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Imagine a learning experience that is designed so effectively that what the student learns is powered by how the learner is being assessed. Shared assessment practices are established when learners play a role in understanding, planning, and demonstrating evidence of their own learning. When educators adopt assessment practices that allow the learners to play an active role in the design, the assessment process becomes more relevant to the student, and helps them connect their classroom learning to life outside of school.

Assessing the learner, as well as the learning
In an attempt to re-balance the system, the adoption of certain assessment practices and approaches creates a system that can develop and measure the skills that the future requires, while also capturing traditional learning proficiencies. To begin measuring what matters, we need to intentionally invest in developing personal success skills, along with the capacity and inclination of the learner to be a learner for life. Intentionally developing students' learnability prepares them for the world outside the classroom walls. When we shift the learner's role, and support their skill development in the areas of self-assessment, resource curation, and presenting evidence of learning, we move to a system that assesses more than just content. This system invests in the learner as intentionally as the learning, and allows for the development of learner skills.

Co-designing alternative means of assessment
A teacher who designs a learning environment that shifts the role of the learner to a co-designer allows for customized learning paths and opens the doors to multiple means of assessments throughout the learning process. Creating dialogue around a learner's personal goals and progress towards proficiency throughout the learning process helps them understand the importance of checkpoints and the collection of artifacts to demonstrate proficiency. This also allows learners to see how their efforts are generating progress.

In order for learners to be successful as co-designers of assessment, the educator needs to move into the role of a learning coach, relinquishing some of the overarching control in order to allow student voices to be heard. The fear of the unknown can be terrifying, especially in terms of assessment, but it is necessary if we want every learner to have the capacity and drive to learn for life. Putting that trust in learners shows them that we, as educators, acknowledge that they are capable. Imagine asking just one simple question to a group of learners: "How will you show what you have learned?" Such a question can promote a variety of responses, depending on the individual's view of learning. Learners need to have the autonomy to consider that end result and the ability to bring aspects of their learner profile into the decision making.

When educators are clear about what the students need to learn, and when students understand the competency, or standard, they are working towards and why it is relevant, they move from wanting to get a "good grade" to true learning through proficiency based progress. They can then work backwards to break down what they need to know and how they will learn this information. Co-designing this learning and assessment process builds learner agency and leads to greater motivation and independence.

What matters most
Intentionally repositioning the learner in the assessment process is part of a comprehensive effort to develop an entirely learner centered system. Assessments can be used as an overall approach to nurture a powerful learner as part of a systemic personalized learning effort. Ultimately, we want learners to work in partnership with the educator as they strive toward demonstration of mastery. In a world where learning is the new currency, we must help learners see assessment not as the final chapter, but rather as a crucial step on their learning journey. Because the learner, and their journey, are what matter.

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Imagine a learning experience that is designed so effectively that what the student learns is powered by how the learner is being assessed. Shared assessment practices are established when learners play a role in understanding, planning, and demonstrating evidence of their own learning.

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Pineapple Charts for PD with eachother! 

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Pineapple Charts for PD with eachother! 

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Professional Development: The phrase has a way of striking dread into the hearts of teachers. But not because teachers don't WANT to improve. Not because we believe we're done growing and learning. Far from it.

In fact, so many teachers bristle at the thought of PD because most of the time, it's executed so poorly. Although the typical one-size-fits-all format-where every teacher in the building is herded together to listen to an expert speak-has been widely denounced, it still persists as the default model. Sometimes, if the speaker happens to be engaging, some teachers will walk away with a small tidbit they can apply to their own work. For most teachers, though, it feels like a waste of precious time, time that could be spent developing skills that would make a real difference in their specific practice.

But things are starting to change. More and more schools are experimenting with personalized approaches to professional development; this guide from EdSurge takes a comprehensive look at all the different shapes this can take. And as new unconferences pop up every week all over the world, teachers are seeing just how easy it can be to learn from each other, without the need for any kind of outside expert.

And now, taking PD to an even simpler, more local, more affordable level, we have the Pineapple Chart.

What is a Pineapple Chart?

A Pineapple Chart is a system that allows teachers to invite one another into their classrooms for informal observation. The chart is set up in some location where teachers go on a daily basis: the teacher's lounge, the copy room, or wherever teacher mailboxes live in your school. On the chart, teachers "advertise" the interesting things they are doing in their classrooms, activities they think others might want to observe. The activities could be as complex as a science lab, a history simulation, or a Skype session with a school in another country. Or they could be as simple as a read-aloud or a lesson on badminton.

