Teachers and Mentors

Seth Godin has a great blog post  about two different types of teaching- one that’s all about facts and procedures, and one that’s more about learning to see and solve interesting problems.  This caught my attention, because I’ve been having alot of conversations lately with folks about what makes a good teacher, and the difference between “teaching” and being a mentor.

In the medical profession, folks graduate from medical school, but they are not yet ready to go out and practice medicine- they need to do some more formal training- a residency- usually in some sort of specialty.  (Even family practice is a specialty.)  Yet in residency, the training and additional education young doctors need before they can practice on their own comes in two forms.  One is specialized reading- sometimes the reading is assigned, but most of the time, it is assumed you will use your “educational money” and buy the specialty text books you’ll need, not only as a resident but in practice, when you come up against something you might not have seen before.  The second is on the job practice, where you see patients but are supervised by another “attending” physician, who is supposed to help you learn and guide you, like a mentor.  Not all doctors teaching residents are good at imparting the art of their practice to others, as well as the base knowledge required to do the job.  Practicing medicine and teaching it are two different things, and not everyone is good at both.

Similarly, many teachers went into teaching because they love learning.  They loved being in school themselves.  They loved having a guiding path through all the cool stuff there is to know, and somewhere along the way, decided they wanted to do this themselves.  They mastered the whole school process, start to finish. They almost have a nostalgia for school- it is a precious place to them.   But the problem is often that the best students don’t always make the best teachers.

Teaching is a different skill set from learning.  While teaching and learning are clearly complimentary, they are not the same thing.  My dad, for example, was a brilliant engineer, and fantastic at math.  Yet when he tried to help me with calculus homework, I often ended up frustrated and in tears.  For me, the conflict arose because he largely couldn’t remember what it was like not to know all this math, and couldn’t explain it in a way a neophyte would understand- what the Heath Brothers call “The Curse of Knowledge” in their great book, Made to Stick. I think many teachers suffer from this problem as well-they love their subject matter and understand it so well that they have a hard time remembering what it was like not to know.

The skill of being able to be a guide through complicated material, all while making it an exciting and engaging process is a rare skill.  While I think there are methods and checklists and other tools people can use to help make what they know accessible to others, great teaching is an art form.  It requires not only understanding the subject area, but understanding it well enough and liking it enough that you can make it exciting for almost anyone.  It requires a bit of stage presence, improv skills, and being able to communicate with the students so you know what they understand and what they don’t.  Teaching at its best, is an interactive experience between teacher and student. (This is also why going to high school or college just by watching a bunch of DVD’s is not equivalent to being enrolled in a real school with real classrooms, but I digress.)

Sometimes the best teachers are people who are less interested in the one true path, but recognize there are many individual ways to get to the same goal.  They are good mentors, guides and parents.  They are interested in someone else’s success, and they get joy in seeing others succeed, and don’t worry that someone else may be smarter than they are- in fact, the best teachers are often looking for those smarter than themselves, so they can continue learning and growing themselves.

The essence of a great teacher involves being passionate about your subject area, and being a fantastic communicator, who can turn that love of knowledge into a spark of inspiration and curiosity in others.  It’s the reason why I think all teachers should learn a bit about marketing and the way people turn commercial ideas into what Seth Godin would call “an idea virus” that spreads on its own.  Using the tools the Heath Brothers talk about in Made to Stick, for example, can help anybody make their ideas and communications more effective and more memorable, by essentially hacking what our brain natively finds most interesting.  This can help business people end “death by powerpoint” presentations, but it can just as easily make you a better writer, a better teacher, and a better communicator across the board.

In the end, good teaching requires that people are personally invested in the process and look on it as mentoring as well as a delivery of knowledge vehicle.  The teacher might be driving the bus, but the bus can be an old school bus, a greyhound, a tricked out  tour bus, a local or express.  The bus comes in many sizes, varieties and with different amenities.  But unless the bus is responsive to the needs of the passengers, and can get them to where they need to be, it’s not very useful.  The driver, like a good teacher, needs to be aware of the road, the path, and the needs of the passengers in order to do the best job possible.

We need to make sure all of our teachers- at every level, from elementary through graduate school, training and beyond- understand not only how to make lesson plans, but how to meet the needs of kids in their classrooms.  And sometimes, it’s going to require “marketing” that science lesson, history or math to a group of reluctant learners, to get them on the right road in the long run.

Are you a good teacher?  What makes a good teacher to you?  Is it a skill or an art or a mixture of both?

