Learning 4.0
Yesterday I had an incredible experience at the Benteler Education and Training Center in Paderborn Germany. We had the opportunity to learn Smart Manufacturing first hand by working in the Benteler Industry 4.0 Learning Factory. This factory was built by the students and used to teach Industry 4.0 smart manufacturing practices and techniques. This learning factory also affords students the opportunity to use equipment and use 4.0 practices. There are three choices of products to build in the learning factory: speed boat, semi tractor; or sports car. The cool part was that all of the parts for the products except for the the grill ornament (made by 3D printer) were Lego™. I had the honor of working with Representative Bob Behning on this project.
The line starts with the selection of which product and what color the product will be built. For this part of the factory SMART glasses are used in order to give the student the opportunity to use and navigate this 4.0 technology. I am really glad I had the opportunity to do this. We had been hearing about SMART glasses and having the opportunity to actually use them on the production line was awesome. Then after the selection of the color and product the line gave us a tray of parts to get started.
After assembling the frame of our truck it was then moved down the assembly line and the RFID chip (I could relate to this because it is like the RFID tags we use for data and identification of our dairy cows) read what product we were building and gave us the next set of instructions digitally. As we waved our hand over the screen the proper bin for the next part would light up and then the screen told us where to put the parts. Even though we were doing some human labor on this it was evident to see all the skilled labor that was needed to program the line to give us the right parts on time during the assembly. Finally, we installed the Benteler emblem made in the 3D Printer to the grill of the truck.
One of the coolest things was at the end of the assembly line when our completed truck went into the sensors to tell us if we had made it correctly. We either got a green light or a red light. The green light meant we had it perfect, the red meant we had a flaw. Sadly, we got a read light. We went back and studied, but could not find the issue. We found there was an error and we were not given the instruction or part to put some covers on the clearance lights on the front of the truck. But, how cool is that to have sensors that could tell us if the product was perfect. Here is a picture of our final product:
I am so glad I had this experience. It also really drove home the fact that, as the research tells us, as adults we like to learn like our young students. We want the education to be relevant and we want to be engaged in the process. Let me tell you, Representative Behning and I were very engaged. We were excited as the truck came together and went down the line. Then we were screaming when the truck did not pass inspection. We were ultimately proud of our product. Bottom-line – This Industry 4.0 Learning Factory made school work into real work. We were using real life digital tools to make a real product in real time. How much more engaging can you get?
The factories of the future will be very different from the workplaces of today – in 2016 alone nearly 200,000 robots were deployed in automotive factories and a further 85,000 were installed in factories making electrical and electronic goods, so automation will liberate people from the drudgery of production lines. Now with Artificial Intelligence (AI), the robots will be able to interact with the human. These “cobots” will take robotics to a new level. This past week we have also learned that at work or at home, the Internet of Things (IoT) will completely change the way in which most of us carry out our basic daily tasks, eliminating the drudgery of shopping, banking and even cooking.
I am so glad I have had the opportunity to learn about Industry 4.0 this past week. One thing is for sure: this will completely change the dynamics of manufacturing and will mean that we will be able to make products that are tailored exactly to our wishes in every way we could want. The very same technology is already being used to produce motor vehicles and even to “print” buildings, so the possibilities are almost endless! We need to make a commitment to making sure we have our students ready for this workforce. That means we must start and continue to have the conversations between all sectors about how to do what is best for our students. This involves bringing business/industry, k-12 education, higher education, education advocate organizations, business/industry organizations, state officials, families, and students together to partner how to make this happen. I appreciate all the work that organizations like Horizon Education Alliance are already doing to make the conversations happen – thus why we are learning in Germany and Switzerland. It is the right thing to do for our scholars!
Fully Qualified Worker
The past two days in Paderborn Germany have been awesome. Our Horizon Education Alliance education study group had the opportunity to spend a great deal of time at the Benteler Education and Training Center. We have spent a lot of time learning about the German Dual System of Apprenticeship and vocational training. Students in Germany can chose a company/employer apprentice or college training. See pictures here to get an idea of the German system:
The German system is intriguing and I am amazed how much the companies take responsibility for being part of the training. Students have the opportunity to do two week internships to help them sort out what they want to do. Then, if the apprenticeship option is chosen they can then apply to companies. This can either happen after year 10 in school or can be chosen to do after year 12 in conjunction with the university.
