and learning) at the pace and rhythm of both hands clapping out the beat of innovative performance.
Let's make this the beat of OBTC 2008. What do you think?
Friday, December 28, 2007
Glitch?
A colleague has e-mailed me that she has tried to post a comment to one of my posts, but could not do so. I have alerted our technical support person who will help me dissolve this glitch. Then, perhaps, I will not be "one hand clapping".
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
To Teach
There are terms that play such a central role in our lives that we feel no need to probe their meaning. For us, the term is teach.
What does it mean?
Houghton-Mifflin eReference furnishes quite a list. The main thrust is to "impart or provide knowledge and skill. This presumes that we teachers know something that our learners don't; accordingly, we give it to them. Now they have it.
Entreprenuerial teaching and entreprenuerial learning, our OBTC 08 theme, challenges this tidy transaction. I see it as less a give to take proposition and more a matter of take to give.
I use take in this latter sense: to be receptive to; or to be naturally attracted or fitted to. . When being entreprenueiral, we are seeking to cross and close gaps in knowledge, so we have less to impart and more to investigate. "Take to give" means teachiing is to exhibit a receptivity to new information, fresh theories, and uncommon situations. We learn in this stance in order to give others the benefit of our findings or realizations.
Teaching this way, I would encourage learners to share my attraction to knowing more about a given topic or subject, rather than to just tell them what I know. My job is to foster their attraction to same; then structure the lesson so that they explore it, create their own unique brand of knowledge about it, then give their interpretation as information for others to use to build on the attraction and enhance their own "take" on the question at hand.
Here is the definition of teach that seems to come closest to what I am espousing: To condition to a certain action or frame of mind.
What do you think about teaching so as to encourage an entreprenuerial frame of mind?
What does it mean?
Houghton-Mifflin eReference furnishes quite a list. The main thrust is to "impart or provide knowledge and skill. This presumes that we teachers know something that our learners don't; accordingly, we give it to them. Now they have it.
Entreprenuerial teaching and entreprenuerial learning, our OBTC 08 theme, challenges this tidy transaction. I see it as less a give to take proposition and more a matter of take to give.
I use take in this latter sense: to be receptive to; or to be naturally attracted or fitted to. . When being entreprenueiral, we are seeking to cross and close gaps in knowledge, so we have less to impart and more to investigate. "Take to give" means teachiing is to exhibit a receptivity to new information, fresh theories, and uncommon situations. We learn in this stance in order to give others the benefit of our findings or realizations.
Teaching this way, I would encourage learners to share my attraction to knowing more about a given topic or subject, rather than to just tell them what I know. My job is to foster their attraction to same; then structure the lesson so that they explore it, create their own unique brand of knowledge about it, then give their interpretation as information for others to use to build on the attraction and enhance their own "take" on the question at hand.
Here is the definition of teach that seems to come closest to what I am espousing: To condition to a certain action or frame of mind.
What do you think about teaching so as to encourage an entreprenuerial frame of mind?
Friday, December 14, 2007
Un
"Un".
It dawns my me that this is the prefix that sets enterprenerial behavior apart from practiced behavior.
How so?
As in uncertain, unknown, unreliable, unexplored.
Uncomfortable.
This last one is a true demarkation.
We who teach from deeply-grooved, well practiced syllabi and methods are comfortable.
So, it seems, are student comforted by common practices (quizzes, mid-term, final, term paper, presentations).
Yet, where is the powerful fresh learning for us and them?
In that imposing "Land of Un".
I go there rather often, bringing my students with me. There is a reward. It stops being Un and becomes another thing and place we know.
Are you one who visits Un as a teacher and scholar?
It dawns my me that this is the prefix that sets enterprenerial behavior apart from practiced behavior.
How so?
As in uncertain, unknown, unreliable, unexplored.
Uncomfortable.
This last one is a true demarkation.
We who teach from deeply-grooved, well practiced syllabi and methods are comfortable.
So, it seems, are student comforted by common practices (quizzes, mid-term, final, term paper, presentations).
Yet, where is the powerful fresh learning for us and them?
In that imposing "Land of Un".
I go there rather often, bringing my students with me. There is a reward. It stops being Un and becomes another thing and place we know.
Are you one who visits Un as a teacher and scholar?
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
My student's eyes
A moment ago, one of my seniors, a Management major, left my office after thanking me for a valuable semester of learning (couldn't hurt). I can still see her eyes. She believes that what she learned and how she learned it was valuable. She looked me squarely in the eyes, from across the table I have between me and my guests. "Thank you, Doc".
