Who Moved My Cheese-Spencer Johnson

Start With Why-Simon Sinek

Brave Heads

Wayfinding Leadership

Learner Centred Innovation- Foreword and Chapter 1

Disobedient Teaching Welby Ings

Timeless Learning

The Power of Positive Deviance

A Deliberately Developmental Organisation

Thank You for Being Late Thomas L Friedman

Community Capacity Building

Empower

UnCommon Learning

Designing Your Impossible Future: Why You Need One and How to Do It

Article


“extraordinary result...or transformational goal”. 

An Impossible Future (IF) goal looks more like this:

•    Meet the needs of serious woodworkers and gardeners as one of the leading mail-order and retail suppliers of woodworking tools, gardening tools and cabinet hardware (Leonard Lee, Lee Valley Tools);
•    Better Leaders. Better World (Leadership coach Robert Hargrove);
•    A computer on every desk and in every home (Bill Gates).


You can construct a small, safe, predictable future or something more meaningful and challenging. Your Impossible Future will most likely have a longer time frame, and one Impossible Future can lead to another.

Longer time frame


8 Steps to Designing Your Impossible Future

1.    Start by taking stock of your current reality, but with a twist.
Instead of focusing on what is wrong or missing, look for the best of what is now. Identify your current strengths. Reflect on your career high points, positive experiences and accomplishments. Find similarities, themes and lessons across your positive experiences.  What is working well for you?  What do you want to keep?  Describe in detail your positive core.
Personal- empowering people to take control, growing leaders, leading professional learning, leading and motivating for change, developing collaborative teams, connecting with and motivating teenagers,
Team- commitment to the success of the school, diversity of experience and interests and backgrounds, passion for learning, passion for the community we will be working with, experience wealthy, professional capital, energy young, sense of caring and recognition of peoples needs as individuals, growth as a culturally responsive team, acknowledge that we don't know it all, 

2.    Become an explorer into your future.
With your positive attributes and strengths in mind, imagine your ideal future in broad strokes. Generate images of possibilities.  What would someone who respects and loves you want for your future?  How would you express your highest and best self? If there were no obstacles, what could you accomplish that could make a positive difference for you and your community? 
Personal- Be a challenger, Passion for looking at existing patterns and challenging them
Team- Creating a team and a school that challenges existing notions of 'good/best practice' education and  particularly schools and models some. 
As a collective leadership team what do we want to be seen as? capacity builders, cohesive, empowerment of others, collective decision making

3.    Paint a detailed picture
Now add plenty of detail to your future. Define it as clearly as if you were standing in your Impossible Future now. Use present tense language. What does it look like exactly? Where are you? Who is there? What are they saying about you? What are you doing? How are you feeling?  Make it real in your mind.  Remember, you are forming the image of your future toward which you are going to grow.

4.    Pay attention to the language you use.
Scientists today recognize that how we use language creates our social reality. Optimistic, possibility-generating language drives people to take action in a positive direction far more than negative, critical, cautionary approaches.  

5.    Declare your future to others.
It is important to give voice and intention to your future. You need to tell people where you want to go and what difference you want to make. Making your goals public will increase your commitment. As well, if people know where you are going, they just might help you. 

6.    Look for aspects of your Impossible Future that you are already living.
If you have a clear vision of where you want to go, your brain will unconsciously look for opportunities to move toward that vision. Doors will open that you did not see before.  It is likely that you have already started on the path toward your future.  It will give you confidence if you are able to notice what progress you are making now.

7.    Develop a broad action plan but leave room for experimentation.
Turn your Impossible Future into a plan with stepping stones, but look for opportunities to experiment. The focus is to expand your capabilities and learn new things.  This will mean looking at your beliefs and assumptions, getting help from others to see your blind spots, and trying new ways of tackling obstacles. 

8.    Stay flexible, persevere and celebrate.
Impossible Futures, like Rome, are not built in a day.  Keep faith when the going gets tough and celebrate successes both large and small. This will help calm your doubting self and your inner critic.  

An Impossible Future is a Greater Goal That Connects Higher Purpose and High Performance

Article


an Impossible Future is 

• the derivative of leadership that is authentic and passionate
• a greater goal that connects everyone in the organisation to a higher purpose and to higher performance.

An Impossible Future is a whole new possibility.

What is your Impossible Future and how will it change the world?

Tribes- Seth Goodin

Tribes-Seth Goodin

Main Ideas:

"A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate."

This really tells us what a tribe is, important is that they need to be able to communicate. Without communication it is just a group.

"By challenging the status quo, a cadre of heretics is discovering that one person, just one, can make a huge difference."

"Heretics are the new leaders. The ones who challenge the status quo, who get out in front of their tribes, who create movements."

People who take chances.

"...there’s a difference between telling people what to do and inciting a movement. The movement happens when people talk to one another, when ideas spread within the community, and most of all, when peer support leads people to do what they always knew was the right thing."