The chart represents one week of school. Along the top, five columns are labeled Monday through Friday. Along the side, rows assigned to various chunks of each school day. In a middle or high school, these would be class periods. In an elementary school, the rows could be divided by hours or half-hours.

When a teacher sees something on the chart she (or he) is interested in, she goes to that classroom at the designated time, sits down in an out-of-the-way spot, and watches. That's it. No note-taking is required, no post-observation conference, no write-up. Just a visit. She can even grade papers or catch up on email if she wants, paying closer attention when the moment calls for it, but getting work done in the meantime. She can stay for five minutes or a whole class period. The key word here is informal, and it's the best way for teachers to learn lots of skills and techniques just when they need them.

The reasons the visiting teacher might come in are endless: It could be that she wants to start using Google Cardboard, but would like to see another teacher do it first. Maybe she's struggling with classroom management and knows this teacher runs a tight ship. Or maybe she's there because she always wanted to learn more about World War I. Regardless of the initial reason, what she ends up learning is likely to be far more than she expected. During that Google Cardboard visit, she'll also notice a cool bulletin board in that teacher's classroom and decide to try something similar in her room. While watching the lesson on World War I, she'll pick up a questioning technique she ends up using in her own teaching. Every teacher in your building has their own unique blend of skills and talents, but the only way you'll ever learn about them is to see your colleagues in action.

The Origins of the Pineapple Chart

The pineapple has long been a symbol of hospitality; it's used in the chart in the spirit of welcoming one another into our school "homes."

But that's just the beginning. Here's how the Pineapple Chart came to be: In early 2015, Mark Barnes and I were compiling innovative teaching "hacks" for our book, Hacking Education: 10 Quick Fixes for Every School. I remembered my sister, who teaches science in Massachusetts, telling me about her attempts to start a "Pineapple Welcome" initiative at her school, where teachers would hang a picture of a pineapple outside their classroom doors, indicating that any other teacher who wanted to visit was welcome to stop by.

When I asked her how the whole pineapple thing went, she said, "Eh. Some people came in, but usually I would hang the pineapple and nothing would happen. I stopped doing it after a while."

This bothered me, because some of the most valuable skills I have picked up as a teacher came from informally observing my colleagues in their classrooms. I feel strongly that some of the best professional development available to teachers lives right inside the walls of our schools, and if we could just watch each other teach more, we would all grow exponentially.

Just hanging the pineapple on the door, I realized, had two shortcomings. One, it was only visible to teachers who happened to pass by that door on that day. And two, it didn't offer enough information: Just seeing a pineapple on the door tells the visitor nothing about what's going on inside. If a teacher is going to spend time visiting another teacher's classroom, he wants to know that the thing he's coming to observe is something he's actually interested in. A chart posted in a central location, with a bit of information about the day's activities, solves both problems.

We asked my sister to pilot this centralized system at her school, and the first Pineapple Chart was born. Since the publication of Hacking Education, the Pineapple Chart system has taken off in schools all across the world, and the results have been fantastic.

Two Schools Where Pineapple Charts Are Making an Impact

Gator Run Elementary, Weston, Florida

"The Pineapple Chart has been a game changer for the staff at Gator Run," says Intern Principal Cyndi Felton, who initiated Gator Run's first Pineapple Chart in January of 2016. "We have some of the very best PD available under our own roof. Now teachers have the opportunity to get into each other's classrooms and learn from one another."

Since the chart has been going, Felton has seen teachers trying new things more quickly. "Last year we noticed tools and strategies spreading throughout the building after Pineapple Chart visits. Kahoot, Nearpod, Plickers, in-class flipped lessons, SeeSaw, and performance scales in addition to unique procedures, classroom management and teaching strategies."

Maple Avenue Middle School, Littlestown, Pennsylvania

In January of 2016, when Assistant Principal Cortney Golden first launched the chart in her school, she worked hard to keep it full. "I was very aware that if we lost momentum, and the chart was blank, it would die. I sent staff-wide emails, group emails, personal emails, face to face requests, and even had my secretary appealing to teachers to sign up. Getting teachers to sign up was my first priority....then, once that became more automatic, we began to 'push' visiting."

Since then, informal observation and an open-door policy have become part of the school's culture. So much so that the word "pineappling" has become a verb:

"Collectively, we embrace pineappling now more than ever," says Golden. "As teachers desire to grow their craft, to foster 21st century skills, and to help students discover and pursue their passions, it becomes clear to all that teachers need each other. Pineappling gives teachers the permission they feel they need to collaborate, observe, ask, and reflect. It is a 'safe' and powerful professional development opportunity. Pineappling is free, fits within the school day, and has proven to be the BEST professional growth experience."