We had the chance to spend time with Benteler’s student touring and getting a first hand look at how the final examination/certification process works for the apprenticeship program. This examination is taken in two parts. One part is taken after 1 1/2 years in the apprenticeship and the other part is taken after 3 1/2 (the end) of the apprenticeship. The examination contains a theoretical part and a practicum part where the apprentice is doing an actual project in his/her chosen field of study.
I am amazed at the community that Benteler has formed to educate the students. The students are very engaged and interested in the process. In fact, I had the opportunity to have a student teach me how to use a robot welder. The same welder that would be used and in the same way he was taught in the apprenticeship program. This was a great experience for me to put myself in the shoes of the student. Here is a video clip of part of my robotics certification training:
This was such an awesome experience and it is so incredible that Benteler has made the investment here in Paderborn Germany to educate its workers and these students. Due to Industry 4.0, the BENTELER training program has become very important to having a highly trained workforce and is constantly changing, integrating content and thus adapting it to the needs of the market. I was proud to be award an Industry 4.0 certification while I was there and again was really glad I took the opportunity to interact with the students and experience education from their point of view. Have you ever taken time to visit a school and experience life from the viewpoint of the student? You should!
Leading Work 4.0
Today, our Indiana delegation in Germany spent the morning in Paderborn at the Benteler Vocational Training Center and then the afternoon touring the Benteler Automotive Plant. Because Benteler is 30,000 employees strong at 144 locations in 39 countries, they believe a company is the sum of all its employees. In other words, Benteler has 30,000 “guaranteers of success.” As a side note, 5,000 of those employees are in Indiana.
While visiting with Benteler officials and students, we learned more about five new and emerging areas in manufacturing and industry:
- Smart glasses
- Digital maintenance
- Predictive maintenance
- Smart production
- Work 4.0
These are all areas that both the manufacturing sector and education sector need to be area of and talking about together. This all further drove home the point about why we, in Indiana (and I am sure all over the U.S and Europe) to continue to replicate the great work that Horizon Education Alliance is doing to facilitate bringing together all the stakeholders to develop solutions for educating our young people to be ready for the workforce of tomorrow.
Smart Glasses
Smart glasses can collect information from internal or external sensors. It may control or retrieve data from other instruments or computers.
Digital Maintenance
Digital solutions applied to maintenance can considerably improve asset reliability and reduce operating expenditure by predicting equipment failures, streamlining supply chain, reducing unplanned and planned maintenance and increasing production efficiency. Equipment can be set up with a digital inspection plan, run-to-failure, condition based maintenance, preventive maintenance or predictive maintenance strategy.
Predictive Maintenance
In a predictive system, employees and systems can anticipate and act before issues or challenges arise, rather than simply reacting to them after they occur. This feature can include identifying anomalies, restocking and replenishing inventory, identifying and predictably addressing quality issues, and monitoring safety and maintenance concerns. The ability of the smart factory to predict future outcomes based on historical and real-time data can improve up-time, yield, and quality, and prevent safety issues. Artificial intelligence can also be used to predict when something will fail or need to be replaced.
Smart Production
Smart Production or Manufacturing and the Smart Factory enables all information about the manufacturing process to be available when and where it is needed across entire manufacturing supply chains and product life-cycles. This Smart manufacturing, or Industry 4.0 as it is also referred to, is the process that employs computer controls, modeling, big data and other automation to improve manufacturing efficiencies.
Work 4.0
Work 4.0 was the most intriguing topic of the day as it is really about the interaction of humans and machines (eg. robots). The use of pulleys in early antiquity or the Babylonians’ use of pumps to irrigate fields can be regarded as early examples of human-machine interaction. Now we have reached a whole new level of connectedness and interaction. Industry 4.0 has brought humans and machines to an almost human-like connection with emotions and feelings. The digital interconnection of all workers, tools and work-pieces in the production process and across company boundaries is generating an “Internet of Things (IoT).” This means we are going to need to be educating and training on new things. We will also need to educate on the benefits. We will need to answer the question for those we are educating: “How will this make my life easier?” It won’t just work to outline the financial benefits or improvements to the bottom line.
