What follows is fodder for a two-day leadership seminar I’m running in Memphis.  You can feel free to play along . . . or just show up toward the end of July to check-in on the results.

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Step 1: Explore the following links (aimlessly at first).

Step 2: Find something that would actually help you to address a work problem you are currently facing or expect to face next year. 

Step 3: Scroll to the bottom of this blog post and add a comment wherein you share what you found or suggest a new thought leader to whom we should pay attention. 

Step 3, version 2: Publicize the thing you found (along with the author) via social media.  If you’re using Twitter, tag @lausannelearn and #LLIChat. 

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Klingbrief Archives

Seth Godin’s Daily Blog Archives

Austin Kleon’s Blog

Fred Wilson’s Daily Blog Archives

Reshan Richards’ “Last Week I Learned” Blog Posts

Blending Leadership Newsletter Archive

I found this quotation in a book called The Alliance, which has served as a foundation for my thinking about the employee journey, from start to finish, in schools.  Consider sharing it with your teams in advance of conferences or meetings with people outside your school.

Knowledge isn’t valuable unless shared.  Every Monday, Reid [Hoffman’s] venture capital firm, Greylock Partners, distributes a  list of all the external people each partner is scheduled to meet with that week.  This allows the rest of the partners to trade notes and suggest questions that might generate useful insights or valuable connections.  Reid also asks the Greylock Consumer Team to regularly circulate their answers to the question, “Who was the most interesting person you talked to this week?” 

Recently, Aaron Pressman wrote about AT&T’s Workforce 2020 program for Fortune magazine.

I’ve been recommending the article to school leaders because I think it holds some nice lessons for those of us who think about, and execute, professional development in schools.

Via the 2020 program, AT&T is trying to retrain a huge swath of its 270,000 person workforce. If you think about your relationship with your landline at home, you will understand why a company in the rapidly changing telecommunications industry would be willing to take on such an enormous “upskilling” project. The shift to mobile, in particular, requires a skillset that many AT&T employees did not acquire during their formative educational years. There are some obvious upsides for corporate: being able to upskill continuously from the inside, instead of having to hire from the outside, could be a huge competitive advantage for AT&T.

Also, there are some obvious upsides for human beings. If Workforce 2020 succeeds, it will allow people to keep their jobs, to grow steadily, to move into new jobs within the same company, to benefit from change by changing. There’s a twist, of course, in that the training has to happen outside of work hours. People who want to keep their jobs will have to fit in the work, even if it’s inconvenient, even if they are trying to raise children or deal with other personal matters outside of work.  A sociologist quoted in Pressman’s article qualifies the arrangement as “impressive but not entirely happy.”

Technology, taken seriously, puts us in that position again and again, causing continuous reckonings. It can help us to do impressive things, though we won’t always be happy on our way there. The question is, how impressive do we want to be?

In schools, where our job isn’t to swap out landlines or move data into the cloud but to care for and empower young people, the answer should be “very.” Pressman’s AT&T article is important because it shows us a company that is drawing a line in the sand but making sure that the line is dashed. They want their people to be able to get to the other side.  I wonder — are school leaders drawing similar dotted lines as they consider how work in schools is organized and how we are preparing out workforce for its inevitable future?

Blending Leadership was published almost one year ago by the good people at Wiley Jossey-Bass. Since then, we’ve talked about the book all over the world, partnered with Global Online Academy and Laussane Learning Institute, appeared on almost a dozen podcasts, and even appeared on television. To celebrate the one year anniversary of the book, and all of the wonderful colleagues we have met as a result of our book’s success, Reshan and I are booking 5 digital meet-ups with leadership teams (3 or more people) to talk with them about their reactions to the book.  These sessions will last for about an hour, be conducted via Zoom, and must take place in June, July, or August.  First come, first served.  Contact me by adding a comment to this post or via twitter: @sjvalentine.  Thanks for the support and for making year one of Blending Leadership much better than we ever dreamed it could be.