With only one person involved, a movement is just an idea.

"A passionate mission, not just a common idea."

"Senator Bill Bradley defines a movement as having three elements:

1. A narrative that tells a story about who we are and the future we're trying to build.
2. A connection between and among the leader and the tribe.
3. Something to do - the fewer limits the better.

Too often organisations fail to do anything but the third."

"Three steps; motivate, connect, leverage."

"They switched for the journey. They wanted to be a part of someone that mattered."

"Too many organisations care about numbers, not fans. They care about hits or turnstile clicks or media mentions. What they're missing is the depth of commitment and interconnection connection that true fans deliver."

Even in your own life you can get caught up with numbers.

"What people are afraid of isn't failure. It's blame. Criticism."

"We hesitate to create new innovative movies, launch new human resource initiatives,designs menu that makes diners take notice, or give an audacious sermon because we're worried, deep down, that someone will hate us and call us on it."

We are always telling the kids that making mistakes is how we learn, but the majority of teachers are afraid of making mistakes ourselves.

"Great leaders focus on the tribe and only the tribe"

Stop worrying about others things outside of your control and focus on those in front of you.

"Leading someone to giving up their own world view and embracing yours isn't easy and it's not always comfortable."

"Not all leadership involves getting in the face of the tribe. It takes just as much effort to successfully get out of the way."

"The safest thing you can do feels risky, and the riskiest thing you can do is play it safe."

"Tribes are increasingly voluntary. No one is forced to work for your firm or attend our services. People have a choice of which music to listen to and which movies to watch... So great leaders don't try to please everyone. Great leaders don't water down their message in order to make the tribe a bit bigger. Instead they realise that a motivated, connected tribe in the midst of a movement is far more powerful than a larger group could ever be."

"The new thing is rarely as good as the old thing was. If you need the alternative to be better than the status quo from the very start, you'll never begin."

Things take time to build up, don't expect too much too soon.

"Tearing down others is never as helpful to a movement as building your followers up."

"The secret of leadership is simple: do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow."

"The elements of leadership:

• Leaders challenge the status quo
• Leaders create a culture around their goal and involve others in that culture.
• Leaders have an extraordinary amount of curiosity about the world they're trying to change.
• Leaders use charisma (in a variety of forms) to attract and motivate followers.
• Leaders communicate their vision of the future.
• Leaders commit to a vision and make decisions based on that commitment.
• Leaders connect their followers to one another."

Great basic summary of leadership.

"Remarkable visions and genuine insight are always met with resistance."

Have to expect and work through and/or ignore resistance

How it Relates to Haeata- Learners- Community

The ultimate legacy will be if we can create something that isn’t dependent on us and doesn't change without us guiding it. Do people really buy into the vision. Got to hook them in with narrative and connections.

Incite, excite

Do what’s right for the kids in front of us on Day 1 and others will come.

A good summary of leadership to aspire to.

How it Relates to Haeata Values

Alofa-

Love what we do, and who we do it for- the rest will fall in place- relationships at the heart

Service-

Creating something that is bigger than any of us individually

Manaakitanga-

Sense of belonging- Building a passionate mission

Hanga Whare-  

Building connections an important part of growth

Success-

Developing the ability to innovate and to process and deal with failure

The Third Teacher

THE THIRD TEACHER

My Favourite Quotes:

Education must shift from instruction to discovery to probing and exploration

If you really want to shift a culture, it’s two things: its habits and its habitats- the habits of mind and the physical environment in which people operate

Most of today’s clasrooms are designed with the teacher at the centre, But if the classroom is focused on the learners instead, then learning becomes paramount

We use a guideline for all our school furniture: Educators and students have to be able to adjust or reconfigure it themselves without calling in a facility manager, and they have to be able to do so within three minutes

The rich cultural traditions of a school’s students offer design opportunities. Embracing them is a mark of respect that tells students that where they come from matters as much a where they’re going to.

Children of all ages need places where they can learn by touching, manipulating, and making things with their hands

Open the doors- give students places to exhibit their work as it it were in a public gallery

Universal design- creating an environment for all learners

We introduced a cafe into each of the four academies, so the students can take a break and go get a snack when they are hungry or thirsty, rather than when the bell rings

Survey students about what they would like to study, then design spaces that let them learn what they want to learn

Make sure each classroom has the capacity to link into learning opportunities beyond its four walls- even beyond the Earth

Main Ideas:

• DREAM BIG AND BE BRAVE
• Incorporate cultural traditions into learning design
• Changing the physical environment helps people to change their habits
• The number 1 priority for furniture is that it is flexible
• Learning environments and learning space (classrooms) need to be learner centred not teacher centred. Resources learners need shouldn’t be gate-kept by adults.
• Making is an important part of learning for ALL ages.