I’ve heard it said on this trip that technology is not the issue, it is the enabler. We will need to be teaching our students how to use the data and the technology. All of this is going to allow us to move from reactive to predictive and preventative (artificial intelligence). Human-machine interaction is taking on a new dimension due to developments in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). Because of AI there are now robots capable of interacting with humans. These are call “cobots.” No longer does the robot replace the human, but actually works along-side the human.
Are you ready to lead and educate in a Work 4.0 environment? 4.0 is here and we need to be having the conversations about how to have our workforce ready. You ready to have the conversation?
From Best Practice To Next Practice
Today was the final day of the 2nd Annual Global Smart Manufacturing Summit in Berlin, Germany. I really valued the time to get to know business and industry leaders from around the world. I was reminded of what my good friend Kevin Eikenberry and I used to talk about a lot – when we look at the differences between different industries (eg. manufacturing vs. education), we see about 90-95% of our issues being the same and about 5-10% different. What I mean here is that many of the challenges and roads to improvement are the same. Think about it, we all have responsibility in finance, HR, facilities, and customers. If we break that down further, we all have one of the same groups within the customer category – employees. Now, I get it; our employees are our competitive advantage, but employees are still a customer to be taken care of at the highest level.
Organizational Commitment
The first session this morning was about initiatives and organizational commitment. As a believer in learning organizations, I was really enamored by the discussion of organizational commitment. This thinking really fits with a lot of the Gallup® research I have been studying around employee engagement. When we discuss organizational commitment, we are talking about the bond employees experience with their organization. Broadly speaking, we know employees who are committed to their organization generally feel a connection with their organization, feel that they fit in, and believe they understand the goals of their organization.
Next Practice
One of the session titles this morning was “From Best Practice To Next Practice.” I really appreciated this session because we talk a lot in education about “best practices,” but really it is about making the right choice and implementing the next practice. Good or bad, I tend to be the one looking for the next practices. Really, that is what this entire discussion was about for the global leaders here: what are the next practices.
Convergence
Then, it comes down to convergence. How do we take several sources of independent data and bring them together to develop strong conclusions? In education we call this using “multiple data points.” I don’t think we do the best job of bringing all the data points together. For example, this week I was reading and article about teacher pay and how it was decreasing. I question if we have been properly converging HR, financial planning, and student data in a way that would inform what we have been paying our teachers in Indiana. I’ll let you grapple with my comment here, but you get the point.
Problems
One of the comments that I loved most today was, “We shouldn’t be talking about the problems of today, but the problems of tomorrow.” This is so true! This means in education we need to be looking several years out as to what business and industry needs. We also need to think about what our execution model will be for making sure our students have the skills necessary to meet the needs of the workforce. A few phrases/questions coming from the global manufacturing leaders that jumped out at me were:
- What data is coming from where?
- How do you use your data?
- Appropriate levels of (you fill in the blank here)
- Move from reactive to predictive and preventative
Outcomes
All of this discussion has made me an hinkeven bigger believer in us (both Indiana and the United States) needing to move to a strictly outcomes based school accountability system. We could then, truly in partnership with business/industry and higher education, determine what transferable skills students need and have coming out of high school. Then we can match those transferable skills to outcomes that the students needs to accomplish. Here are some examples and outcomes:
- industry certifications
- 4 year degrees
- Associate degrees
- Trade school
- Joining the military
- Meaningful employment
At a time when our state has 75,000 jobs per year going unfilled because there are not skilled workers to take those jobs, we need to be thinking about the outcomes for our students. Thus the skills gap of only 42% having any kind of post-secondary preparedness versus the 75% needed.
If we are going to have our students ready for the workforce we will need to:
- Teach students in a real world and relevant context
- Enable, encourage, and stimulate students to be curious
- Teach students how to fail and that it is o.k. to fail
- Engage students in career exploration activities at a young age
- Determine the transferable skills needed to have students ready for today’s jobs
- Teach students to be disruptors
- Provide pre-apprenticeship, apprenticeship, and work based learning internships
Business and Industry engagement in education programs not only prepares students with the skills they need for careers, but it also contributes to the development of clearly developed career pathways that lead students to careers after graduation.
