Closer than Monet's gardens and a place for creative inspiration ...

 

While a visit to the Claude Monet House and Gardens in Giverny (France) has been on my wish list for a long time, we have a North American scenic rival at the Butchart Gardens near Victoria, British Columbia - a boating or ferry opportunity from Seattle or Bellingham, Washington ... or from Vancouver, BC. 

The famous sunken garden (top center photo) was originally the limestone quarry for the Butchart family business, but after the limestone was extracted in the early 20th century, Jennie Butchart began a transformation of the area that now attracts more than 1 million visitors a year.

There are water lilies to paint and rest by, as you might find in Giverny, as well as nicely placed benches and scenic spots for creative inspiration of any kind.  A peak at the bay?  Resting under a canopy of roses?  Or, maybe you'd like to ride the carousel?  Finding beautiful places is a great way to begin creating the 3 preconditions for innovation!  (http://www.caronsart.com/about.html).

For more information about the Butchart Gardens:
http://www.butchartgardens.com/

What is Integrative Learning?

... just returned from the AAC&U (Association of American Colleges and Universities) conference at Loyola University in Chicago to learn more about Integrative Learning and Signature Works through their annual institute.  For those of us interested in creativity, entrepreneurial mindset/behaviors and 21st century workforce skills, the AAC&U has many tools for us to use with students and within our communities.

What is integrative learning?  Here's the AAC&U vision:

Integrative learning is an understanding and a disposition that a student builds across the curriculum and cocurriculum, from making simple connections among ideas and experiences to synthesizing and transferring learning to new, complex situations within and beyond the campus.

If you would like to consider the controversy of "assessing" creativity, take a look at the AAC&U creative thinking rubric:

Link to AAC&U Creative Thinking Rubric

Need to update your mission statement?

Mark Zuckerberg just announced a change in the Facebook mission - the updated version is to:  

"Give people the power to build community

and bring the world closer together."

CNN Tech reported Zuckerberg's explanation, "We used to have a sense that if we could just do those things, then that would make a lot of the things in the world better by themselves, but now we realize that we need to do more, too. It's important to give people a voice, to get a diversity of opinions out there, but on top of that, you also need to do this work of building common ground so that way we can all move forward together."

There are whispers that this word change in the mission is more about advertisers than customers and making the world a better place, but Zuckerberg is implicitly acknowledging that a mission statement can be of importance in an organization that wants to stay relevant.  And, while we can't know for sure what the motivation is for Facebook changing their mission, Zuckerberg and Facebook are great at engagement (well over 1 billion members) and mission statements can be effective engagement tools ... if we speak them often and live them daily.    

The mission and vision statement for the college where I teach are:

Mission:  to educate the whole person and to serve our students and our communities by providing learning opportunities that are designed to help them achieve their goals.

Vision:  to aspires to be the higher learning organization of choice by creating engaging lifelong educational relationships that inspire and support all learners to increase their capacity for personal growth and positive social change.

On our mission & vision webpage, curious viewers or stakeholders can also find our Core Value Statement:

Learning is the core value of Paradise Valley Community College. PVCC encourages and supports learning at three levels — student, employee and organizational — and the integrative relationship between the three levels. Learning at Paradise Valley Community College means increasing the capacity of our students, our employees and the college itself, to achieve their goals. PVCC acknowledges organizational learning as a means to continuously improve our college.

Thank you, Mark Zuckerberg ... good reminder for all of us to revisit our missions!  And, happy to hear of Facebook committing to bringing the world closer together :) 

Need to update your mission,, vision and/or core value statements?

Iowa State University - Mission, Vision and Core Value Statements

The previous mission statement for Facebook was to:  

give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected

Courage for Positive Social Change from Admiral McRaven

At the college where I teach, we often speak of preparing students to be agents of Positive Social Change and my involvement in interdisciplinary entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship are definitely examples of positive change movements within higher education that involve risk ... there is always risk when there is change. 

How brave are we as we promote change initiatives aimed at increasing possibilities for transformational learning experiences?  What are we willing to risk and endure to promote positive change with, and on behalf of, our students? 

After watching Admiral McRaven's commencement speech from the University of Texas (where he is now Chancellor), I'm feeling pretty wimpy.  I realize that I sometimes get discouraged even by just a little social discomfort when we aren't agreeing or achieving results together ... next time I feel like my work is risky or uncomfortable, I'll imagine being up to my neck in ice cold mud and start singing ...  

Curious?  Here is a 19 minute video about how to change the world for the better ...