Tips for Making Pineapple Charts Work

Find creative ways to make the time.
The simplest way to squeeze these visits in is for teachers to do them during their planning time, or part of it. Remember, we're not talking about a whole class period necessarily; a 15-minute visit may be all that's needed to pick up a new strategy. In cases where teachers want to see something that doesn't coincide with planning time, the staff will need to be more creative:

A floating sub can be arranged for a day (or a few days) and teachers can "sign up for the sub" in order to visit another room.

Administrators (or other certified personnel) can step in to cover a class. This solution does double-duty, as it gives the principal some time to interact more closely with small groups of students. Instead of covering the teacher's regular material, the administrator could use this time for having discussions about school issues or just getting to know the students.

Teachers can team up to cover each other's classes. Imagine a scenario where teacher A agrees to cover teacher B's class while teacher B observes in teacher C's room. Then everyone switches roles two more times. A motivated school might even experiment with a second chart (beside the Pineapple Chart) where teachers post a need for coverage and other teachers sign up to cover for them.

Keep it voluntary.
Administrators, be warned! The quickest way to suck the life out of this initiative is to make it mandatory for all teachers. By keeping visits informal and strictly voluntary (for the host teacher AND the visitor), you'll ensure that the Pineapple Chart is always seen as a positive thing, a learning opportunity initiated by the teacher.

Skip the documentation.
An equally fast way to drain people's enthusiasm for visits is to force them to do some kind of write-up afterward. Please don't turn the chart into another reason to require teachers to document. If they know paperwork is expected of them, they will be far less likely to visit.

Start with the bold and the brave...
When you first launch the Chart, many teachers will be shy about posting lessons. Get things going by having your most extroverted teachers sign up first. If you get a group of 5-10 teachers willing to put themselves out there, this will eventually help others step forward as well.

...but set the bar low.
Make sure teachers know they don't have to be doing something 'impressive' in order to post a lesson to the chart. "The hardest part is getting teachers to understand it doesn't have to be an extravagant lesson to sign up," says Felton. "Their everyday strategies and standard procedures can be incredibly helpful to someone who has never seen or thought of it. You really never know what you might learn whether it's a 5- or a 25-minute visit."

Sell it.
Especially when you first get started, encourage those who do the observing to share the good things they saw by talking about it in faculty meetings, sharing a compliment on a teacher "brag board" or posting about it online. At Maple Avenue, Golden encouraged teachers to tweet about their experiences using the hashtag#MAMSLearning. "This helped keep the excitement high, and the pressure low," she says. "Although I still have to harass teachers every once and again (I call it "gently wooing") to showcase the teaching and learning in their classroom, it has become very much part of our culture."

Share Your Story

If your school has already started using a Pineapple Chart, tell us about it in the comments. I would love to hear about tweaks you've made to the system and how the system is impacting teacher relationships and student growth.

Learn More

The Pineapple Chart is just one of the 10 hacks Mark Barnes and I share in our 2015 book, Hacking Education: 10 Quick Fixes for Every School. Get your copy today and start hacking tomorrow! ♦

Learn something new every week.
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How Pineapple Charts Revolutionize Professional Development

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As one-size-fits-all PD fades into obscurity, more personalized professional development models have emerged. The Pineapple Chart may be the greatest of them all.

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Mayville Constellation - Proficiency based progress

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Legacy Vs. Competency Based

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The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) opens up new opportunities for states to offer personalized learning options for students. This policy shift is important because states now have the opportunity to align state accountability, assessment, and student systems of support with a vision for personalized learning. This opportunity will empower district innovators who have pioneered personalized learning approaches while also conforming to federal requirements that align to more traditional education systems.

As states and district leaders ponder the possibility of this paradigm shift, it's important to understand how this approach differs from the traditional education system.

The chart below illustrates the differences between a personalized, competency-based approach and a more traditional approach to education. Can you imagine how the differences in these core teaching and learning elements empower educators and students?

Lillian Pace is the Senior Director of National Policy with KnowledgeWorks.
Twitter

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What's the difference between traditional & competency-based education?

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The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) opens up new opportunities for states to offer personalized learning options for students. This policy shift is important because states now have the opportunity to align state accountability, assessment, and student systems of support with a vision for personalized learning.

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Visual of the SAIL Vision for the District 

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Visual of the SAIL Vision for the District 

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Admin created based on end of the Year data; how does is align to our continuum??

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Blog - Learning Independence Continuum...

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Blog - Learning Independence Continuum...