What Does Industry 4.0 Mean?
Today, I had the honor of being in attendance at the 2nd Annual Global Smart Manufacturing Summit in Berlin, Germany. One of the topics we grappled with was of what does Industry 4.0 mean? Ron Zahavi, Chief Strategist for IoT Standards and Consortia, Microsoft Corporation did a great job of walking us through some history.
Industry 1.0
This is the first industrial revolution:
- Technology such as wheels and engines replaced artisans
- Child labor laws had to be introduced to prevent abuse
Industry 2.0
- Assembly lines allowed workers to be turned into consumers
Industry 3.0
- Lean Processes improved the quality of products
- Advent of computer use
- Robots reduced mistakes and improved productivity and safety, but began replacing people
Industry 4.0
- Big data and analytics
- Autonomous robots
- Simulation
- Horizontal and vertical system integration
- The industrial Internet of Things (IoT)
- Cybersecurity
- Additive Manufacturing/Advanced Manufacturing
- Augmented Reality
Interestingly, in all these cases technology and mechanization are involved, but in the revolutions of Industry 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0, I wonder if we forgot how important people are. We must remember as we navigate Industry 4.0 that people are more important that the devices and technology.
In my world of educating young scholars and creating education policy, we have a responsibility to make sure as we move to Industry 4.0 to put people at the forefront. We do not want to make the same human mistakes with 4.0 that we made with the first three revolutions.
I really believe more than ever that we must make sure that we create space for industry to do as much of the training of our students as possible. Industry is in a good position to do this. What we have to do, though, is identify the transferable skills students need and institutionalize those skills in the framework of the internship learning being done in partnership with industry. This is crucial because of the mobility of our students.
We must be educating our students on the new things being done with Industry 4.0, but must also be educating them on the benefits. In other words, answering the question: How does this make life easier? Not just always pointing to financial improvement and the bottom line. We must begin to develop a workforce made up of the right quantity and right quality of workers. The skills we are preparing students with must match the needs of the workplace.
Industry 4.0 will require new skill sets, and manufacturers will need to attract the right talent. This may involve partnering with k-12 schools to train students. Existing training programs may need to be expanded to include new technologies that are introduced to the marketplace. Manufacturers also need to recruit for Industry 4.0, which may differ from how they have done it in the past. Both business and industry and education will need to stop all focus being on qualifications determined by degrees and certificates, companies should recruit for capabilities to succeed. These capabilities will include specialized skills.
For us to compete during Industry 4.0, it will require us to conduct constant iteration and be flexible. It’s not about buying software or purchasing a curriculum and then watching it all play out. To compete in Industry 4.0, the education sector and manufacturers must be flexible and agile in the face of change, and, most importantly, partner together.
Learning to Do, Doing to Learn!
Today, while in Berlin, Germany, I was reminded that what I always say, “Once an Agriculture Science teacher and Career and Technical Education (CTE) Director, always a CTE guy. As I visited with Yorck Sievers of The Association of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry, I was reminded just how engrained the FFA motto of, “Learning to Do, Doing to Learn, Earning to Live, Living to Serve” is to making a positive difference in the lives of students by developing their potential for premier leadership, personal growth and career success through agricultural education. This is also engrained in my core values of how to educate young scholars. The Association of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Deutscher Industrie- und Handelskammertag, DIHK) is the central organisation for 79 Chambers of Commerce and Industry, CCI (Industrie- und Handelskammern, IHKs) in Germany. All German companies registered in Germany, with the exception of handicraft businesses, the free professions and farms, are required by law to join a chamber.
The FFA motto gives members 12 short words to live by as they experience the opportunities in the organization. Learning to Do, Doing to Learn, Earning to Live, Living to Serve. Learning by doing is also a cornerstone of the German education system. Whether someone wants to become a carpenter or a hotel concierge, she has probably gone though what is known as the dual education system. This system combines time spent in the classroom with work at a company. During our education research trip with Horizon Education Alliance, we learned about how Germany’s vocational education system pairs hands-on learning with classroom learning to give young people a leg up in the workforce. Most students graduate not only with a degree, but also with job experience and a deep knowledge of their trade. This vocational training offers a high degree of job security. The professional certifications issued to students at the end of their programs are well respected within their fields, and more than half of apprentices stay on as full-time employees at the businesses where they trained. They even get paid during their studies.
