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Joellen Killion, Bill Sommers, and Ann Delehant share their current thinking, skills, and activities from years of experience.  Check it out.

Conversations with Chris

A dear colleague has passed.  Morrie Schwartz in his book, ‘Tuesdays with Morrie,’ says ‘death ends a life, not a relationship.’ My learning has been expanded by learning with Chris.  As a co-developer of Stakeholder Centered Coaching with Marshall Goldsmith and Frank Wagner, he was a practitioner and trainer. Here are ten of my favorites I learned over the years from Chris.  I am eternally grateful.

Invite their thinking – When coaching others, feelings are important.  At the same time, we want to think together and plan a path forward.  Marshall calls this Feedforward.  Leaders are judged by what they do, not necessarily what they say.

Choosing stakeholders – Who better to provide feedback than the people who report to you, not necessarily those who supervise you.  This is an assessment by those closest to you.  Direct reports from people you trust is absolutely, authentic assessment.

Opinions – Ask, ‘is that your opinion or do you have facts to back it up?’  Ah, separate specific behaviors from hallucinations.  Chris often provided questions that identify one of my favorite sayings, ‘pick fly dung out of pepper.’  What is the foundational issue and what will you do about it?

Learning Curve – Chris often said, ‘I shorten leader’s learning curves.  Using Stakeholder Centered Coaching (SCC) can accelerate learning and identify productive behaviors.

Golf & Life – both four letter words and similar.  Swing easy (be kind and authentic), recovery is more important than perfection (are you improving or just waiting), and keep your head still (emotions are important and leadership is head and heart).

Understanding – The goal is understanding not necessarily agreement.  What are the behaviors that build trust, elevate solutions, and help you, your team, and the organization?

Billing – Busy professionals don’t have time so don’t bill by the hour.  This was a big lesson for me.  When you bill by the hour, the coach wants to keep you one the phone, the client wants to get work done.  Cut to the chase and bill by the month or year.  That takes the pressure off.  God Bless You for this.

Engagements – Don’t collude with someone who is not following through.  End the coaching relationship if there is no discipline to keep commitments and/or not doing what is planned in coaching meetings

Realities – There are usually three realities:

(1) The reality of what leaders perceive they do

(2) The reality of what they actually do everyday

(3) The reality of what others perceive the leaders do. At the outset of the coaching engagement,

At the beginning of a coaching relationship there’s almost always divergence among the three realities.  Close the gap and make progress

Culture – culture starts with the leader.  I use a French Proverb: “Children need models more than critics.”  The same is true with direct reports

Thank you, Chris, for your teaching and humanity.  Swing Easy and Often on the golf course in Heaven.

Namaste’

Great administrators and teachers are emotionally intelligent and connect with their students and colleagues. They understand that positive relationships are the bedrock of successful schools. This can be emotionally draining, and if we do not replenish regularly, then it can lead to what presenter, Dr. William Sommers, calls “emotional anorexia.”

When educators become emotionally anorexic, they lose their energy and enthusiasm, their ability to maintain meaningful working relationships, and their own self-efficacy and desire to make a difference. When this happens, everyone suffers and morale spirals downward.

Join us to learn why Dr. Sommers says, “Schools full of emotional anorexics look like the zombie apocalypse.” Discover what you can do to build and improve resilience, stamina, hope, and endurance, for yourself as a leader, and for your faculty and staff. During the challenging times of Covid, it is more important than ever to build a repertoire of strategies that you can use to take care and nurture yourself and others.

These notes are a blend of Daniel Pink’s presentation and some of Bill’s comments.

Daniel Pink’s new book, The Power of  Regrets came out February 1 2022.  I have my copy.  Get Yours.

10. Best way to make a decision. A focusing question is, ‘what would I tell my best friend to do?’   Why? We are better at solving other people’s problems than our own.  So, take your own advice that you would freely give to others.  Three considerations:

• Fundamental is better than perfunctory. Making a short-term decision might be appropriate and life keeps changing.  Fundamental decisions are more value-based and will serve us better over the long-term.
• Do the right thing. Make the ‘hard’ right decision rather than the ‘easy’ wrong decision.
• Less is more. Goethe said, ‘the things that matter most should not be at the mercy of things that matter least.’