Tags: education, heath brothers, made to stick, mentors, seth godin, teaching

Judging Risk

I’ve been thinking about risk, and how we make the decision about the cost/benefit of our actions.

Having gone to law school, I think and act like a lawyer in much of my life, and that can drive some people crazy.  You think you’re asking a simple question, and I give you a balanced assessment, and then let you choose the path you want to take.  Yes, people want to be told what to do.  Sometimes the path forward is crystal clear and being definitive is easy. Other times, multiple paths are available, but each has its own upsides and downsides, and as long as you are prepared for the downsides, each path is viable, reasonable and worth pursuing.

Sometimes, folks think I am risk adverse.  The opposite is actually true.  I’m happy to take chances.  I’m happy to roll the dice.  But when I do take a risk, I will fully admit I’ve almost always considered the consequences first.  I’m risk aware.  I’m not afraid, but instead, I realize that there’s always downstream rewards and potential consequences  for choices you make, and I go into situations aware of as many of those as I can be.

Seth Godin has been talking about this sort of thing recently, in his posts on Surfing as a New Career and Are You An Elite? where its clear that taking chances is no longer optional but required.  The point, of course, is to take risks, and not spend too much time in the worry or flailing stages, and instead get on to the doing and shipping stages of a project.  You have to figure out when it’s a good time to bet the farm, and when it’s a good time to diversify your holdings, so to speak.  I’ll always be surprised, from time to time, when the upside far exceeds my expectations, or circumstances make the downside a little more painful that we predicted.  But 9 times out of 10, results come within spec.

So while I always want to know a chunk of the risks associated with, say, a new medication or surgery, I understand the math enough to know when to play the odds.  Sometimes, people will focus on a quoted risk of 5% of extreme downside, ie. death, dismemberment, etc. and decide not to do something.  But if you understand the math, often you find that the real attributable risk to you is so far below that, spending time worrying about it is not even worth the energy to consider the question in the first place.

Knowing and acknowledging risk can make some people to afraid to act.  For me, it emboldens me to take the jump.  I’m an optimist, and once I know what I’m facing, I take the challenge head on, and have confidence I can win.  Even with odds stacked against me, I’d rather swing for the fences than never try at all.

We all know that “no good battle plan survives contact with the enemy”, which means we’re always going to have to improvise and tweek things along the way.  There’s always something that changes, but by acknowledging that upfront, and having thought the plan through at the outset, improv off the planned path is so much easier- you rarely get totally lost in the rough with no map out.

Planning and thinking something through isn’t everyone’s style.  It can seem plodding from time to time.  It can seem boring.  But I promise it’s rarely wasted time.  Just like a business plan or a book proposal lays out the pathway for the finished product, thinking things through and acknowledging risk up front makes all the flying by the seat of your pants less panic inducing.  However, if you love panic and adrenalin, by all means, please ignore this post and have a great day.

Tags: advice, attorney, balance, chris penn, decisions, risk, seth godin

Filling Niches

One of my favorite concepts from all of those years studying biology was the concept of the niche. An organism or creature finds a spot where the competition isn’t too intense, and raw materials they can work with, and decides to set up shop. They work with their environment and find a place where they can be successful, or they die out. Sometimes the environment around them changes, and the creature needs to adapt or perish.

The same thing is true for businesses, economics, families,you name it- as it’s true for bacteria or lemurs. If you find a niche and can exploit it to your advantage, you have a strategy for success that will carry you far. That is essentially the whole basis for great books like “Blue Ocean Strategy” (Amazon Link) that talk about finding markets where the competition isn’t fierce, or just isn’t there yet- you have the ability to own the niche.

One way businesses achieve this is by creating their own ecosystems.  Apple is brilliant at this, with iTunes and the App Store- it has created a whole economy that it owns.  It lets others play in the sandbox, helping diversify the entire ecosystem, making it more robust, and letting others compete to fill in the niches of best song, or best movie or best work productivity App, all the while taking a percentage, like an agent, as owner of the ecosystem or world.  Amazon has done this, as has Ebay.  All of these ecosystems compete at points of overlap- like a town encroaching on an animal’s habitat- but for large swaths of the ecosystem, there is less competition and life goes on pretty happily.

Finding your niche is difficult for a lot of folks, in part, because it starts with the very hard question of who YOU are, what you do best, and what you love to do.  Sometimes, we can fill a niche because we are perfectly suited for a job that’s available, but if it doesn’t make you thrilled or excited to go to work every day, how are you really going to have the heart required to maximize the opportunity day after day?