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In conjunction with the release of the white paper, The Learning Independence Continuum, we'll be posting a series of blogs on the concept of developing independent learners. This first post provides an overview and the remaining posts will each focus on one of the stages of the continuum:

We spend lots of time thinking about how to motivate learners, engage them in their learning, build self-efficacy, promote ownership for learning and foster independence as separate efforts. What may not be clear are the relationships among these learner characteristics and the power they hold to create highly proficient, consistently motivated learners. Consequently, we can find ourselves focusing on each characteristic in isolation, hoping that somehow they will lead to learners that are persistent, independent problem-solvers.

Instead, the white paper argues that each of these elements should be addressed strategically to build upon one another. The ultimate outcome that we seek are learners who can work independently, are able to drive their own learning, and want to learn out of curiosity - similar to the concept of "freelance" learners discussed in this blog by Ginger Lewman. Much literature and focus (dollars and programs) concentrate on building engaged learners - while this is important, we posit that efforts should go beyond engagement to nurturing independence in learners. We believe there is a continuum that builds from motivation to independence and we provide strategies around each of these elements. Parallel to building these characteristics is another continuum regarding who drives learning and activities - the educator or the learner. Early stages of learning, particularly involving inexperienced and immature learners, generally need to be more educator-driven/designed to motivate, engage and support learners. On the other end of the spectrum, activities that nurture independence in more experienced and mature learners will generally be driven more by the learners themselves. In personalized learning environments, learning activities will fall all along this continuum - at times it's more important for the educator to drive the work, at others, the learner will take the driver's seat. However, in order for this to happen, all of the characteristics along the continuum should be developed and nurtured in each learner.

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In conjunction with the release of the white paper, The Learning Independence Continuum, we'll be posting a series of blogs on the concept of developing independent learners. This first post provides an overview and the remaining posts will each focus on one of the stages of the continuum: Motivation Engagement Self-efficacy Ownership Independence We spend lots...

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Learning Continuum: Educator to Learner Drive

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Learning Continuum: Educator to Learner Drive

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Learning environments exist on a Learning Independence Continuum, according to James Rickbaugh, PhD, former Director of the Institute for Personalized Learning.

Educational leaders are able to refer to and develop their progression into personalized learning by monitoring progress on this continuum. When students have begun to take ownership of their learning and grow their independence as not only a student, but as a citizen, we have achieved a true learner-driven environment.

As students become increasingly more ready for the real world that awaits them beyond the four walls of a classroom, they begin to take more control of their learning and lead their own journey. This is one of our main goals for students by the time they leave the Waukesha STEM Academy.

In his white paper, " Learning Independence Continuum," Dr. Rickabaugh describes the importance of the transition from an educator-driven to learner-driven learning environment. There are many steps and stages that students and school-systems embrace and explore as they move along the continuum. Students don't necessarily travel to the end of the continuum and consider themselves "having arrived." There is no "right place" to be on the continuum, because each individual student is unique and carries a different readiness-level, as well as being driven by flexible intrinsic and extrinsic-motivation that propels them forward.

Creating a Learner-Driven Environment at Waukesha STEM Academy

In our seventh year of operation at Waukesha STEM Academy, we're still looking for ways to be more on the learner-driven end of the continuum.

Acknowledge Best Practices and Build on Them: A common misconception about traditional education and the "legacy model," is that it's old, outdated and irrelevant. This is far from true. Best practices in teaching are best practices because they work. They can and should still be incorporated into today's innovative educational settings.At Waukesha STEM Academy, we try to use and improve upon these practices but also allow for a gradual release of responsibility by the teacher, school staff and administration. In the process, our students expect more ownership of their own learning, along with voice and choice, as they begin to develop their own best practices for learning.

Today was a FLEX day. Students design their day based on needs. #personalizedlearning @XQAmerica @edUcation_frwd pic.twitter.com/LnXseZ8tAe

- @STEM_Saratoga (@STEM_Saratoga) March 19, 2016

Give Students the Tools and Supports to Be Self-Reliant: In the learner-driven environment at Waukesha STEM Academy, students have begun to find the tools necessary to be self-reliant, instead of always looking to their teacher. Through this, they have become their own best advocates in acquiring knowledge. No longer do students wait to be spoon-fed information. They are hungry and craving knowledge, but beyond that, they need to know how to apply what they are learning in context. Our goal is to not just build masters of content, but to build experts in context.
With inquiry-based learning, project and problem-based learning, as well as adaptive online platforms, teachers have begun to incorporate much more efficient platforms to provide students with multiple modalities of learning similar skills, while providing rapid feedback cycles. With the presence of tools to aide in proficiency-building, teachers may now act more in the capacity of coaches for mastery and application, to help students learn while doing... not just learning and then doing.