 

While straightening up the house, I found a sign hanging in my daughter’s room.  This was one of those moments where I realized that her education is unfolding exactly as it should be — thanks to her teachers and school environment, she’s developing beliefs and mindsets that will be utterly foundational for her as she begins to add layers of skill, content, and insight.  And it sounds as if, should she pursue science, she might just be stubborn enough to succeed. “Never doubt a scientist because they never give up.”

That’s Georgia O’Keefe in a photo by Tony Vaccaro (shared via Twitter by the human MFA, Austin Kleon).

I’ve written about AVC before, and I’m pretty sure this is going to become a regular thing as I process my learning from a source that has been consistently useful and enlightening.

Here’s a quote I like from March 16, 2017:

I love it when companies quickly get into a market, start delivering a product or service, and then, over time iterate on their products and services to expand the market and their share of it. Contrast that with a company spending years getting something right before shipping their first product. I much prefer the ship quickly, get customers, and iterate and automate approach.

And here’s a post about Disqus (from March 22, 2017) wherein Fred tells a business growth story fueled by a company’s ability to adapt more quickly than its bigger competitors. Additionally, he explains, in pure shorthand of course, that he invested in Disqus when he finally understood it properly: it was “a network, not a utility.”

Fred’s blog, I’m learning, is telling a consistent story as that story unfolds — i.e., what it means to live and work (and thrive) in a networked age.

A few weeks ago, I subscribed to Fred Wilson’s daily feed, automating a daily email from Fred.
Immediately after setting this daily email in motion, I did what I always do after starting a new attentional habit, that is, a habit that will involve me turning my attention regularly to a new form of media or activity — I scheduled a “stick test.”

A stick test is something I made up.  It is unscientific and possibly unreliable.  But my attention (like your attention) is one of my greatest resources, so I like to be sure I’m not giving it out unthinkingly.  In a stick test, I spend 15 minutes thinking about a new product or service or program, and I ask myself some simple questions: now that some time has passed with this product or service or program, what sticks with me?  Am I happy with what sticks with me?  Is the time I’m spending with this product or service or program adding joy or knowledge or fun or health to my life?

If the answer to most of those questions is yes — in short, if good stuff is sticking with me — then I renew the habit.  If the answer is too often no, then I unsubscribe from the habit.

To cut to the chase, then, I am most definitely sticking with Fred Wilson’s daily email.  Even though we live in two very different worlds (me, education; him, venture capital) here’s what surfaced when I put his writing to the stick test:

Fred is a ridiculously clear thinker and writer, and he has made me want to be more clear in my own communication.  It’s helpful to have a near-daily model for which to strive.

His writing often reflects his values (time and time again you see him literally putting his money where his values are), which reminds me of the importance of (a) having values (b) using my values to guide my decisions, and (c) telling stories about how my values and decisions lead to action and change in my organization and, on really good days, in the world.

He taught me the definition of a PBC (Public Benefit Corporation), which is now something I aspire to build or support.  Here’s a statement from Kickstarter that he shared when he discussed PBCs.

He has taught me about the powerful things that happen when user generated content is supported and enabled:

The UGC content on SoundCloud is not just your daughter’s high school friends making music in their bedroom (which is how many of the current top artists started out). It is DJ mixes, mixtapes, remixes, top artists like Kanye dropping music quickly and easily . . . emerging artists like Chance who are unsigned and have chosen to stay independent, podcasts, and a lot more. It is the most eclectic, interesting, and vibrant streaming music service in the world.

(Read that last quotation carefully.  It’s a blueprint for how and why to build a platform devoted to creativity.)

He has reminded me of the importance of continuos feedback for organizations.  In fact, I shared his 2011 post with two separate leadership teams before meetings at which we planned to discuss our own evaluation processes. 

And last, and probably most important, his blog posts have led to some great conversations with some of my colleagues, who are also now receiving and reading Fred’s emails each day.

Subscribe to Fred Wilson’s blog posts here and let me know if they pass your stick test.