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Yes, I know, this video is old (2014), but I just heard about it and it's good!

The Founder - an update to Ray Kroc

                                 

Ray Kroc, Founder of  McDonald’s System, Inc., a predecessor of the McDonald’s Corporation

Dick and Mac McDonald - original "Founders" of McDonalds in San Bernadino, CA

Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc in the movie, Founder (2017)

President Calvin Coolidge

The movie about the McDonald brothers, Dick and Mac, and their history with Ray Kroc has been on my must see list and, thanks to Netflix, I finally did see it.   With regard to innovation, the McDonalds brothers and Kroc are all inspiring in their own ways.

However ... Kroc wasn't quite as innocent and family oriented as Ronald McDonald (originally played by Willard Scott) might lead us to believe.   In fact, my last post was about confirmation bias and a related concern would be for people with an anti-business perspective to watch this movie, experience confirmation bias and conclude, "yes, those business people, or entrepreneurs, are all unethical and only care about money."  Even if Kroc's third wife, Joan, later gave most of their fortune to charity, how they came into the fortune isn't a story of altruism.

Maybe I should have read the book (or A book!) instead of waiting for the movie to update my understanding of Ray Kroc and also let me know that the quote (below) I have always attributed to Kroc actually belonged to Calvin Coolidge.  Oops.

Love this quote ... while Kroc had a picture of it in his office, it was not his quote but a quote by Calvin Coolidge - 30th President of the United States.

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Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence.

Talent will not; nothing is more common that unsuccessful people with talent.

Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.

Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.

Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

Confirmation Bias - the conversation continues

Recently, the news has repeated use of the term confirmation bias as the conversation continues about political divides following the shooting on the congressional baseball practice field.  Adding this term to the public lexicon could be really good for us as Americans while we work toward better critical thinking (and creative thinking) about wicked problems we want to address together.

Might we be able to open our minds to the values, beliefs and ideas of those who think differently from us rather than holding on tightly to our current understandings?   During the last election cycle, media representatives repeated the term "doubling down" often and you may have noticed the uptick in its use during everyday life.  Perhaps the media can offer us a societal uptick in resisting confirmation bias if they double down on the use of this term?


Confirmation Bias
"Confirmation bias, as the term is typically used in the psychological literature, connotes the seeking or interpreting of evidence in ways that are partial to existing beliefs, expectations, or a hypothesis in hand." (http://psy2.ucsd.edu/~mckenzie/nickersonConfirmationBias.pdf)


Critical Thinking
"Critical thinking examines assumptions, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence, and assesses conclusions." (http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic265890.files/Critical_Thinking_File/06_CT_Extended_Definition.pdf)

Wicked Problems
"A wicked problem is a social or cultural problem that is difficult or impossible to solve for as many as four reasons: incomplete or contradictory knowledge, the number of people and opinions involved, the large economic burden, and the interconnected nature of these problems with other problems."  (https://ssir.org/articles/entry/wicked_problems_problems_worth_solving#)

Bipartisanship is Scary, too (A Call for 21st Century Work Skills)

As the conversations continue about increasing civility after the shooting at the congressional practice field, we are hearing the term bipartisanship as something to strive for in politics.  But, bipartisanship still keeps us in the realm of dichotomies such as us-them, in-group versus out-group, Republican-Democrat, wrong and right, good and bad.

For a moment, Bernie Sanders had us considering that there are more than two perspectives vying for the leadership of our country but many are back to pretending that there is a box, or side, representing Democrats and a contrasting box, or side, that represents Republicans somehow adding up to the whole of our population.  When I hear signs of this thinking (or lack of) in higher education, I find it especially concerning that our critical thinking and diversity and inclusion touting environment can be part of promoting this type of (scary) simplicity.  If we think and behave as such simpletons, how can we prepare students for sophisticated citizenship?

At the Innovation League Learning Summit that concluded on Wednesday at the Omni in Paradise Valley, the "Ten Skills for the Future Workforce" (University of Phoenix Research Institute) handout was one of my favorite tools offered to us.  Could these skills help all of us improve our multi-disciplinary, interdisciplinary, trans-perspective inspired thinking & behavior, as well as outcomes, for our micro and macro communities?  I think so! 

Thank you Innovation League and University of Phoenix Research Institute ~

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Another perspective, perhaps consistent with Chomsky, would be that two perspective, two party thinking isn't even real ... that there is only one establishment and we falsely believe that we are considering more than one way of thinking through the two party dichotomy ... hmmmmm ... so many opportunities for critical thinking ~