Tag: technology

“Dad, there are no bad decisions”

by Alan Jones

(Daughter to Father)

The idea for this blog originated with a conversation I had with my daughter regarding a new business venture she was orchestrating. Both my wife and I had managerial backgrounds, so, we were questioning her recent business moves—a lot of “what if” statements. She patiently responded to all of these queries with what was in my mind sound business and organizational logic. At some point in the questioning process, I sensed my daughter was becoming somewhat frustrated with the barrage of “what if” questions. In the middle of one of my “what if” questions she made the comment that introduces this blog: “Dad there are no bad decisions. People keep looking for certainty, for safety, for decisions that are not bad. But, you don’t grow in a job, in life, in anything you do without learning from bad decisions. You have to find out what works for you.”

     As I thought about my daughter’s comment, I reflected on the countless decisions I had made in my job and personal life. They all fall on a continuum from the highly rational to the highly emotional. As an individual prone to a rational decision-making model, I focused on the decision-making process: identify the problem>gather information>evaluate alternative solutions> and select the option with the highest utility. I discussed my thoughts with my wife who said to me: “Al, you missed the point of what our daughter said.” She went on to explain that it is not the process for making a decision that should be examined, but rather the process you use when it turns out to be a bad decision.

      What struck me with this response is the feedback function, which is what my daughter was focusing on, and the most important function in the act of learning, is exactly the function schools pay little attention to. Yes, schools do provide feedback, in fact, mountains of feedback, but, it is in the form of red pen notations or perfunctory recitation of correct answers on a forced choice testing instrument. There is little attention paid to the “why” of a wrong answer, or a process for checking for wrong answers, or for considering how some wrong answers but be corrected in different circumstances. The source of these poorly designed feedback functions is in assessment instruments that are not designed to analyze decisions, but, to identify wrong answers. After school, however, in the real occupational world, bosses are not looking for the right answers, but rather the effective enactment of goals, policies, and plans.

      The source of the effective enactment of goals, policies, and plans is a repertoire of leadership and managerial moves that are built around bad decisions or the often-repeated organizational axiom: “I won’t do that again.” This short axiom illustrates workers in the trades and professions engaging in a feedback function that has examined the causes and effects of a process that resulted in bad outcomes. Most importantly, within that process, the worker has determined what he or she ought to have done. Those of us in leadership or managerial roles have our private thought process for analyzing bad decisions—mine in particular was the “five whys tool” which for me always led to the root cause of the bad decision.

      Returning to my daughter’s comment, over time the knowledge base developed over the analysis of bad decisions, produces sound professional judgment and what works for you—there are no bad decisions.

“Coding is the future: Or, is it?”

by Alan Jones

      Several years ago, I was at a graduation dinner for a relative’s son. Similar to the scenes in the movie The Graduate, several attendees were giving the new graduate advice on future career fields that were both lucrative and secure. Top among the suggestions was the field of “coding.” Simply put, a coder is a professional who builds programs for websites and apps. Based on what I was reading in the media, it appeared to me that this was sound advice.

      Recently, however, the media has offered a different read on that piece of advice. Three of the major tech companies—Google, Cisco, Microsoft—have laid off thousands of tech workers. All of these tech workers were in the six-figure income bracket. The companies involved have blamed slowing demand, supply chain constraints, cost-saving measures, and changing technologies as the source for the layoffs.

      I watched several YouTube videos featuring laid-off workers expressing their feelings about being laid off. In these conversations, I could not help but be impressed with their educational backgrounds—all attended top computer engineering universities— and their work experiences—all were loyal, made significant contributions to the company, and had advanced to top management positions.

      What made these confessions foreign to me was the career path I had experienced. My career background amounted to years of training in one profession, entering that profession, and then retiring forty years later. For the most part, the profession changed little from when I entered it. What I read in the media and listened to on the YouTube videos is a job market now dominated by uncertainty. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average person will change careers 5-7 times during their working life. Approximately 30% of the total workforce will now change jobs every 12 months. All of these changes require significant retraining.

      As a retired educator—teacher, principal, professor—these job market findings call into question the following axioms we educators have preached from auditorium stages and classroom lectures.

      Axiom #1:   The more education, the better the job.

      Axiom #2:   This subject is a gateway to a good-paying job.

      Axiom #3:   What we measure in schools aligns with real-world knowledge and skills.

      Axiom #4:   A school platform—rules, courses, credits, bells—aligns well with real-world working conditions and expectations.

      Based on recent job market findings, the axioms we preach are woefully out of step with real-world occupational realities. The static nature of our current schooling model is opposed to developing employees who are adaptive learners who can navigate ever-changing personal, academic, social, and economic environments.

      All school mission statements speak to these real-world realities but, in practice, revert to institutional goals of schooling that value telling overdoing, uniformity over novelty, accountability over responsibility, efficiency over effectiveness, control over autonomy, and competitiveness over mastery. At the turn of the twentieth century, there was a group of progressive educators who promoted a school design and pedagogy more attuned to twenty-first-century occupational demands.  administrative “progressives” in urban school systems adopted a school model that was cost-efficient and accountable—the same model that our sons and daughters now attend.

      If schools are serious about preparing our sons and daughters for real world occupations, they must abandon instructional platforms installed at turn of twentieth century and experiment with pedagogical models more attuned to working in a Google world. School districts that decide to part ways with an antiquated model of schooling should question how talent is treated in classrooms. Presently, talent in our nation’s classrooms is a one size fits all definition: scoring high grades in academic subjects and standardized tests. In a Google world, however, talent is broadly defined as a quality with the following attributes.

  • Different talents complement each other;
  • Any large-scale projects demand multitude of talents;
  • Different talents bring different and often fresh perspectives (major inventions in our century were developed by individuals at the margins of our society);
  • Diversity prepares societies for change.

With this expanded definition of talent in place, schools would need to rethink and reconstruct the entire test-driven subject centered curriculum. I have written a number of blogs on what that restructured curriculum would look like. Suffice it to say the “assign and assess” curriculum would be replaced with a “question and experiment” curriculum housed in a variety of learning environments that provide students with different experiences and opportunities to learn.