9. best way to get stuff done. Read ‘Bird by Bird’ by Anne Lamott.

• Do one thing first, then a second, etc. Bill O’Hanlon wrote a book ‘Do One Thing Different’
• L. Doctorow said, “Writing is like driving a car at night: you never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” Living is the same.
• Alcoholics Anonymous philosophy: One Day at A Time

8. Best way to choose what to do. In school and life, pick the professor more than the class.’  We learn best from someone we trust and/or like.

• Relationships first.
• Maori Proverb: Never spend time with people who don’t respect you. (At least limit the time you spend with those who sap your energy, time, and emotional health.

7. Best Way to persuade someone including yourself

• Don’t try to persuade them, make it easy for them to do it. We spend too much time trying to change people’s minds
• Dirty little secret: make it easy for people to act in the best way for them and the organization.

6. Best way to get a good idea. Pink interviewed Malcom Gladwell

• Good ideas lead to good ideas.
• What is the story of an idea? Maya Angelou said, ‘people will forget what you said, but remember how you made them feel’
• Indigenous cultures did not have a three-ring binder. They transmitted their culture through story and metaphors.
• After generating ideas, socialize the ideas. Talk about the ideas to see reactions and reflect on applications.
• Listen to things that have not occurred to you

5. Best way to overcome hassles big and small. Everything will take longer than you think.

• Getting Things Done by David Allen. Two-minute rule – do it now
• When confronted with big hassles it is easy to throw up your hands. Instead reframe as a test.  Hassle is the norm of things.  Remember: you don’t have control of what happens to you, you have control over how you respond to things that happen to you.

4. Best way to liberate yourself.

• Sometimes we are hobbled by a set of beliefs in our head – what did people think of me?
• They are not thinking about me – worried about themselves.
• Here’s that PinkCast: com/pinkcast/pinkcast-4-06-this-is-how-to-deal-with-frustration/

3. Best way to get stuff done part 2. Dan interviewed Al Gore

• Ask: What am I not seeing?
• What metaphors might work for you.
• What advice you would give a younger Al Gore
• THE STOIC CHALLENGE by William Irvine: org/books/the-stoic-challenge-a-philosopher-s-guide-to-becoming-tougher-calmer-and-more-resilient/9780393652499
• What would my heroes and sheroes do? What would Darwin do?
• Get a coach to help with not getting work done
• Purpose statement
• Bill works with the WHY Institute. Find Your WHY.  It does help

2. Best way to deal with your regrets.

• Inward – we are too harsh on ourselves, treat yourself with kindness, forgive yourself
• Outward – talk about it, disclosure, process it. Concrete words can help with emotions
• Forward – challenge my assumptions. Next time you have an idea, use it in a sentence.  Marshall Goldsmith coined the term FeedForward.  Yes, reflect on the past, deal with the present, and What are you going to do moving forward?

1. Best three words to say regularly

• Please and Thank You
• Please reminds me that I am not entitled to anything – it’s a gift
• Thank You – reminds me I am not entitled. Expressing gratitude is good for the person receiving the acknowledgement and the person giving gratitude gets a dopamine hit too.

Daniel Pink:  The purpose of this book is to reclaim regret as an indispensable emotion — and to enlist it to make wiser choices. By changing the conversation about human flourishing, this book will spark millions of people to reclaim their own regrets and thereby lead richer, fuller lives.

Bill:  I am grateful to Daniel Pink for sharing his thoughts and for viewing this presentation.

By: Dr Cindy Zurchin, Positive Consulting, LLC

The New Year brings thoughts of resolutions and ways to improve our lifestyles and create healthy habits.  Many of us have experienced our best intentions end up in disappointments.  There is no reason we have to pick the date of January 1 to make improvements to our lifestyles.  It is always the perfect time to commit to yourself to develop the best YOU!

