Genius at Scale by Hill, Tedards, and Wild

GENIUS AT SCALE by Linda A. Hill, Emily Tedards, and Jason Wild is an in-depth, thoughtful look at “How Great Leaders Drive Innovation.” The authors’ credentials are impressive: Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (HBS); Tedards is a graduate researcher in organizational behavior at HBS; and Wild is he former Global Vice President of CEO Co-Innovation and Customer Engagement at Microsoft. Together, they essentially use case studies and real-world examples to talk about Architects, Bridgers, and Catalysts effecting change in their organizations. Some of the companies and groups mentioned are P&G, Pfizer, Mastercard, Delta Airlines, as well as food organizations in Africa and Italy and the Sampark Foundation which promoted educational advancements in India.  

GENIUS AT SCALE is very accessible, with differently sized helpful headers, a conversational tone, and a focus on individuals and their stories. Much of this necessitates a new way of thinking, like Mastercard’s emphasis on a Framework to Grow, Diversify and Build in the “World Beyond Cash” or P&G’s increasing recognition that “the product economy was shifting to an experience economy.” The authors note that “as much as leaders would like to plan their way to innovation, their job as architects is to help their teams and organizations act their way instead,” referencing a vivid descriptor from previous research: “it's like shifting from leading an orchestra to a jazz ensemble: while their sheet music provides some guardrails, the musicians have to improvise, listen, and adapt to each other as they perform.” Another chapter looks at the establishment of the Cleveland Clinic in Abu Dhabi, stressing the importance of continuous learning and adapting to local practices, needing “to create an environment where all caregivers could be ‘contemplative and creative rather than reactive problem solvers’.” While reading, I found many insightful comments like when the Sampark leadership opined “If you launch a decision as an initiative, people wait for it to fail. If you launch it as an experiment -- indicating that you will reverse it if it doesn't go right -- people participate in shaping it. They own it.” The authors and those they studied repeatedly point out how critical it is to have a “foundation of shared purposes and values -- a sense of community." GENIUS AT SCALE is clearly extensively researched with notes comprising at least ten percent of the book; there's also a helpful index and the online bibliography contains a list of over 700 books and articles.  Highly recommended.

The Disengaged Teen by Anderson and Winthrop

THE DISENGAGED TEEN is a newly released work by Jenny Anderson, an award-winning journalist who reports on the science of learning, and Rebecca Winthrop, the director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. Their book is directed to both parents and educators and is subtitled “Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better.” We all know that especially since COVID students have had a more difficult time re-acclimating to a school setting and staying motivated and engaged. The authors also observed this situation in their own families and conducted extensive research – both qualitative and quantitative - prior to writing this text. Part I describes the four patterns of behavior they found: Passenger (tending to coast along); Achiever (focusing on grades and other external rewards, perfectionist); Resister (refusing to do participate); and Explorer (following interests and building necessary skills). Anderson and Winthrop caution against applying these labels to individual students, arguing instead that the behaviors are fluid. Part II of the book is an “engagement toolkit” with stories, exercises, and ideas so that adults can help to spark student learning and to make the distance between school and life be seen as less of a “chasm.” The authors point out that “resilient learners are not strong; they are flexible.” Anderson and Winthrop recently contributed a guest essay to The New York Times where they note: “Many recent graduates aren’t able to set targets, take initiative, figure things out and deal with setbacks — because in school and at home they were too rarely afforded any agency.” I also attended a recent one hour Family Action Network session where Charles Duhigg (Supercommunicators) posed some excellent questions while interviewing these authors about THE DISENGAGED TEEN. Due to the emotions involved, this may be a difficult book for parents to digest, but it is likely to be thought-provoking and worthwhile. 

Fires in Our Lives

FIRES IN OUR LIVES by Kathleen Cushman with Kristien Zenkov, and Meagan Call-Cummings offers “Advice for Teachers from Today’s High School Students.”  The first half of their book provides background and student quotes on “What Makes Schools Matter.” I especially liked the boxed sections like “Learning from a World of Crises” or “Newsday Tuesday” where students are encouraged to answer What? So What? and Now What? about an issue. Other activities (“I Used to Think … but Now I Think” and “Finding the Right Question”) are clearly valuable for our Civics and Research classes. The second half of FIRES IN OUR LIVES is even more action oriented and presents five “briefings” on issues of particular importance to students: “climate change, community violence, voter engagement, immigration, and gender identities.” Each of these offers some facts or statistics and points to ponder, but the real value is potential for increased engagement through the suggested exercises like reading and discussing a poem or participating in a role play on guns and gun violence from the Classroom Law Project. At the end of the book, notes and resources, including suggested books, links to lesson plans, activist organizations, and professional development, plus an index are provided.  In the past few years, we have generally shifted to having students explore and research an issue of importance to them, so they already use almost all of the resources described. I don’t think there is a great deal of “new” information here, but it is helpful to have it gathered together and other school districts, particularly those less comfortable with inquiry-based learning, would benefit from a review of this text.

Returning to the introduction, I want to highlight a point the authors stress: “Personal contacts and connections make the biggest difference, students told us.” It seems that will be a huge challenge as we prepare to re-enter school this fall. And that idea has been reinforced recently by Jonathan Haidt and Jean M. Twenge in their work in The Journal Of Adolescence, described in articles from The New York Times (“This is our chance to pull teenagers out of the smartphone trap”) and Washington Post (“Teens around the world are lonelier than a decade ago. The reason may be smartphones”). Pew Research data also reflects the “unprecedented level of anxiety” for teenagers (Feb. 2019 report) and for adults - parents and teachers - (March 2021 report, reflecting pandemic impact). If you have resources to share, please reach out.