How to escape education’s death valley

May 9, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Yes. Sir Ken Robinson did it again.
Another great TED Talk on rethinking education.

Gotta love him.

In this new talk “How to escape education’s death valley”, he outlines 3 principles crucial for the human mind to flourish — and how current education culture works against them.

One quote: “Teaching is a creative profession, not a delivery system. Great teachers mentor, stimulate, provoke, engage.”

Wacht this great talk on how to escape the educational death valley we now face.

 

In case you missed his previous talks, watch “Bring on the learning evolution” and/or “How schools kill creativity“. Or read our blog on ‘Rethinking education“

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Work Revolution

January 29, 2015 by Leave a Comment

The Work Revolution is a movement & advocacy group that promotes human and meaningful work for everyone. They are the pioneers designing radically life-giving places to work.

Schermafbeelding 2015-01-29 om 17.55.04

 

 

 

In 2013, we posted their manifesto.
And now…we are on the website ourselves!

With an interview of Plan B founder Daphne, as a change agent.
We think that’s pretty cool ;-)

Here’s the interview on The Work Revolution Website.

[Read more…]

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What is Design Thinking

November 9, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Plan B is – among others – inspired by Design Thinking.

What is Design Thinking?

“Design thinking is a powerful tool to tackle the unknown.
To reveal new ways of thinking and doing.”

Aaah…
Now it’s all clear to you, right?!
Nope. We know it isn’t.

That’s why this short video is a nice one.
It brings Design Thinking to life through a real-world example. Using five ‘steps’: [Read more…]

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Magazine: all about innovation

November 1, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Here’s our brand new Flipboard magazine.

All about innovation!

Full of articles, tips and tricks.

Written by cool people all over the world.

View my Flipboard Magazine.

You might also like our magazine about creativity.

It’s all about creative thinking in business.

View my Flipboard Magazine.

Enjoy!

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How to write – to influence

October 12, 2014 by Leave a Comment

In addition to our blog about language
(“in business, we talk like idiots”),
we’d like to share this with you:
a statement about ‘how to write’.

On September 7th, 1982
David Ogilvy sent the following internal memo to all employees.
It’s titled “How to Write”.

2013-11-05-memo

 

These are some great points.
Ultimately, you want to influence your audience to take action.
How you tell is how you ‘sell’ your message.

David Ogilvy is called ‘The father of advertising’
We know the importance of ‘selling’.
A lot of effort, time and money is spent on marketing, sales, advertising and branding.
To move the ‘outside world’.

But within organizations
It’s a different story.
Literally. [Read more…]

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Rethinking education

September 7, 2014 by 3 Comments

Assess_performance

What we learn at school is not preparing us for today’s reality.

We need different skills compared to what is being taught.

We need to unscrew the education system.

Rethinking education.

 

The need for transformation is greater now than ever before.
No matter where we look, we see problems that only can be solved by acting different.

Education is where it all starts:
what we learn at school is what we apply in businesses and society.

Changing the way we educate is key to changing the system.

Our current ways in higher education just aren’t enough; especially when we’re dealing with rapidly changing and complex situations. What is being taught is too limited, too narrow. We focus only on a small part and we miss important other aspects.

The current system makes that we aren’t using the full potential of who we are. Or could be.

Time to unscrew the system: not only how we learn, but also what we learn. [Read more…]

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What to do at the end of a project

September 6, 2014 by Leave a Comment

What to do at the end of a project?

Three things: evaluation, celebration and adaptation.

Especially the last one: big deal.

Here they are; quick & dirty.

 

Evaluation

By evaluation we mean looking back at ourselves, the team and the process, and learn from our past experiences. To learn. To improve.
Sounds probably like an open door. We evaluate a lot, in organizations.
But does it change anything?
Often: not.
Why not? [Read more…]

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StorySelling within organizations

August 21, 2014 by Leave a Comment

A lot of effort, time and money is spent on marketing, sales, advertising and branding.
Experts are busy doing the job of ‘selling’.
To move the ‘outside world’.

storytelling

But within organizations
It’s a different story.
Literally.