As educators, we are thinking about our students, our staff, the parents, the community and ways to help and serve all of the important people associated with our schools.  The most important person we all need to serve first is ourselves.  We cannot pour from an empty glass!  It is important to keep ourselves at a level of being able to deal with the present, no matter what the present involves.  And a great way to prepare for this is to practice what I refer to as the Four E’s of Maintenance:  Eat, Exercise, Energize and Enjoy!

Eat

The first E pertains to eating well. Whatever imbalance you are experiencing in your eating, take steps to correct it now. Maybe your diet includes lots of sugars or preservatives (as in fast or prepared foods), and you’re jumpy all the time. Maybe you’re always craving carbs, and consequently you’re tired a lot. Whatever your situation, find out where the imbalance is and make a plan to correct it.

However, I do have one caveat: Make a commitment to eating well, but don’t be fanatical about your diet. I want you to avoid the dieting syndrome. Instead of obsessing over every calorie and morsel you put in your mouth, focus on eating well and nourishing yourself with healthy foods.

Your body is a well-oiled machine. So why would you put bad gas in your car? The purpose of eating well is to keep all your parts moving efficiently and effectively. If you find yourself obsessing about food or your weight, you may want to seek help from a professional. It will be beneficial to have someone help you address any concerns you have over food to help you embrace the important step of nourishing yourself with healthy food.

Exercise

The second E involves physical exercise to maintain a healthy mind and body. Do something you enjoy and make it a regular practice. If you haven’t been including this all-important ingredient in your self-care routine, one of the simplest and most natural ways to start is by walking. Walk around the block. Or if that seems daunting, just walk to the corner and back. Don’t look down on starting small. Instead, allow yourself to feel good about your commitment and say something like, “Hey! I’m doing something I’ve been putting off for far too long! Look at me, taking the first step. I’m so proud of myself. I’m going to stick with it.”

Yoga and meditation are another great way to incorporate this second E into your routine. An added bonus from these practices is that they can help you stay in the present moment and deal with whatever comes up in a more calm and balanced manner.

There have been times when I’m having a hard time sleeping at night. When this happens my mind and body are very restless. I’ll be thinking about dealing with a crisis or my endless to-do list. To try to prevent this, I write things down, so I can forget them and clear them out of my mind before bed. There are days, however, when this is not enough to help me relax. I need more to calm my mind. In these times, I remind myself to take the time to sit on a comfortable chair or coach, close my eyes, turn on my soft music, and begin to breathe deeply and focus on relaxing each part of my body. In these moments, I find my body softening. My mind retains its focus. Each time my mind wanders, I acknowledge the wandering and return to breathing and relaxing as I meditate. About 15 minutes of breathing and relaxing your mind can help you to enjoy a good night’s sleep.

Running is another way to practice the second E. A friend of mine started running again in his mid-forties and a friend suggested that he start small and run as long as he could and then to walk and when he caught his breath to try to run again. He did the run/walk on the same two-mile stretch for two weeks before he could run the whole two miles. Because he didn’t overexert himself, he was able to gradually build up to running the two miles. Today, he loves his running practice and has kept it up. The key to each of these four Es is getting started in a way that is gentle and supportive so it becomes something you want to practice long-term.

Energy

The third E is about maintaining your physical and mental energy to support a healthy mind and body. To do this, spend time with people. Keep your mind active by reading. And if you choose good and uplifting books that challenge your thinking, even better! Seek to belong. The more groups you engage with, the more physically and mentally ready you’ll be, and the more support you can call on.

Beware of moods. All of us have to fight moodiness from time to time. One of the best ways to fight depression is to go find someone in need and help them. You will take the focus off the self while feeling good about your ability to make a difference in the life of someone else who is suffering perhaps even more than you. There’s nothing like a fresh dose of perspective to get us feeling better.

A friend of mine from high school has been through a lot of challenges in her life. From the loss of her brother to a tragic accident where she witnessed her daughter being hit by a drunk driver. The accident could have killed her daughter. For months we didn’t know if her daughter would ever walk again. I sent my friend and her daughter flowers at various times to let them know I was thinking about them and supporting them with positive thoughts for brighter days. Each time I have done something like this it makes me feel very good. I can move from thinking about my own problems to helping and supporting others.

