Librarianship. Education. Experimentation.
I’m sure some of you have seen this already, but I thought I’d share for those who haven’t. I’m a big Ken Robinson fan and what’s not to love about the RSA Animate series?
I particularly like how he distinguishes between divergent thinking and creativity (near the end of the video). I guess you can thank the education system for beating (or boring) the creativity out of you.
I just finished reading Richard Florida’s latest book, The Great Reset, and, as usual, I’ve come away with some interesting food for thought. I know some people scoff at Richard Florida’s work and the whole notion of the Creative Class, but I tend to think he’s right on track. There is a shift afoot in our economy and it’s most certainly away from manufacturing jobs. Here’s a passage that I found particularly poignant about the future of the workforce given that I teach second year students:
“The old manufacturing economy honed physical skills such as lifting and manual dexterity. But two sets of skills matter more now: analytical skills, such as pattern recognition and problem solving, and social intelligence skills, such as the situational sensitivity and persuasiveness required for team building and mobilization.” (p. 118)
For me, Florida is hitting a nerve. Corporations, governments and other organizations are demanding flexible employees who have creative problem solving abilities and the desire to work with others to make something happen. The scary thing is that our modern system of education just may not be equipped to teach these skills.
I’ve read a number of books over the past few months (and haven’t written about any of them – yet!), but the one I finished most recently is called Change By Design by Tim Brown (with Barry Katz). I was interested in the book because of its focus on “design thinking.” Design thinking is more encompassing than just good design practice, it’s a larger philosophy. Brown presents a lot of great anecdotes (from his work at IDEO), but I appreciated one of his more simple pieces of advice about brainstorming. If you’re not careful, you’ll miss it. For our purposes, I’ll call it “the HMW approach.”
HMW stands for “how might we” and it’s a better way to phrase a design challenge or brainstorming question. Think about it, we typically phrase brainstorming challenges like this:
BUT, if we apply the HMW we end up with questions like:
I love three things about the HMW approach. First, the word “might” suggests that we are open to all kinds of possibilities. Second, the inclusion of “we” means that we have an active role (and responsibility for) affecting change on the organization. Third, you almost have to follow up “how might we” with a verb that focuses on improvement – it reminds us why we’re all doing the brainstorm/design challenge in the first place.
It seems like such a simple turn of phrase, but sometimes such a turn leads to new possibilities. Thanks Tim!
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