- recognize personal limits of knowledge, pat the kid on the back and say, "you're on your own now"
- read up ahead in the textbook and try to teach (learn by explaining)
- guide towards understanding by asking questions and verifying progress
- approach the chaos as a marketing issue.
The other day I was in a 5-person skype phone conference trying to help an educator in charge of running an elective high-school course with an innovative curriculum. The educator had the backing of the superintendent and sought to refine the message to get better engagement with the other stakeholders.
Tool for your kit: Stakeholder matrix
One of my proposals was to build a stakeholder matrix to refine the issues and uncover the basic points to address in future messages. Might look like this. Fill in the blanks for your situation.
| Stakeholders |
Expectation |
Resistance |
Action Plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Students, eligible |
|
|
|
| Students,not eligible |
|
|
|
| Parents, of eligible students |
|
|
|
| Parents, of not eligible students | | | |
| Community |
|
|
|
| Teachers |
|
|
|
| Super |
|
|
|
| School Board | | | |
| Admin | | | |
Why?
We are trying to understand varied concerns and at the same time bridge gaps of knowledge, diverging horizons and expectations. Each stakeholder group may have different needs, different reasons to resist change and thus may benefit from a specific focus on different aspects of the overall story and promise.
Reason to also include the non-participating groups of students and parents: Objections may come from outsiders not recognized as such and erode trust. Educators can field such objections by exposing who said it. Without this step, objections may circulate as rumors and appear to be from a vocal majority, until the information vacuum is filled up.
Beyond the stakeholder matrix
Even if your matrix is just a first draft, one of the next steps is to define the project in enough detail to make it doable for a team. Frank G. Scarpaci's work breakdown structure might come in handy. Working on the WBS you may find issues to add or clarify on your stakeholder matrix. Working each in turn usually brings progress for me.
What I would prefer even more was if tools were available to make this easier, because work products matter more than procedures.Kids out-knowing elders is not new, just growing faster
Today's hi-tech is tomorrow's boredom, and then it really spreads.
Don. Tapscott said in 1999,
Source: Digital Dad - Interview in Communication World, Dec, 1999 by John GerstnerFor these kids, technology is like the air. My two children are teenagers. They're incredulous that I can make a living writing, consulting and speaking about technology. To them it's like the refrigerator and about as glamorous. It's the applications and the people online and the functionality and the information that they care about, not the technology. So this is leading to a unique period in human history where for the first time, children are an authority on something that is really important. I was an authority on model trains when I was a kid. Today, children are an authority on the big revolution that is changing every institution in society. This is about to -- like a tidal wave -- sweep across all of our institutions. It is already affecting schools profoundly. The kids know more than their educators about the biggest innovation in learning ever.
See also: Wikinomics How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, (2006),
Want an interview in German? Don Tapscott with Brandeins Magazin in 2006.
Inspired? Build your own matrix, break down your own project, and let us know how that works for you. Or fails. Both we can learn from.
Anything else you can think of that might work?
2010-03-23 cleanup. Removed Scribd embedded object, left just reference to Wikinomics.
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