Giving to others also helps your own problems seem solvable. The happy boost in your brain after helping another person is a powerful feeling! The next time life presents a challenge, I encourage you to take a moment and take your focus off of yourself and take a moment to think about helping someone else. Once you have helped them, notice how you feel about your own problems. Chances are your perspective has shifted and what once seemed insurmountable is now doable.

Enjoy

While, it is beneficial to help others. If you are constantly working at fulfilling needs for others, it is imperative that you also take some time to care for yourself. By doing this regularly, you create a habit of self-care. For example, maybe there is one day a week you can take an hour or two to pamper yourself.

I know someone who used to do this, and each Monday she looked forward to her “Diana Time.” She would turn off her phone and computer, and soak in the hot bath. She says this time was wonderful and gave her time to decompress, reflect, and reset for the week ahead. A practice of self-care can help us stay healthy and balanced.

We’re all different. So, do what works for you. And if you’re pressed for time, try what I like to call the one-minute-enjoyment rule: Watch a funny or inspirational video, call a friend, or smell the flowers. These are all quick ways to recharge your batteries and work well when you’re needing a quick pick-me-up in the middle of a busy day. Sometimes when I am having trouble accomplishing a task, I take a break and tidy up my home. I vacuum, make a bed, and wash a mirror. Then when I look in the mirror, I can feel that sense of completion and accomplishment and take that feeling with me when I return to the challenging tasks at hand.

Remember, be kind to yourself.  Start small and keep up the maintenance of YOU! Cheers!

Frederick Herzberg in 1959 studied intrinsic motivators and hygiene factors that inhibit performance in engineers.  For many years educators and businesses have been evaluated on number.  What are the test scores, what are the sales, what are the profits?  How is that working?

Now, people are leaving positions, organizations, and leaders (bosses) because Covid forced us to confront whether or not our organizations are growth producing or are not as healthy as we thought.  Here is a list of behaviors in Herzberg’s research.

The growth or motivator factors are intrinsic to the job:

• Achievement
• Recognition for achievement, the work itself
• Responsibility
• Growth or advancement

The dissatisfaction-avoidance or hygiene factors that are extrinsic to the job are:

• Company policy and administration
• Supervision
• Interpersonal relationships
• Working conditions
• Salary
• Status
• Security

As I reviewed and contemplated this research again and a colleague Jathan Janove mentioned the term ‘compliance cop to culture coach’ I started to rethink how schools and businesses operate.  Which ones do well in many types of environments and which ones struggle in a changing landscape.  Working with schools and businesses relative to the following 7Cs have helped organizations move ahead

Compliance Cop to Culture Coach

• Communication
• Collaboration
• Coaching
• Change
• Conflict
• Creativity
• Courage

Once the culture is right positive increases in other areas are more productive. A few of these areas are:

• Cultural responsiveness and Inclusivity
• Community of Learners
• Content, Instruction, and Assessment (CIA)

Using Stakeholder Centered Coaching (Marshall Goldsmith) and Finding Your Why (WHY Institute) have helped increase motivation and results.

References:

Goldsmith, M. (2007). What got you here won’t get you there.  New York: Hyperion

Herzberg, F. (2008). One more time: how do you motivate employees? Boston:  Harvard Business Press.

I listen to the news and read the papers.  I keep hearing assertions such as, “I am guilty of no wrong-doing.” Or, “I did nothing illegal, I broke no laws.”  In the last few months I’ve seen an epidemic of such claims.  And these comments are attributed to various people in the public eye: politicians, business people, entertainers.

I’d like to extend that earlier thinking here ever so briefly.

Recently I came across this in a book by Robert Gates[1], A Passion for Leadership:

“…through this searing experience, I came to realize that while I had done nothing wrong, I hadn’t done enough right.”

Jack Hawley[2] wrote this:

Dharma is often translated from Sanskrit into English as ‘right action.’  The proverb Dharma chara means ‘do the right thing.’  The translation is okay but the Westerner, from a culture so oriented to action, naturally emphasizes the word do and tends to under-emphasize the word right. …

The traits of courage, self-discipline, goodness, and doing right are the marks of collective character, just as they are of individual character.  Each organization must also follow its own collective heart and soul.