Give Teachers the Space to Adapt Instruction and Support as Necessary to Personalize Learning: The gradual release of responsibility by educators at all grade-levels has afforded teachers the ability to let those students who are a bit more independent and have grown along the Learning Independence Continuum, move more at their own pace. We have really worked to avoid looking at students with a "born-on-date," but rather, acknowledging that students come to use at different places and move at different paces, regardless of their age. At the same time, educators have the ability to hone in on and support those students who need more one-on-one guidance and direct instruction, while allowing those who are a bit more independent to soar.

I love my STEM staff! @STEM_Saratoga @edUcation_frwd pic.twitter.com/jdcau7LYvs

- Rebecca Carlson (@CarlsonRcarlson) August 25, 2016

Share how your applying Dr. Rickabaugh's Learning Independence Continuum with me on Twitter at @edUcation_frwd or comment on Facebook.

Our guest posts are provided by teachers, coaches, administrators, students, community partners and more. Keep up with more of what's happening at KnowledgeWorks by checking us out on social media.

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Learning Independence Continuum: The Path to Learner-Driven

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Learning environments exist on a Learning Independence Continuum, according to James Rickbaugh, PhD, former Director of the Institute for Personalized Learning. Educational leaders are able to refer to and develop their progression into personalized learning by monitoring progress on this continuum.

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SignUpGenius - Free Online Sign Up Forms

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SignUpGenius is an online sign up software to simplify volunteer management and event planning. Customize online sign up sheets and schedules for schools, nonprofits, business events and more.

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- K-8 staff
How do we roll out and incorporate throughout the school year
-families
- explain our first constellation to the family
-update and support through web-site; social media, and conversation nights

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Learners are resources not empty vessels.
Learning as a journey rather than an assembly line.

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Look fors for Proficiency Based Progress Constellation

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Look fors for Proficiency Based Progress Constellation

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-Could articulate the standard/target they are working on
-"In order to get further my learning, I will need to do ..."
- explain how they will get there
-Identify the "WHY" they are working on a particular /target
- connecting passion project with the targets

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LINK

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Mayville Constellation - Learner Profiles

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Customized learning paths - Constellation

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Customized learning paths - Constellation

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LINK

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Mayille Constellation - Customized learning paths - Google Drawings

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Mayille Constellation - Customized learning paths

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WHY for "Flexible Learning Spaces" - McDonald

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Flexible learning spaces Comfortable physical environments are conducive to collaborative learning, responsive to the needs of learners, and support individual, small-group and large-group instruction. Recognition of anytime/ anywhere learning Standards-based proficiency is recognized no matter w...

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Proficiency based progress - Constellation

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Proficiency based progress - Constellation

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LINK

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Mayville Constellation - Proficiency based progress

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Start with WHY

Stay with WHY

Be clear about WHAT

Be flexible about HOW

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—Tyler Coady, BS-Information Science & Technology, ’17

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UW Flexible Option: Online Competency-Based Degree and Certificate Programs, Education

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Earn a University of Wisconsin degree online, at a pace that fits your schedule. Discover UW Flexible Option competency-based programs.

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What would it look/sound/feel like?

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X10 = how long it takes John to post a pic.

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1 x 28 x 52 x 6 x 5 x 180 x 13 = 1 teacher, 28 kids, 52 minute periods, 6 periods a day, 5 days a week, 180 days a year, 13 years

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"If we teach today's students as we taught yesterday's, we rob them of tomorrow."
- John Dewey, 1915

The availability of content and the multitude of distribution platforms have grown exponentially in recent years. The explosion of social media, combined with the ability to stream content to virtually all types of devices, both at home and while on the go, has radically altered the way in which people interact with media. No longer does one have to wait until a scheduled time to watch their favorite television show. It's available when and where they want it, often on various platforms and in multiple formats, with the click of a button. Users can even remove or ignore the media they don't want, such as commercials. This "Netflix generation" of students (and all future generations) has no basis for understanding information that isn't readily and immediately avail able. These students have come to expect high-quality content-on demand, anytime, and anywhere. This mindset puts our schools in an interesting position.

In classrooms where teachers view themselves as the key disseminators of information, content is primarily derived from a static textbook, and information isn't meant to be consumed until a particular point during a larger scope and sequence. This model has become obsolete to the current Netflix generation. Such a learning environment is seen as completely irrelevant and unrelated to the world students experience outside the classroom walls. To avoid this, and in an effort to remain relevant in a digital world, many school leaders have been purchasing vast amounts of technology with the hopes that it'll move instructional practices into the current century. Remaining relevant to a generation of students who consume and create digital content daily obliterates the perceived effectiveness of a traditional stand-and-deliver, regurgitation-based methodology. If your mindset is that a teacher's main job is content delivery, then they've just been outsourced by Netflix and YouTube.