It seems like we don’t know how to tell and sell the story.
And how to move others.

As Daniel Pink says: Like it or not, we’re all in sales now.
So, how do you tell/sell your story?

The system

We know the importance of ‘selling’. A lot of effort, time and money is spent on marketing, sales, advertising and branding. To move the ‘outside world’. But within organizations, there is still a lot of communication going on that is far removed from what appeals to people. Boring language, death by powerpoint, incomprehensible stories. Name it.

Why should you care? Great ideas that are going down the drain, solutions that never will be executed, a hard road trying to change mindsets of people, trying to convince them of value, usefulness or necessity. It all gets stuck somewhere, because we are not able to move people.

As Daniel Pink says: “Whether we’re employees pitching colleagues on a new idea, entrepreneurs enticing funders to invest, or parents and teachers cajoling children to study, we spend our days trying to move others. Like it or not, we’re all in sales now.”

So, if we spend our days trying to move others, how could do you do it?
How do you get other people to love your idea, service or product?

Tips & Tricks

[Read more…]

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The power of visualization

August 16, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Data-Visualization-Landscape

Do you know the power of visualization? 

It helps you to solve problems, understand, banish confusion, discover new ideas, envision, think, communicate, present, convince, show, sell. And more.

Let’s get visual.

 

Words are limited

Within organizations, we mostly use words. 

As we wrote in a previous blog “Lost in language“: there is nothing wrong with words, but they are limited.

Visualization or visual thinking doesn’t get a lot of attention in organizations. That is a pity, because it can be extremely powerful. Here are some random thoughts on the power of visualization. How it adds an extraordinary amount to your ability to solve problems, understand, banish confusion, discover new ideas, envision, think and communicate, present, convince, show, sell. And more.

Bring in your visual mind

Let’s start with Dave Gray. He says: “Visual thinking is a way to organize your thoughts and improve your ability to think and communicate. It’s a way to expand your range and capacity by going beyond the linear world of the written word, list and spreadsheet, and entering the non-linear world of complex spacial relationships, networks, maps and diagrams…It is a way to externalize your internal thinking processes, making them more clear, explicit and actionable.”

When we take a step further, visualization is a way to discover and understand the essence, and literally ‘see the big picture‘ (‘the whole picture, relationships, dependencies). This will lead to a clearer picture of the situation and it can help you to see things that would otherwise remain invisible or unspoken.

Thereby, it’s a great way to discover hidden ideas, to envision new products or services (and expressing functional and emotional merits) and to develop and test ideas (see our blog: “Six reasons to prototype – everything“). And is extremely powerful to share ideas with other people in a way they are simply going to ‘get’. [Read more…]

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The Certainty Trap

June 10, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Many organizations are aimed at certainty.
And reliability. And predictability.

We call this The Certainty Trap.
Because this mindset is one of the biggest obstacles for innovation.
And it inhibits change.

Should you care?
Yes, you should.
Because you simply cannot ignore change. 
Shift happens.

The system

In many ‘traditional’ organizations, everything is aimed at certainty, reliability and predictability. We have an urge and desire for certainty. We feel uncomfortable with doubt, ambiguity, ‘maybe’ and ‘opportunities’. We have a tendency to control it all; to reduce uncertainty: nothing should go wrong, we don’t want to make any mistakes and we don’t like risks (see our blog about the fear of failure). Owh, and we want proof. To be certain.

This urge for certainty and predictability is one of the biggest obstacles of innovation and change. New possibilities are almost the opposite of certainty; they always bring uncertainty, risk and stress. And because we feel uncomfortable with uncertainty, we prefer to continue what we always do – until we actually forced to change.

Thereby, with new things you have no guarantee that it works, no one can prove in advance whether it is valuable or useful. You may want to know in advance whether an idea will work, but with real innovational stuff, you simply can not know. So, what happens is that many new opportunities are discarded in advance, because it is it difficult to measure. Difficult to proof. But there simply is no innovation without uncertainty.  [Read more…]

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