Why am I so restive about this? I did a hell of a good job on that course. Now it dawns on me why I cannot get those trusting, appreciative eyes out of my head.
She is on a COOP (cooperative education) at a huge insurance company here in Hartford, Connecticut. She will stay on part time this Spring, until she graduates. She is the sole person (even as a COOP) handling incoming retirement items that they had underestimated in volume and complexity. They are hiring a temp worker to pick up the slack of her moving from full to part time. She is supposed to train this person, even though she is traveling over the semester break.
This is one 21 year old woman with a good mind and good heart upon whose shoulders this vast, global financial services company is resting a big chunk of new business.
Ironically, I came to my office from a 1:1 meeting with my retirement advisor from her company. That line of business my student is supporting included what I count on for a smooth transition to life beyond this work. She looked at me with those eyes and said, "Doc, my supervisor doesn't even understand this new material. They planned on 20 a day. Yesterday, we had over 200. I can leave (xxxx) in May and go out to find other work. She has been there 20 years and I think she is on the verge of a nervous breakdown."
What I am I driving at here?
This good young person thanked me for a course of study that I am not at all sure prepares her for the complexities, uncertainties, and managerial vagaries of today, let alone five years from now.
Entrepreneurial teacher? I thought I was, but now?
Entrepreneurial learner? She took it upon herself to write up the processes that she had pretty much invented to manage the volume of those in comings, but has far less stake in how things turn out than her supervisor does.
What do you see in the eyes of your students?
Why am I so restive about this? I did a hell of a good job on that course. Now it dawns on me why I cannot get those trusting, appreciative eyes out of my head.
She is on a COOP (cooperative education) at a huge insurance company here in Hartford, Connecticut. She will stay on part time this Spring, until she graduates. She is the sole person (even as a COOP) handling incoming retirement items that they had underestimated in volume and complexity. They are hiring a temp worker to pick up the slack of her moving from full to part time. She is supposed to train this person, even though she is traveling over the semester break.
This is one 21 year old woman with a good mind and good heart upon whose shoulders this vast, global financial services company is resting a big chunk of new business.
Ironically, I came to my office from a 1:1 meeting with my retirement advisor from her company. That line of business my student is supporting included what I count on for a smooth transition to life beyond this work. She looked at me with those eyes and said, "Doc, my supervisor doesn't even understand this new material. They planned on 20 a day. Yesterday, we had over 200. I can leave (xxxx) in May and go out to find other work. She has been there 20 years and I think she is on the verge of a nervous breakdown."
What I am I driving at here?
This good young person thanked me for a course of study that I am not at all sure prepares her for the complexities, uncertainties, and managerial vagaries of today, let alone five years from now.
Entrepreneurial teacher? I thought I was, but now?
Entrepreneurial learner? She took it upon herself to write up the processes that she had pretty much invented to manage the volume of those in comings, but has far less stake in how things turn out than her supervisor does.
What do you see in the eyes of your students?
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Will they be able to sustain?
Yesterday, my wife Connie and I went on a charity house walking tour in the affluent Connecticut River town of Essex. Not only were the homes themselves representative of great (and comforting) wealth, the people thronging the tour seemed mainly our age (over 60), and well to do. My 2000 Subaru shared a lot with cars that cost more than we owe on our house (and will take another 6 years to pay). My point?
These are people who managed (I assume mainly in business) to demonstrate to others that they were highly valuable to enterprise. In exchange for what they could do with their talents for business, they made a lot of money. Further, I must assume that why they were valued so much is that they had learned how to sustain their businesses. To sustain is to To hold up: bear, carry, support. These folks were apparently able to do this.
I put this in the past tense. For there is tomorrow and a business future so much more challenging to our current learners than any of these prosperous Essexians could even imagine. We/they got ours. Much money is tucked away to fund many more charity house tours. While standing in line, I could not help overhear some talking about the private colleges they paid their kids' ways through, the big weddings, the second homes in Vermont or Cape Cod.
What about tomorrow?
Are we teaching so that our current business learners will be able to sustain the business organizations they are signed on to serve?
Is the content we proffer relevant to a globally competitive business future?
Are the ways we teach compatible with the the ways these students must go forth and learn their way into the future?
Will they be able to sustain business so well as to be enriched to the extent that one day, after 30 or so years, they will walk the streets of a still prosperous Essex, Connecticut, admiring the homes of our former business students?