Breaking no laws is a dismally low standard to set – for oneself or for one’s organization. Avoiding wrong-doing is not much better. How much more challenging to each of us to set the clear goal of engaging in much more right-doing.

[1] Gates, Robert M. A Passion for Leadership. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016.

[2] Hawley, Jack. Reawakening the Spirit in Work.  New York: Fireside, 1993.

INSIGHTS & INFLUENCE WORKSHOP

Dan Heath

Dec 13-14, 2021

Raleigh, NC

What Bill thought were Highlights

“If a system never learns it never improves.”

When there is no systemic problem solving with individuals or organizations, tunneling occurs, e.g., narrowing of your focus to what you know or has worked in the past.  The result is Whack-A-Mole. To escape from the tunneling the focus must be on Fundamental Growth Improvement.

We must make time to determine a destination, plan a route to get there, and thrive on the journey.  (Bill-the journey never ends.  See William Stafford’s poem ‘The Way It Is.’) (Bill’s comments will be in parentheses.}

Questions:

1. What if there is a better destination than the one you are going toward? Decide ‘whether or not’ to move toward the current destination or change direction. That is a decision to make. We are sometimes blind to our choices.  The villain is narrow framing of the problem and/or the solution.

Confirmation Bias eliminates options.  See the article ‘Laddering’ by Dan Heath already posted.  Use analogies, look outside your own system, and go up the ladder to see possible destinations. (Ah, vision)

See the article Laddering at https://learningomnivores.com/laddering/

2. What is we’re chasing the wrong destination?

• Get neutral feedback
• Include a Devil’s advocate
• Ooching which is outlined in the book. Inching and scooting toward a solution.  This helps to overcome ‘Confirmation Bias.’

When hiring ask for work samples, consulting contracts, trial runs.  (See Chief Joy Officer by Richard Sheridan and how they hire.  Team interviews – would you want to work with this person?  Do they play well with others? One day trial periods, short term projects, “Run the Experiment.”

3. What must you give up? (Are you willing to give it up?) Opportunity cost involves the difference between what you would getting now and what you won’t be getting by the alternative.  If you do more of something, you will be required to do less of something else.
4. Does the destination really fit you? Here was Dan’s Ladder of Competence:

• Genius
• Excellence – sometimes you get trapped by this. (You are good, so others want to keep you doing the same thing)
• Competence
• Incompetence

Some questions Dan asked us:

• What is your genius?
• Have you fallen into the “excellence trap?”
• When did you first realize your competence and excellence?
• What is your genius?

Reminder about Switch metaphor

• Rider is the rational part
• Elephant is the emotional part
• Path is the journey

Plan the Route. We have the information we need.  (Angeles Arrien, in the Four-Fold Way said:

1. Show up and be fully present
2. Pay attention to what has heart and meaning
3. Tell the truth without blame or judgment
4. Be open to outcome, not attached to how to get there

It is #4 that sticks out to me.  Plan the route and know you may be off track or surprised along the way.)

In a fight between the rational and emotional is not a fair fight. Emotions usually win.

Emotional is the elephant

• Direct the rider Clarity – vision or destination
• Motivate the elephant Desire – fire in the belly
• Shape the path Ease – path of least resistance

Rider behaviors

• What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity
• Clarity: Goals and Behaviors to get to the goal

Leaders need to spotlight the right behavior. (In the book ‘Whale Done’ Blanchard interviewed trainers of whales at Sea World.  How do you get a multi-ton whale to jump through flaming hoops?  Their answer:

1. We get in the water and play with them. First, they need to know we mean them no harm.
2. Reward them for doing the right thing.