Fortunately, a recent survey indicates that schools are evolving in these areas to adapt to the Netflix generation. Project Tomorrow, an organization that studies trends in this area, produces the yearly Speak Up Survey and analyzed feedback from almost half a million students, parents, and educators from over 2,000 districts throughout the United States in 2015. Some of the key findings from this survey were the following (Project Tomorrow, 2016):

* Over three-quarters of middle school students (78 percent) are tapping into online videos, and 6 out of 10 (61 percent) are playing online games, all in service of various types of self-directed learning goals.
* School principals (84 percent) are almost unanimous in their belief that the effective use of technology within instruction is important for student success. However, they do acknowledge challenges or barriers to meeting the expectations of effective technology usage. * Five out of ten administrators note that the implementation of digital content resources, such as videos, simulations, and animations, was already generating positive student outcomes. * Almost 60 percent of technology leaders say that one-quarter of instructional materials in their schools today are digital-not paper-based-and 26 percent say that their level of paperlessness is 50 percent. * The top subject areas in which students in grades 6-12 watch videos to support their homework, research projects, or studies are science (66 percent), math (59 percent), social studies/history (53 percent), and English/language arts (45 percent).
School curricula and experiences are evolving, yet on the whole, the speed of transformation remains slow. As school leaders spark this evolution, they often rely on massive amounts of technology to "fix" traditional issues, which we believe has led to the current "educational technology fallacy," an issue that Eric Sheninger and I cover extensively in our new book, Learning Transformed: 8 Keys to Designing Tomorrow's Schools, Today.
A portion of this post is an excerpt from Learning Transformed: 8 Keys to Designing Tomorrow's Schools, Today, which was published by ASCD in June 2017. Learning Transformed comes with a free study guide for school leaders.

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Teaching the "Netflix Generation" #LT8keys

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"If we teach today's students as we taught yesterday's, we rob them of tomorrow." - John Dewey, 1915 The availability of content and the multitude of distribution platforms have grown exponentially in recent years.

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About Education Reimagined: we're guided by a transformational vision for the future of education created by 28 ideologically diverse education stakeholders

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-Safe place to take risks
-Empower learners to become successful humans
-Invested and engaged in their own learning
-Being a part of the community
-Expand the potential of each learner to maximize their learning
-Learners value themselves
-Developing them as humans
-Learners see the value of learning

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Relax, free your minds and laugh! New funny pet videos every week!

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Execution Is a People Problem, Not a Strategy Problem

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Execution Is a People Problem, Not a Strategy Problem

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Paul,* the CEO of Maxreed, a global publishing company, was having trouble sleeping. Publishing is an industry that's changing even faster than most other fast-changing industries, but Paul wasn't awake worrying about his strategy. He had a solid plan that took advantage of new technologies, and the board and his leadership team were aligned around it. Paul and his team had already reorganized the structure - new divisions, revised roles, redesigned processes - to support their strategy.

So what was Paul worrying about? People.

Which is precisely what he should be worrying about. However hard it is to devise a smart strategy, it's ten times harder to get people to execute on that strategy. And a poorly executed strategy, no matter how clever, is worthless.

In other words, your organization's biggest strategic challenge isn't strategic thinking - it's strategic acting.

If I were to depict the challenge graphically, it would be going from this:

To this:

The conundrum is how to get from the first graphic to the second one. Most organizations rely on communication plans to make that shift. Unfortunately, strategy communication, even if you do it daily, is not the same as - and is not enough to drive - strategy execution.

Because while strategy development and communication are about knowing something, strategy execution is about doing something. And the gap between what you know and what you do is often huge. Add in the necessity of having everyone acting in alignment with each other, and it gets even huger.

The reason strategy execution is often glossed over by even the most astute strategy consultants is because primarily it's not a strategy challenge. It's a human behavior one.

To deliver stellar results, people need to be hyperaligned and laser-focused on the highest-impact actions that will drive the organization's most important outcomes.

But even in well-run, stable organizations, people are misaligned, too broadly focused, and working at cross-purposes.

This isn't critical only for a changing company in a changing industry like Paul's. It's also true for fast-growing startups. And companies in turn-around situations. And those with new leadership. Any time it's critical to focus on strategy - and when isn't it? - the most important strategy question you need to answer is: How can we align everyone's efforts and help them accomplish the organization's most important work?