I know, some reading this will be put off by the very notion that our job is to launch careers of the next wave of elites. I know I am, but, then again, I do hope one of my former students is able to give a gift to my school that creates scholarships and other opportunities for those whose families live far and away from that pricey corner of my state.
What do you think?
These are people who managed (I assume mainly in business) to demonstrate to others that they were highly valuable to enterprise. In exchange for what they could do with their talents for business, they made a lot of money. Further, I must assume that why they were valued so much is that they had learned how to sustain their businesses. To sustain is to To hold up: bear, carry, support. These folks were apparently able to do this.
I put this in the past tense. For there is tomorrow and a business future so much more challenging to our current learners than any of these prosperous Essexians could even imagine. We/they got ours. Much money is tucked away to fund many more charity house tours. While standing in line, I could not help overhear some talking about the private colleges they paid their kids' ways through, the big weddings, the second homes in Vermont or Cape Cod.
What about tomorrow?
Are we teaching so that our current business learners will be able to sustain the business organizations they are signed on to serve?
Is the content we proffer relevant to a globally competitive business future?
Are the ways we teach compatible with the the ways these students must go forth and learn their way into the future?
Will they be able to sustain business so well as to be enriched to the extent that one day, after 30 or so years, they will walk the streets of a still prosperous Essex, Connecticut, admiring the homes of our former business students?
I know, some reading this will be put off by the very notion that our job is to launch careers of the next wave of elites. I know I am, but, then again, I do hope one of my former students is able to give a gift to my school that creates scholarships and other opportunities for those whose families live far and away from that pricey corner of my state.
What do you think?
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Teaching without a Net
It was about 15 years ago that Steve Meisel (LaSalle University - Philly) and I led off an Eastern Academy of Management meeting with the theme; "Teaching without a Net". Do you remember the world back then? You Tube would have been a ranking, as in "Pick up that sweat sock, you dumb tube". Now, we have this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi4fzvQ6I-o) We said that managers were working without a net back then. Imagine how scary the view is from up on today's managerial high wire! Back then, the arena below was encircled as mainly a domestic marketplace. Today, the Globe. Yet, I told a highly respected management educator colleague in an e-mail this morning that I believe we professoral management eductors are the most protected and insulated of all who are in the galaxy of managerial leaders whom we serve. Why be entreprenuerial in our teaching? Take risks that our more radical views and learning venues will blow up in our faces, rather than "blow learner minds"? Hell, Steve and I were worng. We did have a safety net back then. We have it (somewhat) now. However, how long will they come to us for our wisdom, if we dish out pablum?
Monday, December 3, 2007
Drucker on our Theme
In his book The Age of Discontinuity, Peter Drucker gives us management educators a powerful rationale for entrepreneurial teaching. On The New Entrepreneur he writes:
"We are again entering an era in which emphasis will be on entrepreneurship. However, it will not be an entrepreneur of a century ago, that is, the ability of a single man to organize a business he himself could run, control, embrace. It will rather be the ability to create and direct an organization for the new. We need men and women who can build a new structure of entrepreneurship on the managerial foundation laid these last eighty years. History, it has often been observed, moves in a spiral; one returns to the preceding position, or the preceding problem, but on a higher level, and by a corkscrew-like path. In this fashion we are going to return to entrepreneurship on a a path that led out for a lower level, that of the single entrepreneur, to the manager, and now back, though upward, to entreprenuership again. The businessperson will have to acquire a number of new abilities, all of them entrepreneurial in nature, but all of them to be exercised in and through managerial organization."
Are we teaching so that learners develop entreprenuerial abilities, not as a side specialization, but at the core of our lessons?
"We are again entering an era in which emphasis will be on entrepreneurship. However, it will not be an entrepreneur of a century ago, that is, the ability of a single man to organize a business he himself could run, control, embrace. It will rather be the ability to create and direct an organization for the new. We need men and women who can build a new structure of entrepreneurship on the managerial foundation laid these last eighty years. History, it has often been observed, moves in a spiral; one returns to the preceding position, or the preceding problem, but on a higher level, and by a corkscrew-like path. In this fashion we are going to return to entrepreneurship on a a path that led out for a lower level, that of the single entrepreneur, to the manager, and now back, though upward, to entreprenuership again. The businessperson will have to acquire a number of new abilities, all of them entrepreneurial in nature, but all of them to be exercised in and through managerial organization."
Are we teaching so that learners develop entreprenuerial abilities, not as a side specialization, but at the core of our lessons?
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