Check out a few slides from our meeting with Sievers:
During this time with Sievers we also learned that schools follow the companies and not the other way around. This training model is all about the future of the company, but the companies are not left alone. The companies need support. This is competency based education. The Chambers in Germany provide:
- Organization
- Registration
- Examination
- Certifications on a national level
In this German model there are courses that cover more than 350 different occupations that are approved by the businesses and federal bodies overseeing the program. In Germany, they are truly walking the talk by facilitating students for “Learning to Do, Doing to Learn, Earning to Live, Living to Serve.”
Focus On The Wider World
Last week I did a 3D Leadership Program™ session on focusing as a leader. It was about focusing on three things:
- Self
- Others
- Wider World
Clearly if we want to be effective leaders we must focus on ourselves. This focus does not mean being self-centered, but self-caring. We must take care of ourselves physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Additionally, we must take ownership of our own professional growth. If we are taking care of ourselves then we can begin to focus on others using our empathy, caring, and relationships.
Another important focus area and focus of this post is to focus on the wider world. To do this I believe it is important for us to not only take a worldview look at our own part of the world, but also look literally at the rest of the world. I will be doing this for the next 12 days in Germany and Switzerland. I am on the plane flying to Berlin, Germany as I write this post. I am very honored to have been asked to go on this trip that was organized by Horizon Education Alliance. There are representatives from schools and business/industry in Elkhart County, Indiana as well as State Representatives, Governor’s Office officials, colleges and universities, and me as a member of the Indiana State Board of Education taking part in this experience and serving as ambassadors of our state and country. Again, what an honor!
I am hoping to add a post to my blog each day as our journey progresses. So, stay tuned to Byron’s Babbles each day to see where we have been and what we have learned. It is going to be fast and action packed learning. Tomorrow we will be attending the 2nd Annual Global SMART Summit in Berlin, Germany. This will be a chance to learn more about Manufacturing 4.0 and I am excited to learn how we can better prepare Indiana’s students to work in this environment upon completion of high school. I am super pumped about all the businesses and industries that will be represented. See the photo here to see who the players are who will be in Berlin:
Surely you recognize a few on the list. This will be the who’s who of business and industry. SMART, or 4.0 Advanced Manufacturing applies information and manufacturing intelligence to integrate the voice, demands and intelligence of the ‘customer’ throughout the entire manufacturing supply chain. It marries information, technology and human ingenuity to bring about a rapid revolution in the development and application of manufacturing intelligence to every aspect of business. It changes how products are invented, manufactured, shipped and sold. We will be gaining insights on what it takes to thrive in this new paradigm shift in manufacturing through the use of advanced technology. Our Indiana delegation will be part of the 200+ delegates from the top leading companies from around the world sharing their management strategies on the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead in the Digital Economy.
Back to the point of this post – focusing on the wider world. This is so important because we must practice exploratory strategic thinking and creative thinking. Leaders with a strong outward focus are able to exercise these two skills. These leaders tend to be visionaries who sense the far-flung consequences of local decisions and imagine how the choices they make today will play out in the future.Take Bill Gates: On 60 Minutes, Melinda Gates remarked that Bill was the type of person who would read an entire book on fertilizer. “Why fertilizer?” Charlie Rose wanted to know. The connection was obvious to Bill Gates, who is constantly looking for technological advances that can save lives on a massive scale: “A few billion people would have to die if we hadn’t come up with fertilizer.”
Any business school course on strategy will give you the two main elements: exploiting your current advantage and exploring for new ones. It’s not surprising to find that exploitation requires concentration on the job at hand, whereas exploration demands open awareness to recognize new possibilities. But exploitation is connected to the brain’s reward circuitry—in other words, it feels good to coast along in a familiar routine. So when you switch to exploration to roam widely and pursue fresh paths, you have to make a deliberate cognitive effort to disengage from that routine and maintain open awareness. We must always be looking to spot new opportunities.