That's the question Paul reached out to ask me. Below is the solution we implemented with him at Maxreed. We call it The Big Arrow Process, and it represents my best thinking after 25 years of experimenting with this very challenge.

Define the Big Arrow

We worked with Paul and a small group of his leaders to identify the most important outcome for Maxreed to achieve over the following 12 months. Their Big Arrow had to do with creating a strategy and product roadmap that was supported by the entire leadership team. The hardest part of this is getting to that one most important thing, the thing that would be a catalyst for driving the rest of the strategy forward.

Once we defined the Big Arrow, we tested it with a series of questions. If you answer "yes" to each of these questions, it's likely that your Big Arrow is on target:

Will success in the Big Arrow drive the mission of the larger organization?

Is the Big Arrow supporting, and supported by, your primary business goals?

Will achieving it make a statement to the organization about what's most important?

Will it lead to the execution of your strategy?

Is it the appropriate stretch?

Are you excited about it? Do you have an emotional connection to it?

Along with that outcome clarity, we also created behavioral clarity by identifying the most important behavior that would lead to achieving the outcome. For Maxreed, the behavior was about collaborating with trust and transparency. We determined this by asking a few questions: What current behavior do we see in the organization that will make driving the Big Arrow harder and make success less likely? We then articulated the opposite, which became our Big Arrow behavior.

Identify the Highest-Impact People

Once the Big Arrow was clear, we worked with Paul and his HR partner to identify the people who were most essential to achieving the goal. Doing this is critical because you want to focus your efforts and resources on the people who will have the most impact on the Big Arrow. In the case of Maxreed, we identified 10 people whose roles were core to the project, who already had organizational authority, and who were highly networked. With other clients, we've identified many more people at all levels of the hierarchy. As you think about who might be the appropriate people, ask the questions: Who has the greatest capacity to affect the forward momentum of the arrow? Who is an influencer in the organization? Who has an outsize impact on our Big Arrow outcome or behavior? Those are the people you should choose.

Determine What They Should Focus On

Once we established the key people, we worked with each of them and their managers to determine their:

Key contribution to moving the Big Arrow forward

Pivotal strength that will allow them to make their key contribution

Game changer, the thing that, if the person improves, will most improve their ability to make their key contribution

One of the things that makes this process successful is its simplicity. It's why we settled on one pivotal strength and one most critical game changer. Strategy execution needs to be laser-focused, and one of the biggest impediments to forward momentum on our most important work is trying to get forward momentum on all our work. Simplicity requires that we make choices. What will have the biggest impact? Then we make that one thing happen.

Hold Laser-Focused Coaching Sessions

Once we made sure the right people had the right focus, we coached in laser-focused, 30-minute one-on-one coaching sessions. Coaching is often used in organizations to fix a leader's flaws, but that is not the focus of this kind of coaching. Here, the leaders were coached to focus on making clear headway on their key contribution to the Big Arrow. These conversations only focus on larger behavioral patterns to the extent that they are getting in the way of the task at hand.

Collect and Share Data

Because we were coaching multiple people, we were able to maintain strict confidentiality with the individuals being coached while collecting data about trends and organizational obstacles they were facing, which we reported to Paul and his leadership team. This wasn't just opinion survey data; it represented the real obstacles preventing Maxreed's most valuable people from driving the company's most important priorities forward.

One of the main challenges we uncovered was a lack of cross-functional collaboration. Armed with that insight, Paul was able to address this issue directly, getting the key people in a room together and speaking openly about the issue. Eventually, he initiated a new cross-functional Big Arrow process that included leaders from the groups that weren't collaborating. Identifying what they needed to achieve together broke down the walls between the groups.

Amplify Performance

While Paul removed organizational obstacles, coaches continued to help Maxreed's most critical people address the particular obstacles and challenges they faced as they delivered their key contribution. Coaches addressed the typical challenges people struggle with when executing strategy: how to communicate priorities, how to deal with someone who is resistant, how to influence someone who doesn't report to you, how to say no to distractions, and so on. The coaching prioritized helping people build relationships on their own teams and across silos, which was supported by the data and the Big Arrow key behavior of collaborating with trust and transparency. Individuals aligned with the goals of the organization to drive continued growth and success.

While the Big Arrow process is ongoing, we sent out a survey to people being coached as well as others outside the program to assess progress being made by the key contributors. Compared to before the coaching, are they more effective or less effective at making their key contribution, achieving the outcomes of the Big Arrow, and addressing their game changer? There were 98 responses to the survey:

Key contribution: 90% said either more effective or much more effective.

Big Arrow: 88% said either more effective or much more effective.

Game Changer: 84% said either more effective or much more effective.