Always know that Bad is stronger than good for memories.  (Think about news reports:  what bleeds, leads. Listen to the song ‘Dirty Laundry’ by the Eagles)

What’s the problem and how do we solve it?  Find out what is working somewhere. (Positive Deviance is about Jerry Sternin) What’s working and how do we do more of it?  Learn to study success. Find the Bright Spots

Elephant tricks

• Shrink the change, it will fuel motivation
• Don’t “inform” people about change. Boost their DESIRE to change
• Behavior is contagious
• Tweak the environment
• When the Path changes, people change

Stand up meetings – research says this results in shorter meetings and more productivity.  Make the path of least resistance

Summary of Switch ideas

Rider

• Focus on behaviors
• Study bright spots

Elephant

• Shrink the change
• Find the feeling

Shape the path

• Rally the herd
• Tweak the environment

Activity:  we wrote down on paper a habit we wanted to eliminate.  Then, went to a shredder to dispose of the note.  Keep in mind if you want to quit a bad habit, failure is part of the deal.

Never ending part of leadership:  clear, sticky communication

Make a 2-minute pitch to a group – it must be worthwhile to them, not just to you

Made to Stick – SUCCESs – an organizer for maximum retention

1. Simple
2. Unexpected
3. Concrete
4. Credible
5. Emotional
6. Stories

Sticky ideas are about Stories & Credibility.  Real stories attract people who see the storyteller as credible. Why Stories Stick?  They use concrete language which increases understanding and memory.  We want to share the same movies in our heads

If you want people to have preference, they must see a difference. When everything seems the same, it is boring to the brain. Marcus Elliott, trainer for NE patriots by looking at data reduced leg injuries from 22 to 3.  Marcus did not accept the fact there was nothing they could do about the injuries.

Problem Blindness – first you must see the problem, take it seriously, and then look for possible actions.

• Be concrete – what will success look like
• What’s different? Highlight uncommon sense
• Make the WHY explicit (elephant)

Joe Sanfelippo:  Scanning the world for opportunities to celebrate.  Joyful work

Purpose and Passion. Purpose trumps passion. Reconnect people with purpose.  (See Bill for his work on Finding Your Why.  This is about your purpose)

4 strategies for thriving

1. Purpose
2. Progress – Teresa Amabile wrote ‘The Progress Principle.’ The best motivators are visible progress on meaningful work.
3. Responsiveness
4. Recognition

Luthans and Stajkovic:  Effective recognition is about noticing. Do you recognize employees? Recognition Gap – 80% of the managers say they recognize employees.  When employees were asked, only 20% said they were recognized for their contribution.

LADDERING: FIND SOMEONE WHO HAS SOLVED YOUR PROBLEM

Excerpt from Decisive (2013) by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Kevin Dunbar set out to understand how scientists think. How do they solve problems? Where do their breakthroughs come from? So, like a war reporter embedding himself with an army unit, Dunbar spent a year alongside the scientists in four leading molecular biology laboratories, watching and recording their work.

What Dunbar discovered, after countless hours of eavesdropping and interviewing and synthesizing, was that one of the reliable but unrecognized pillars of scientific thinking is the analogy.

When the scientists ran into problems with their experiments, a common day-to-day experience, they would often benefit from a “local analogy”: a comparison to a very similar experiment with a similar organism. So if one scientist was bemoaning a failed experiment with the phage virus, a colleague might share an example of how he tweaked an experiment to overcome a similar problem. “This type of reasoning occurred in virtually every meeting I observed, and often numerous times in a meeting,” said Dunbar.

Other times, the scientists were struggling with a bigger problem. In those discussions,

Dunbar found, the scientists often switched from using local analogies to what he called “regional analogies.” These typically involved another organism that had a family relationship with the organism being studied. A scientist trying to understand how a new virus replicates, for instance, might work through an analogy from a better-known virus such as smallpox.

Dunbar said “the use of analogies is one of the main mechanisms for driving research forward.” And the key to using analogies successfully, he said, was the ability to extract the “crucial features of the current problem.” This required the scientist to think of the problem from a more abstract, general perspective, and then “search for other problems that have been solved.”

When you use analogies—when you find someone who has solved your problem—you can take your pick from the world’s buffet of solutions. But when you don’t bother to look, you’ve got to cook up the answer yourself. Every time. That may be possible, but it’s not wise, and it certainly ain’t speedy.