How it Relates to Haeata- Learners- Community

• DREAM BIG AND BE BRAVE
• Move learning design into a base of probing and exploration rather than discovery
• Learning centred-learning communities. Putting learning and learners at centre
• Flexible furniture- adults prepared that furniture is constantly being reconfigured by themselves and students
• Build nests- soft, quiet areas- within larger spaces
• Use culture and cultural tradition as an integral part of designing learning not an add on
• Reveal how stuff works- Sensing Schools??
• Making stuff is important for ALL ages
• Think, pull apart, the need for things like set eating breaks and bells. How can we organise for learnig wihtout these tools that schools have alway relied on?

How it Relates to Haeata Values

Alofa-

Learner Centred all the way- schools are for learners and learning, not the comfort of teachers

Service-

Manaakitanga-

Cultural identity integral- design incorporating it rather than as an ‘add-on’

Hanga Whare-  

Hook into learners natural curiosities and design from there

Success-

Dream Big. Be Brave. What are all the definitions of success we could/should consider?

How to Reach the Ultimate Goal of Leadership

https://leadershipfreak.wordpress.com/2015/06/26/how-to-reach-the-ultimate-goal-of-leadership/

Ed Journeys Grant Lichtman

Leading in a Complex World Chapter 1

1 LEADING THE POSSIBLE

Leadership by its very definition is about taking people and ideas to new places.

This is the rise of VUCA: volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.

organizations are also more complex because there is much more information available and things are much more interconnected.

What we don’t notice is that because we are using the past as a kind of measure of what’s likely, we have sharply constrained the set of possibilities when we made our decisions.

Complexity is about getting our heads around what is possible (because anything could happen) rather than what is probably going to happen (which is determined from what has happened before).

this task of leading in times as complex and volatile as today is a bigger stretch for us humans than anything else we’ve ever had to do.

there is a way to grow more able to handle the complexity in the world around us: three habits of mind that stretch your thinking capacity and help you grow more “complexity of mind.

These habits of mind are deceptively simple: • Asking different questions • Taking multiple perspectives • Seeing systems

the thing leaders do is answer: they craft a vision, get others to follow them, make decisions purportedly at the drop of a hat.

Stereotypical leaders have vision, charisma, and brilliant minds. They also tend to be male and, oddly, tall.

One leadership skill that you might not even see as a leadership skill at all is the power of asking different questions, which pulls against the stereotype of leaders having all the answers.

most of us ask questions to confirm our hypotheses, not out of any deep curiosity or doubt.

In a time of complexity and uncertainty, though, this pattern is unhelpful. You don’t know which data might be more important or where the novel solution to an emerging issue might be hiding. Your old patterns constrain you, and your old questions keep you in familiar territory. It is new and different questions that open up

new and different possibilities.

figure out what you really don’t know and to ask those questions.

Trying to figure out what questions you’re asking and making an intentional shift to different questions opens up new avenues for exploration in an uncertain and volatile world.

Your mindset determines your behavior, determines what is or is not possible in a given situation, including what questions you think to ask.

Narrowing to decide is key for someone who needs to take action quickly.

It’s not very good for coming up with innovative solutions to complex problems.

Although, as leaders, we often use threats and stresses as powerful prompts to action, there is a cost in this: it is much harder to learn when you’re faced with threat.

FIGURE 1.1

shift your mindset and your mindset can shift your questions.

Leadership is about gathering people together—even people with quite different goals and understandings—and helping them build bridges that take everyone to a new place.

Understanding other people’s perspectives is a central tool in bridge building, because until you know how others see the world, you’ll have little opportunity to influence or learn from their perspective.

If you think about an issue with which you’re struggling, you can imagine for a minute the variety of people and perspectives involved.

You could probably map them together, watching for the ways the players intersect with one another, the way they hold or give away power or information, the way they seem to cluster around a variety of different primary interests.

Taking into account multiple perspectives simply involves remembering that whatever other people do, they tend to do it because they think it’s the right thing.

taking multiple perspectives also helps widen your scope to improve your problem solving.

When the way is not simple and predictable, one of the core requirements of those in power is likely to be to cede some of the control to others and let the system itself begin to come into a new pattern, guided but not controlled by those in power.

In a complex world, as we’ll explore together, it takes a collective sharing of power, creativity, and perspectives to become agile and nuanced enough to lead into the uncertain future.

As you try to ask different questions to grow your curiosity, take multiple perspectives without losing your own, and influence the system even though you’ll never be able to see the whole thing, you are always trying to keep your head above the paradoxical waters of leadership.

The main gist is that we are thinking for a new and complex time with old habits- especially leading with tendency to quick assessments and making multiple decisions. Take time to ask different kinds of questions and consider things from multiple perspectives to come up with truly innovative solutions to complex problems.

Definitely going to try to ask some different questions- especially when you get into time pressured situation you just tend to make decisions based on your experience and  this must be hampering innovative thinking at times.