Another spot of friction is when you know your talents and strengths, how do you communicate those to others is a short, coherent, easy to grasp way so they can help you find a niche that works?  Some people refer to this as a lobby or elevator pitch- what is your tag line that inspires other people to be interested in you and hire you?

For example, on Twitter, I am largely known as LD Podcast, for the podcast I’ve done about learning and learning disabilities.  But the important part there is really the Learning part- that transcends people struggling in school or work with things like dyslexia and ADHD.  I feel I’m all about learning and teaching, and trying to find the most effective ways to make your message clear.  I read business books and marketing books because these fields are all about making messages clear in order to get someone to buy something.  I take all these ideas and concepts and apply them to help businesses, medical education, and other clients/niche owners to make their ideas and talents more easily understood.  When you understand, quickly, what someone or some business is about, you can quickly decide whether you need that service, and you can convey that information easily to others- making the idea a virus, as Seth Godin would say.  The principals are the same whether we’re talking math facts for middle school kids or marketing plans for adults or social media tools-  you’ve got to be able to make a case and sell your ideas for anyone else to understand them and do anything with them.  And that, in a nutshell, is about good, precise communication.

Which brings us back to science.  In science and technical writing, precision is really important.  I’ve spent hours struggling over a sentence or two in an abstract, trying to get the exact language as concise and accurate as possible.  Likewise, in law school, your ability to win a case or argument depends on how you use language to communicate your client’s position to another, and use supporting information to convince the decision maker you are correct.  In business and marketing, you have to do the same thing- use language to convince someone your product or service solves a need or problem- maybe even one they didn’t know they had. (Just ask Ron Popiel, or read about him in Malcolm Gladwell’s “What The Dog Saw“.)

In the end, it’s all about finding your unique niche where you can thrive.  You need enough resources (which includes money and customers for business, often money and students for education) to make the most of the niche, and you have to be constantly willing to adapt and change with the environment.  If you can’t adapt and evolve, you will likely suffer, decline, and possible even go extinct, or at least out of business.

It’s easier said than done of course.  But the process starts and ends with you, not with the shiny new objects or social media tools or anything else.  I’d love to be able to say Get Twitter and life will be perfect, but that’s not true.  Like monkeys figuring out to poke a stick in a log to get food, it’s all about how you use that tool to its greatest effect that will bring you success, and it often involves experimentation, failure, and reinvention time after time.

I know my life is one great experiment.  I think I know something, and that knowledge gets challenged.  I can stick to my guns, or adapt to the new conditions.  I have to apply what I know.  In reading The Checklist Manifesto- How to get Things Right, they talk about two distinct kinds of mistakes we make all the time.  There are errors we make of ignorance- we don’t know what we don’t know- and then there are egregious errors-  when we know the right thing to do, but we just can’t seem to execute as we’re supposed to, leading to disaster.

For example, I know easily 20 different diet plan that promise to help me lose weight, but it’s not a lack of knowledge, it’s the consistent implementation over time that causes trip-ups.  Part of it is programming the environment, and making doing the right thing easier than doing the self-destructive or ignorant or convenient thing.  Part of it is keeping simple rules forefront in your mind, and avoiding the infinite shades of gray.

Success will be measured by how well you can adapt to the “rules” or metrics of your environment, or control the environment to your advantage. It’s how well you can fill your social, cultural or economic niche.

And that’s why studying biology and evolution is essential to everyone.  Period.  Know your niche and optimize it.

Tags: biological basis of business, business, education, finding your niche, ideas, malcolm gladwell, marketing, niche, seth godin, what the dog saw

The Digital Generation Gap

Last week, the Archer Group in Wilmington held a Trust Summit at duPont’s Theater N, featuring presentations by Mitch Joel, Julien Smith and Chris Brogan, some of my favorite people ever.  One of the stories Mitch told keeps coming to mind again and again.  It can best be summed up by saying “There’s no going back, only moving forward.”  As businesses are coming to terms with what digital communications channels are doing to business, we have to keep in mind that we can’t rewind time back to what we’re used to and comfortable with-  times have changed and there’s simply no going back.

To this point, I”m reading a great book by the vastly under-appreciated Seymour Papert entitled The Connected Family: Bridging the Digital Generation Gap.   It seems to me  that the phrase “Digital Generation Gap” describes  the core problem businesses are having these days- the digital generation gap and its disruption of business as usual is causing all sorts of problems and pain.

