To impel or not to impel, that is the teaching question

im·pel (ĭm-pĕl)tr.v. im·pelled, im·pel·ling, im·pels
1. To urge to action through moral pressure; drive: I was impelled by events to take a stand.

2. To drive forward; propel.

im·pel·ler (ĭm-pĕlər)

n.
1. One that impels, as a rotating device used to force a fluid in a desired direction under pressure.

2. A rotor or rotor blade.

These two definitions of impell and impeller from my American Heritage e-dictionary came to mind this morning as I went over the accounts my OB learners made of their knowledge gains in the next to the last unit of the course.

There are 60 of them. Most will graduate this month or next December. Arriving in what they call the "real world", how fast and well will they be able to learn to do their part in keeping a business in business?

This question brough "impelling" to mind. I believe they will have to learn at "entreprenerial speeds". How fast is this? Faster, by far, than the slow, plodding rate at which we can lead them through familiar material, slowly so they may commit the correct answers to rote memory.

Who teaches this pedantically?

The classroom I use for OB is filled later in the day by a teacher who stands at the white board, rarely looking at the near comotose students, talking, touching the numbers, talking, touching the numbers.....................Sorry, I feel into a trance.

No, sirs and madams, business happens in sprints, marathons, dashes, sometimes all three ways of running happening at the same time in a business unit.

My worry is that I have not yet found enough ways to impell (the first definition) learners to greatly pick up the pace of the attention they give to understanding humans behaving as organizations. I feel the moral pressure I give to myself to adopt, adapt, or invent new teaching practices that breed learning practices that open and fill knowledge gaps as quickly as must a business practitioner out there trying to keep a plant in China producing and sending product to his US distribution center at a rate and cost that still justifies the decision his company once made to close the "costlier" US plant. This, by the way, was my guest this week in the OB course - a '94 grad whose is VP-Sales for a company whose once stable ow price-point has started to jiggle like the needle on a seimic gague. China's labor costs are rising as is the cost of fueling the container ships for their 15 day run to California. There is no chapter in his company's history book with corrective steps to memorize. Tom is learning with his sales team what to do next with little hope that we they do will still that price needle. In the meantime, his business to business customers, mostly in healthcare, are flooding his voice and e-mail.

When we all say goodbye this Tuesday, and Mgt 426 is no more, I will look at each of those very fine yound men and women and try to gague their learning speeds.

Impell or not to impell. There is no question in my mind. Teach to impell and hurry up learning to do it better.