Thinking creatively involves three forms of focus:
- Vigilance—remaining alert for relevant information while immersing yourself in all kinds of input
- Selective attention—focusing on one thing while filtering out everything else
- Open awareness, which we’ve discussed earlier
The classic model of creative thinking shows how you use each of these:
• First you use vigilance to gather a wide variety of pertinent information.
• Then you alternate between intense concentration on the problem at hand (selective attention) and letting your mind wander freely, as you might in the shower or going out for a run (open awareness).
Being a focused leader doesn’t merely mean concentrating on the biggest priorities of the year or being in tune with corporate culture. It means commanding the full range of your own attention. With diligence, you can cultivate focus on yourself, on others, and on the wider world. As a result, you’ll be able to direct your attention—and others’ attention—where you need it.
For the next few days I am going to focus on a wider world view. I want to know how the best of the best are leading our industries. I want to learn how the best of the best in Germany and Switzerland are educating young scholars to be ready for post-secondary success. Let me be clear; I do not want the United States to become Germany or Switzerland. What I want is for us to learn the best of what others are doing find ways for us to get better at educating our students. In saying that it does not mean that I do not think we are doing a good job. It means that if better is possible than good is not enough. We need to be pursuing fresh paths by spotting new opportunities with open awareness. I hope you will tune into my blog over the next several days and check out the wider world global learning taking place with a group of us from Indiana, USA.
Leadership Algorithms
This past Tuesday I facilitated a gathering of our South Carolina 3D Leadership Program cohort. The through line was “Your Leadership Toy Box.” The idea was to use toys to discover ways to be focused leaders. At the beginning of the gathering I had each participant grab a toy and answer the question of how the toy they chose represented leadership. Participants were given 10 minutes to prepare a response in any format they chose. Needless to say, the responses were awesome, inspiring, and most importantly – FUN!
One of the toys chosen was a Rubik’s Cube. As was the plan, this toy caused a lot of reflection, and even more for me after the participant reported out. Click below to watch the video of her presentation: Leadership Algorithms. It’s awesome!
Her reflection really got me to thinking about leadership and education. I thought about how this game reveals lessons that we all face as educators and leaders. Every year, we encounter and solve challenges that must be addressed on several levels, just as the Rubik’s Cube must be solved side by side and layer by layer. Every day teachers make decisions before, during, and after classroom lessons to successfully engage students and lead the learning process, maneuvering through numerous machinations to address diverse learning styles and skills. This is what teacher leaders do. School leaders must search for ways to enable continual school improvement, which requires school leaders to study, plan, implement, analyze, react, and adjust throughout the decision-making and implementation processes. These are the same skills and actions necessary to conquer the Rubik’s Cube.
So what did we learn from the Rubik’s Cube algorithms? Leadership requires us to step back from time to time and re-assess the situation in order to move forward. Successful leaders are continually convening the team to assess and re-assess processes in order to improve. We also learned that making one twist of the cube leads to multiple changes on the cube. When we make changes as leaders, we have to understand there is a ripple effect that affects the team and the organization. Leadership is so much like the Rubik’s Cube because to be a successful leader, we must think several moves ahead of the one we are actually working on. In talking to those who have solved the Rubik’s Cube, they tell me you have to think ahead and there are algorithms. What is your leadership algorithm?
What Do You Think?
Governor Eric Holcomb
I had the opportunity to meet with an impressive group of community leaders this past Friday. As we continue to work through the guidance and implementation of our new Indiana Graduation Pathways, of which I chaired the panel that created this policy, we are working very hard to learn from the groups in the state that have been doing this work already and successfully. The Community Education Coalition and Economic Opportunities through Education (EcO) Network in southeast Indiana is one such group that brings educators, manufacturing leaders, workforce, and community-based organizations together to coordinate and align educational program offerings for students to successfully connect with well-paying manufacturing occupations.
