Red letter days

Our learning management system (LMS) was upgraded over the weekend, with two immediately noticeable results: (1) new tools and features to keep me busy and (2) red warning messages informing me that work I spent hours putting into the LMS is problematic.  The work is problematic for the LMS...which translates to problematic for me.

Because we have amazing technical support, my red warning messages were tackled quickly. The support folks tried telling me to just stop changing things (since the messages only popped up when I attempted edits), but that's challenging for inveterate tweakers. We found the issue, I'm free to tweak, and the red is gone.

But my response to seeing those serious-looking red messages gave me pause.  Red has long been the color of choice for educators and editors, creating a knee-jerk response that seems at odds with the use of red to signify days or events of import.  How did the color red come to mean danger, importance, celebration, and failure, all at the same time? And whose idea was it to take a color initially reserved for "particularly important or significant information" and associate it with poor work or, worse yet, with feedback?  

As an educator who is currently taking one course and teaching two others, I am both giving and receiving feedback, assignments, and grades.  Learning really should feel more like a red letter day than it usually does...and I am far more aware of the importance of every piece of the academic environment, from tone of voice in a verbal exchange to use of salutation in a written message. 

I want my interactions with students to be significant, to be red letter days in the best possible sense of the word.  And that means taking the time to view everything (syllabus, LMS content, email...) as an opportunity to create meaning and significance.  Here's to red letter days that celebrate the failures that engender learning.

"You...completed the privilege of playing"

In the midst of wrapping up one semester and planning for another (as the teacher) and starting a semester (as the student), an article about Coach Frosty Westering made me stop and write.

Though Westering left coaching in 2003 and "slipped the surly bonds of Earth" last Friday, his legacy is one of honoring the losses and well as the wins, making time to savor what matters in life, and singing.  Yes, singing:

During warmups for the NCAA Division III national championship in December 1999, right there on the field in Virginia, his players sang "The Twelve Days of Christmas," then proceeded to win 42-13.

Can you imagine warming up on the other side, then losing 42-13 to that?

Coach Westering instilled in his players the relative importance in life of losing.  Losing means you had the privilege of playing, a privilege that "could not occur without opponents." 

It might be easy to dismiss all of this as the Pollyanna attitude of an average coach, if not for the fact that Westering holds a record for most coaching wins and ranks ninth in wins among all college football coaches.

 Win or lose; succeed or fail.  One defines the other and how we handle both defines us.

Details matter

We've been talking about design this week, as part of the larger discussion about innovation.  It seems to me that details matter, whether in design, in customer service, or in life.  The artist takes note of the details, as a matter of pride in her work.

In the wood running board of a 1937 Packard Town Car or the wood spokes of an early 1920's Ford wheel, there is the attention to detail that is the hallmark of an artist, a craftsman, a designer.  Long before Apple, there was design...and the attendant attention to details.

How often do we forget the importance of the details...the ones that delight and enrich...the ones that we may be sacrificing for efficiency and productivity?  

In the rush to finish, to move on, to get ahead, are we aware how often we lose sight of the things that matter to our customers, our students, our friends, our children...ourselves?  

Slow down.  Take time to notice the details, especially those that have been relegated to the past. You may be surprised how much there is to discover in the beauty of the details.

Tenure as sunk costs

After writing about sunk costs, I stumbled upon the best possible example of a disruptive innovation for higher education: abolishing tenure.  The merits of tenure are fodder for many a heated discussion, but the sheer mechanics of unwinding a tenure-based system are likely to keep many universities from seeing with a clear eye.

There is probably no better example of sunk costs.

Serendipity lives.

The siren song of sunk costs

What we've already invested can keep us trapped, even when we know the textbook definition of sunk costs.  An education system that prizes achievement (success, perhaps) over learning may be a contributing factor, though no small part is the lifelong dialectic of permanence versus change.  

Years ago, while consulting with an oil and gas company of globally recognized name, I asked about a process that did not seem to work well.  The response I received from a successful middle manager was, essentially, this:  "Yes, it is flawed and we know it doesn't work well.  But we're comfortable with it and have no plans to change it, because we can implement this process quickly."

Using a flawed, but speedy process makes absolutely no sense.  And yet, it's what many of us do multiple times each day.  We keep doing something the way we know, rather than the best or better way, because we have so much invested; the sunk costs (whether financial or emotional) keep us from thinking clearly and charting a course to what would work far better.

This is one of many places in life and in work where the risk of failure is high--not because we've already failed, but because we refuse to ignore the siren song that lures us to stay where we are and feed the sunk costs.  If failure is inevitable in a life of exploration and learning, perhaps we need traveling companions who do not allow us to succumb to the sirens.

Pretty sure there's an "I" in irrational

So, it's official.  The Google Reader I've come to trust as a daily companion is going away. And the problem with trying something that "never caught on as a mainstream customer experience" is that I liked it.  A lot. And now I have to change. I'm a big proponent of change. But not this change.

Part of what makes change and innovation (which are, essentially, synonymous) so interesting is the emotional attachments we make to the way things are, unless we are the one wanting the change.  Allow me to become disenchanted with my RSS reader and choose another one?  Great.  Shut down the RSS reader I like and make me choose another one?  Not great at all.

The humor here is that the outcome is exactly the same.  I get to experiment with ways of aggregating the things I like to read...to play with technology...to try something new.  And I'm irrationally unhappy about it, mostly because the timing was not of my choosing.

The biggest obstacle to successful change is active resistance, sometimes for very good reasons.  When we can do something faster or better the way we do it now (as opposed to the better, faster new way), it's extremely difficult to make near-term choices we do not like or want for the promise of longer-term improvement.  Its' why most of us don't change bad habits we know we need to change.

Never let it be said that people who understand change and the importance of change to both learning and innovation are more rational than anyone else when on the receiving end of a change we do not want.

I'm going  to miss that reader.

Reminders

I planted bulbs last fall, as a personal refusal to go gentle into that season I enjoy least.  I distinctly remember planting tulips and I might have planted jonquils.  I had no recollection at all of planting what I found today.  I consider these lovelies to be the joys of a bad memory.

After reveling in the sheer delight of finding crocus in multiple places (who knew?), I wondered about the metaphors of planting...planting without expectation, planting with no guarantee of success, planting far removed from the joy of the harvest.  It's what educators, innovators, and parents (among others) do--we plant.  It may not be seeds or bulbs, but it most definitely is ideas, hopes, challenges, and, if we are lucky, a bit of knowledge.

I wonder whether education puts too much emphasis on the pretty and not enough on the gritty.  End-of-year test scores, grades, and student ratings of professors all seem to be missing the mark in a rather short-sighted way and they lack the intrinsic value of projects, portfolios, or prototypes.   The gritty part of working through a problem, developing a project, creating a design--and, equally, in failing to solve, develop, or create--is where the learning happens.  The interaction with an educator as coach, collaborator, or guide (rather than as lecturer) offers opportunities that are, at best, only hinted by numbers, rankings, and anonymous feedback.

If we focus on the shortest, though most visible, part of any process, we are missing most of it.