My personal organizing system is fairly simple. From any meeting, I usually walk out with a piece of paper, which has doodles on one side and a list of actionable items on the other. Back in the office, I take the list of actions, and do one of several things: If an item can be dealt with immediately, I try to do it on the same day, unless it is really crazy – send an email, make a phone call, or ask someone to perform a task. If it is important, I try to create an Outlook task with a reminder. Items that require a longer process are moved on my to-do list, next to the monitor. Other actions, after consideration, are ignored as not worth pursuing. After all that, the piece of paper goes into the recycling bin, which is very satisfying. Whatever comes to me through e-mail follows the same logic: messages sit in inbox until they are processed in one of the same way. If I am waiting on a reply, they go to the “Waiting” folder.
Yet there is a class of things on my lists that are very difficult to process. Those are ideas that cannot be acted on, but interesting enough to not throw the paper away. They either come from whoever I meet with, or they occur to me during the conversation. Here is an example. One of superintendants I met with last week, said that our student teachers should think about how they can be useful in the schools of their placements. For instance, they can share some new technology, or a new science lab experiment, etc. Now, that’s a very interesting thought. What if we asked student teachers to prepare a presentation for their cooperating teacher, and perhaps for other teachers in the school. Something that could be valuable in the process of a regular peer—to-peer professional exchange? A professional development requirement? The problems are a ton: we already have too many requirements, there may be no chance to present it at school, etc. Yet the potential payoff could be significant – our partners might develop an expectation that RIC students always come in with something new to share. That would change s lot I our relationship.
Another superintendant asked if we can offer a data literacy workshop for teachers – how to read and interpret assessment data, and use it in the new teacher evaluation system. That’s not a new idea, but it made me thing that someone could offer the simple service of taking someone’s data and making it digestible with summary tables, graphics, and interpretive statements. Can our School serve as a think tank for the local schools? We have plenty of people who could do it, but no organizational way of processing such requests. Anybody wants to set up a small business? There will be demand for sure.
Those are just two small examples. The point is – we all probably have these ideas that are too vague and unproven to be immediately evaluated and converted into actions. But they may be promising enough to keep them alive. That’s my question for today – how do you keep them alive? How do we let them grow, incubate them, give them a chance to prove their worth? Innovation is really a systematic process – ideas have to be invited, collected, supported, nurtured, and examined; most of them would have to be rejected. But a small percent could turn out to be very fruitful. And there is always a chance that one of them will change everything. One of my fellow Deans said we need a system to incubate new programs, especially those crossing the boundaries of Schools. That’s a great idea; we also need an incubator for ideas.
Anyone, an idea about what to do with all the ideas?
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