A separate study of a medical plastics design group, conducted by Bo T. Christensen and Christian D. Schunn, found that the designers tapped a veritable circus of analogies, including zippers, credit cards, toilet paper, shoes, milk containers, Christmas decorations, water wheels, picture puzzles, Venetian blinds, and lingerie.

What we’re seeing here is that, when you’re stuck, you can use a process of “laddering up” to get inspiration. The lower rungs on the ladder offer a view of situations very similar to yours; any visible solutions will offer a high probability of success, since the conditions are so similar. As you scale the ladder, you’ll see more and more options from other domains, but those options will require leaps of imagination. They’ll offer the promise of an unexpected breakthrough—but also a high probability of failure. When you start looking for crossfertilization between the medical plastics domain and the world of lingerie, you’re likely to find yourself at a lot of dead ends (or perhaps with a very hard and uncomfortable bra).

For an example of laddering up, let’s imagine a junior high principal, Mr. Jones, who wants to speed up the lunch line in the school cafeteria. He figures if students spend less time waiting in line, they’ll have more time to go outside and get some activity before afternoon classes begin.

Given this goal, where can Jones look for options? The first answer, we know now, is that he should look locally. Are there bright spots in his own staff? Maybe one checkout line always seems to move faster than the others; Jones could study how the checkout clerk handles the process. (Perhaps, like the collectors at toll booths, she counts out common configurations of change in advance.) Jones could spread her approach to the remaining cashiers.

If there are no obvious bright spots, he can ladder up a couple of rungs and benchmark the practices of other schools in his city. If he strikes out again, he could keep laddering up. The next step might be to expand his search to any organization with a checkout process, from convenience stores to community pools. (These rungs of the ladder are akin to a scientist’s use of a “regional analogy”—learning from another organism that is similar to the one they study.)

As he climbed, he would broaden the definition of the problem. Instead of looking for people who have pioneered creative checkout solutions, he might hunt down people who excel at managing the flow of crowds: managers of sports stadiums, amusement parks, or shopping malls. (Could you learn something from Disney’s rollercoaster queues, for instance, that might be useful in a crowded lunchroom?)

Lexicon, perhaps the most famous “naming” firm in the world, excels at this process. In naming the processor that became the Pentium, they wanted names that suggested “speed,” so they laddered up past the domain of computer technology to consider any fast, highperformance product. One team, in fact, spent time studying the names of slalom race skis. (In the end, another analogy would prevail: The notion that the processor was a powerful “ingredient,” an essential element of the computer. Note the “-ium” ending to the “Pentium” brand name, making it sound like something from the Periodic Table of Elements.)

TO SEE HOW LADDERING UP can generate a truly novel option, consider the story of Fiona Fairhurst, a designer who’d been hired in 1997 by Speedo. She was given a crystal-clear mission: To design a swimsuit that would make swimmers faster.

Traditionally, swimsuits had evolved to become smoother, tighter, and skimpier, but Speedo had grown interested in new design approaches. Fairhurst, a swimmer herself, was unimpressed with Speedo’s early designs, so she began to seek out other sources of inspiration. “This is how my brain works,” she told Dick Gordon in a June 2012 interview. “If I’m going to make something that goes fast, I tend to look at everything that goes fast and the mechanisms that make things go fast. So I started looking at manmade objects like boats, torpedoes, space shuttles, everything.”

Fairhurst was laddering up. She’d redefined the problem from “a swimsuit that goes fast” to “anything that goes fast, especially in the water.” And that got her interested in animals who seemed to move faster in water than they ought to. Shortly thereafter, she had a fateful day at the Natural History Museum in London:

“It was one of those ‘eureka moments’ … [The guide from the museum] took me to the back rooms of the Natural History Museum, … It’s not where the public is allowed. And he had this huge metal tank, and he lifted it open, and inside was a 9foot shark. And he said to me, ‘Fiona, you need to touch his nose, touch his belly.’ … I was thinking, ‘What the heck am I doing?’