People are simple creatures at heart.  We are built to try to make our lives as easy and simple as possible.  Occam’s razor rules the day.  We want what we want when we want it.  We respond to positive reinforcement, and stop doing the stuff that’s difficult, unless we see a light at the end of the tunnel, and know the path will yield results.  We can get this wrong from time to time, of course, but the more assurance we have of success up front, the more patient we’re willing to be.

Take the case of the flashing twelve on the VCR, or get used to a new cell phone.  These are tasks that can be done or ignored in large part, if you can use work arounds, but in each case, the benefit of getting the small task done makes other things possible.  Program the time on the VCR or DVD player, and you can record shows when you’re not home.  Get used to the software of your new phone, and you can take advantage of more features.  Children and young people have grown up in a world where they readily adapt to the rules and structure of these new systems, but I would bet most families have some members who have instead decided technology is just too complicated for them and it’s easier to maintain the old ways, until they can no longer avoid it.

My mother in law, for example, wanted CD’s for Christmas, and I bought her an ipod touch instead.  She can have all her music available all the time now, and no need to worry about carrying around all those CD’s, but she still worries that she can somehow break it or otherwise make a mistake.  She teaches classes online, but computers seem complicated, they seem to break for no rational reason (yes, she is on an old Windows machine) and they’ve made her feel silly and dumb, and so she resists doing anything new.  She can see the advantages, but the thought of learning yet another new way to do things doesn’t excite her as much as scare her from trying. Trying to convince businesses to try a social media strategy for building more business feels the same way.  What’s worked in the past feels comfortable, and while they may have gradually adapted to things like email marketing, asking them to try something like Facebook or Twitter, and the whole method of engagement they’ve been using gets turned on its head- it’s scary, and there’s no guarantees that it will be successful for them, regardless of the number of case studies coming out.

We have a whole generation of people in management and decision making authority who see the world around them changing, with no real stability in sight.  They’ve been through the betamax to VCR changes.  They’ve gotten rid of all their old 8-tracks and cassettes and adopted CD’s and maybe even digital music and photography.  But they worry that what’s great today is going to be outmoded or out of fashion tomorrow, just when they finally feel comfortable with what they know and are doing.  And they’re right- things will continue to change.  The flood water is rising, and while you might be waiting for the river to crest and recede, I think we all have to get in a boat and start paddling together, because staying still isn’t the answer- you’ll drown and fall farther behind.

I’ve grown up with computers changing rapidly around me, and my kids are even more used to living in a rapidly evolving world than I am.  They still are more eager to experiment and take risks than I am.  I keep hoping to develop some sort of flow and pattern to my work to become more efficient, but that is coming more and more from adaptation than stagnation.  I need those reminders from time to time that just because I always “do it this way” does not mean there’s not a better and faster way to do it coming up tomorrow.  This sense of constant change is definitely anxiety-provoking, but denial isn’t helping.  Like sharks, we need to keep swimming (and experimenting) to stay alive.

The other part of the Digital Generation Gap that causes problems is the sense of community that grows through hazing.  There aren’t any more sure things and guarantees like there used to be- if you followed the rules, you would get rewarded later on- pain first, profit second. (Seth Godin discusses this brilliantly in Linchpin.)  We want people to do it the way we had to, so it’s hard and they appreciate the journey we had to go through, we tell ourselves.  Yet I never took any of the “pain from the depression” stories my grandparents told very seriously, and their struggle didn’t help me all that much- just because they couldn’t call their neighbors or watch TV, what did that mean to me as a child or young adult?  Somehow if I didn’t use the phone, I would have better moral fiber?  I didn’t believe it then, and I know my kids don’t believe it now when I tell them similar stories about my childhood.

Someone asked me recently if the podcasts we were doing for medical resident education was providing them “cliff notes” to knowledge.  Is it letting them off easy?  Why should it be any easier for them than it was for us?  In the end, I am more concerned that my doctor knows the right thing to do and why than how they learned it, but I also understand there’s a richness of experience that comes not from just reading a review of a book, but actually reading the whole thing.  I think the short cuts, if you want to call them that, are really about making the on-ramps to knowledge and experience easier, so you have time (hopefully) to reflect and gain deeper knowledge once you are engaged with the possibilities.