Last year, the Indiana State Board of Education was charged with establishing graduation pathways per HEA 1003. The goal was to create an educated and talented workforce able not just to meet the needs of business and higher education, but also have students able to succeed in all post-secondary endeavors. To account for the rapidly changing, global economy, every K-12 student needs to be given the tools to succeed in some form of quality post-secondary education and training, including an industry recognized certificate program, an associate’s degree program, or a bachelor’s degree program. Every student should graduate from high school with 1) a broad awareness of and engagement with individual career interests and associated career options, 2) a strong foundation of academic and technical skills, and 3) demonstrable employability skills that lead directly to meaningful opportunities for post-secondary education, training, and gainful employment. During the process of our panel convenings we did a lot of asking, “What do you think?” Now, thanks to the Community Education Coalition we are able to continue to ask “what do you think?” as we work through making sure schools are able to put the pathways in place for students. We are so grateful that they put the event together last week that included Governor Eric Holcomb, State Legislators and Policy Makers, business and industry leaders, higher education leaders, K-12 school leaders, and most importantly students. There was a lot of question asking and learning going on.
The partners and facilitators of the Community Education Coalition and EcO initiatives have learned to make inquiry a habit of mind, thereby initiating a long-term commitment to continual improvement and growth. This coalition has developed an outstanding process that uses the questions of “who?, why?, what?, and how?” in order to identify key community issues. You can bet the four words of, “What do you think? are asked in this process. Essential to the success of this process was collaboration with colleagues across different disciplines for clarifying their questions and for understanding and analyzing the data they collected. For example, data like: high school graduation rate, education attainment growth, STEM enrollment growth rate, GDP per capita, employment growth, and average annual wages are used as outcomes to measure success.
This data is then able to be used by stakeholders to answer the questions of “who?, why?, what?, and how?” and the question of: What do you think? We are reminded of how important these four words are in Gem #7 entitled “Four Magic Words: ‘What do you think’” in 52 Leadership Gems: Practical and Quick Insights For Leading Others by John Parker Stewart. In this lesson Stewart reminds us that leaders often fall into the trap of assuming they have the right answer. I am also reminded of the teaching of one of my heroes in community work, Peter Block, who believes that effective leaders are not problem solvers, but conveners of communities of people to solve issues.
“Using these four inclusive words [What do you think?] is evidence of an effective and healthy leader who actively listens to the input of the members of the team.” ~ John Parker Stewart
All research is messy and recursive; and it has been my experience that collaborative inquiry is more so because no one knows the end. You are not starting with answers, but with questions. Throughout the process, partners reflect on what is being observed and found out. The stakeholders may change direction, ask new questions, challenge the inconsistencies they discover, seek new perspectives, and fill gaps in their information. During our gathering on Friday we were reminded over and over that the process of connecting the stakeholders is more important than looking at programs. It would be very hard to replicate programs in all parts of the state, but it would not be hard to replicate the process of deciding what programs are needed and developing programs specific to each area. It is all about bringing collaboration to scale.
To do this we must remember to ask the pertinent questions, listen, and ask “what do you think?”
Got Experience?
Here’s a question for you: Are skills directly proportional to years of experience?
While I agree that experience will give you more expertise in subject matter, people skills, and well-roundedness—I believe that all these are not necessarily causal of years of experience. Nor do I believe years of experience always correlate with exceptional performance. So what’s my idea of proper experience? It’s having had enough time in the field to see the results caused by your own decisions and workflow. Actually, that can be done in a short amount of time. Conversely, I have known individuals with a great many years experience who really hadn’t grown or improved much. In my field of education, I have known new teachers with little experience in terms of years that were much more effective facilitators of learning than some teachers with many years experience.
This was the topic of Gem #6 entitled “27 Years Of Genuine Growth Or 1 Year Repeated 27 Time” in 52 Leadership Gems: Practical and Quick Insights For Leading Others by John Parker Stewart. In this lesson Stewart taught us that strong leaders seek new opportunities to continually develop and hone their skills. Weak leaders just keep doing the same things and embrace the status quo.
“Make each additional year in your work one of genuine learning and growth.” ~ John Parker Stewart
I view experience as the sum of a few factors: time working, experiences survived, the nature of the role and responsibilities, and potential lessons learned. Really, there is no magic number of years to this. It is about learning from your experience and the idea of continuing to practice and improve. It is not about the difference between experience and not enough experience, but about has it been the right experience. Then it really boils down to what have we been learning from the things we have been doing.
So, do you have x number of years experience, or x number of years doing the same thing over and over?
Byron's Babbles 
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