As I touched the nose, it was exceedingly rough, almost sharp. It’s made of this material like enamel, like our teeth, it’s called dermal denticle. … If you run your hand from nose to tail, it’s smooth, but a bit like any fish scale, if you run your hand backward, it’s sharp and it will cut your hand.

They sent a sample of the shark’s skin to a lab, which returned images of its rough and micro-grooved texture. The images sparked an insight for her: “For years many people thought smooth fabric was the key [to speed], but if you look at sharkskin and how rough it is, roughness is the actual key to making a fast fabric.” (Indeed, one Harvard scientist has conducted experiments showing that the shark’s rough denticles reduce drag and increase thrust.) Inspired, Fairhurst and her colleagues sampled over 1,000 different fabrics until they found one whose texture convincingly mimicked sharkskin.

Another, perhaps more important, change they made to the new swimsuit was inspired by an analogy to a man-made object, the naval torpedo. Unlike skimpy traditional suits, Fairhurst’s swimsuit covered much of the body, like a second skin. It was tight and restricting, which struck some athletes as uncomfortable at first, but Fairhurst said the effects were profound: “by compressing all your lumps and bumps, you can make a more torpedo-like shape thru the water.”

The Speedo team began to test the new suit with Olympic athletes. In one test leading up to the 2000 games in Sydney, Fairhurst worked with Jenny Thompson, an American swimmer who’d already won medals in the 1992 and 1996 Games. As Thompson’s coach timed her, she swam 50 meters once with her own suit and once with Fairhurst’s new creation.

As Fairhurst recalled, when Thompson emerged from the pool, she said, “I hate this suit, it feels horrible.” Meanwhile, her coach, staring at the timer, was incredulous. Thompson’s time with the suit had been close to her world-record pace, even though she had started her swim by merely pushing off the wall with her feet rather than diving in at full speed. He told her, “A world record isn’t easy … so don’t rule out the suit!”

In test after test, the new suit, which came to be called the Fastskin, consistently outperformed its predecessors. Next came a regulatory hurdle: For the suit to be used by swimmers in the Olympics, it had to be approved by FINA, the international governing body for the sport of swimming. Fairhurst was surprised when FINA officials objected to the suit on aesthetic grounds.  “One of the things that they felt gave them very good TV coverage was the fact that it was beautiful people in swimsuits … a bit like the Baywatch mentality.” FINA’s leaders were worried that her suit was hiding too much flesh!

To her relief, FINA overcame these anxieties and approved the suit, and the Fastskin debuted at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Its impact was immediate and dramatic: An astonishing 83% of the medals were won by swimmers who wore it.

The very success of the Fastskin inspired controversy. Critics, including some Olympic swimmers, questioned whether the suits were giving athletes an unfair advantage.

Later evolutions of her original swimsuit—the successors to Fastskin—kept boosting swimmers’ performance, until finally, FINA balked, banning certain fabrics and styles beginning in 2010.

Fairhurst’s laddering had produced a competitive advantage so strong that it had to be banned to keep the playing field level.

 Although last year became known as “the year like no other,” this year seems to be even more challenging! Navigating the daily ups and downs of COVID-19, economic cause and effect fallout from the pandemic, and the constant barrage of misinformation and attacks across the political landscape are all taking their toll on educators.  Administrators and school leaders are facing the conflates of four distinct types of challenges – Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA) – that serve as the catchall of what we are experiencing when we say, “It’s crazy out there!”

On November 30 at 4:00 PM, CAS is hosting a 1-hour webinar with Dr. Bill Sommers, former principal and current author, consultant and leadership coach with Learning Omnivores. Dr. Sommers will draw from the works of John Gottman, Barbara Fredrickson, Marshall Goldsmith, and Richard Sheridan to help equip school leaders with the skills and strategies needed to identify, prepare for, and respond to VUCA.

Successful school leaders are at the top of their game – physically, emotionally and cognitively – and understand the importance of making sure to take care of themselves FIRST. Join us on November 30 as Dr. Sommers shares action plans and ideas that you can use to facilitate your own sustainability and successfully lead during VUCA times.

Register with Connecticut Association of Schools.