And as I write those words, I think about how this is basically the model for marketing and advertising.  We try to gain people’s attention and tease them with the prospect of our product or service, to let them see how our offering solves problems or makes their life easier, not more difficult.  We all want short cuts and friendly user experiences, so people can get to the heart of the matter- whether that’s advancing knowledge, buying a product, engaging our experience and expertise for money.  We can’t all be expert at everything, so we look for short cuts and anything that will ease our journey.  No one has to reinvent the wheel from scratch- we start out by sitting on a mountain of knowledge,  and our job is to contribute to that as best we can for our kids.

We may all carry the pain of our hazing- of the problems and experiences that made us the people we are today, but that’s no reason to make sure everyone else has to experience the same thing over and over again, ad infinitum.  We’ll close the digital generation gap in part by remembering how fun it can be to try something new, make mistakes and get on with it.  We learn most by experimenting, and more and more of life requires us to be adaptive rather than stagnant.  It doesn’t always mean it will be cheap.  It doesn’t guarantee success.  There’s risk involved.  But in the end, we learn more by moving forward than standing still, hoping it will stop raining.

(And don’t forget to check out Chip and Dan Heath’s new book about change, called Switch.  One of the best reads so far this year.)

Tags: adaptation, archer group, change, chris brogan, digital generation gap, experimenting, julien smith, linchpin, seth godin, Seymour Papert, six pixels of separation, social media, switch, trust agents

Don’t Underestimate Surprise and Delight as a Strategy

I have been a fan of Seth Godin’s for a long time. I read his blogs, buy his books, and frequently recommend them to friends. (In fact, we celebrated my birthday this year at Max Brenner’s restaurant, in part due to reading about Max in Seth’s books.) So when Seth told readers on his blog that they could get an early copy of his book by making a donation to the Acumen Fund, I eagerly signed up.

I really enjoyed Linchpin, and you can see my earlier reviews here. I would love to sit down with Seth and discuss his Lizard Brain concept further, taking into account the development of the brain as we go from kids to adults and how that process may impact creativity. But despite any nitpicking I might do on neurology, it brought home the point that you have the best chance to succeed when you are involved and engaged in your work.

When I came home today from a client meeting where being engaged and responsive had made a big impact, I was surprised to see a package by my door. Inside was another copy of Linchpin with a note from Seth that read :

“Generosity is a key piece of being an artist. It gives each of us a chance to connect, to make a difference and to do indispensable work. You were generous enough to make a donation to the Acumen Fund, an organization that focuses on trade, not aid, building communities that work because each member contributes more than they get. A few weeks ago, I sent you a preview copy of Linchpin, as promised. Now, in recognition of your generosity, I’m giving you another. I hope you’ll share this one with someone you care about.”

What a lovely surprise! I’m speaking to a group next week, and I’m going to make sure someone in the audience gets this gift, along with the hope they will pay it forward as well in the future.

I know Seth is a fantastic marketer, and this is an additional chance to help the word spread about his book. Since I found myself quoting the book frequently after reading it, I’m doing a pretty good job of that already. But this gives me an additional chance to share Seth’s words with others, and it was a terrific and thoughtful gift to find on my doorstep. It was like finding a handwritten note, that chocolate on the pillowcase, the extra secret surprise than reinforces the concept of getting through the process of giving.

I know I always find the more I give and help others, the more I seem to get in return. The return comes in many forms, but whether it’s volunteering or taking a moment to help a friend, or doing great work with a client, I always seem to end up
feeling that everything I put into a project, I get at least that much, if not more, out on the other side. Even in cases where things don’t work out so well, I always find there’s often a lesson I needed to learn in the process.

The bottom line here is that I’m already a huge Seth fan. He doesn’t need to “re-sell” me, really. I’m already happily playing on his team, so to speak. But this gesture reinforces the message that Seth not only stands behind his work, but he wants to make it easy to share with others who may not be fans (yet) the same way I am. And it’s another lesson to me that these small moments of surprise can be touching- moments of delight that work on many levels, including encouraging me to invest in any of Seth’s future projects. Not because of any “What’s in it for me?” reason, but because he always seems to find a way to surprise and delight me, and I’ve always been thrilled by anything I’ve done on his recommendation. I always learn something from Seth, or am reminded of things that are important that I may have put on the back shelf. So I’ll continue to invest in Seth, because he’s never afraid on investing in his audience and fans.

Tags: acumen fund, delight, fans, linchpin, marketing, seth godin, sharing, surprise