In other words, the key contributors were getting massive traction in moving the organization's most important work - its key strategy - forward. This data was confirmed by Paul's own observations of the progress they've made on their Big Arrow outcome, a strategy and product roadmap that is supported by the entire leadership team.

Maybe most important, the broader organization was noticing. Which, of course, is how you start a movement.

Paul is still working hard to continue the momentum of the strategic shift. That's the point, really: Strategy execution is not a moment in time. It's thousands of moments across time.

But now, at least, it's happening.
*Names and some details have been changed to protect privacy.

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Execution Is a People Problem, Not a Strategy Problem

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Paul,* the CEO of Maxreed, a global publishing company, was having trouble sleeping. Publishing is an industry that's changing even faster than most other fast-changing industries, but Paul wasn't awake worrying about his strategy. He had a solid plan that took advantage of new technologies, and the board and his leadership team were aligned around it.

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https://dpi.wi.gov/personalized-learning/elements

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https://www.amazon.com/Passionate-Learners-Empower-Students-Education/dp/1138916927

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http://digitalpromise.org/

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We were subjected to name tags, and I decided to try to buy into the positive vibe. We were also given helmets. Mine was pearlescent white with pink flowers, and apparently if the helmet fits, you have to wear it, despite how determined you are to switch it out for the plain gray one. We lined up in order of height to be matched with a bike.

We were taught the "balance first" method, which means you scooch along with your feet until you gain enough momentum to swing them up. I was relieved and horrified that we didn't have training wheels. At first, our bikes didn't have pedals, but a half-hour in, I saw a woman sail by with some. It was then that I became convinced that we'd be graded on a curve, so I raced to get my own set of pedals. My competitive spirit did not necessarily jibe with my skill level.

Learning to ride a bike in a public park means anyone can see you. This was plenty insulting, but I took special offense at the sleep-deprived puffy couples with squawking newborns openly delighting in our discomfort. These wan goons I derided sotto voce for bringing their squealing offspring to brunch or for clogging up the sidewalk were momentarily cooler than I, and that was unbearable.

I crashed into a fence. I crashed into a garbage can filled with extra pedals. I crashed into a woman whose jeans had a design that caught my eye. Evidently, staring at an obstruction guarantees you'll steer into it. I wish one of the teachers had pointed this out, because it seems important. Pro tip: Engaging your core does nothing. Bonus tip: Spin class is wrong.

I narrowly missed a man only by dangling my leg into the frame and falling. This encouraged an instructor to remind me that I had brakes. Again, I found it unconscionable that I was not informed of this earlier. I pulled over for a lesson on gears. I needed the break anyway because my, um, pelvic girdle felt bruised.

In 45 minutes, I could ride a bike. In 75 minutes, I could go in a straight line near indefinitely and make right-hand turns. I know I'll eventually master the left because I did not get into this to be the Derek Zoolander of bike riding. One thing I did learn straightaway, however, is that people with baby seats on their bikes are maniacs who should be locked up. As a new cyclist, I get a vote, and the added cargo's way too dicey, especially on turns, particularly if there are cars or pebbles.

That said, biking with a kid is O.K. if you are forced to flee via your previously devised escape route because of a tsunami or zombies. But man, that kid better be wearing a helmet. Preferably a plain gray one.

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The Terror and Humiliation of Learning to Ride a Bike at 33

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We were subjected to name tags, and I decided to try to buy into the positive vibe. We were also given helmets. Mine was pearlescent white with pink flowers, and apparently if the helmet fits, you have to wear it, despite how determined you are to switch it out for the plain gray one.

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Great Businesses Scale Their Learning, Not Just Their Operations

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Great Businesses Scale Their Learning, Not Just Their Operations

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Executive Summary

Ronald Coase nailed it back in 1937 when he identified scalable efficiency as the key driver of the growth of large institutions. But here's the challenge. Scalable efficiency works best in stable environments that are not evolving rapidly. Today we live in a world that is increasingly shaped by exponentially improving digital technologies that are accelerating change, increasing uncertainty, and driving performance pressure on a global scale. There still is a compelling rationale for large institutions, but it's a very different one from scalable efficiency. It's scalable learning. In a world that is more rapidly changing and where our needs are evolving at an accelerating rate, the institutions that are most likely to thrive will be those that provide an opportunity to learn faster together. Scalable learning offers the potential to shift away from a "diminishing returns" model to an "increasing returns" model where the more people who join together to learn faster, the more rapidly value gets created.

Ronald Coase nailed it back in 1937 when he identified scalable efficiency as the key driver of the growth of large institutions. It's far easier and cheaper to coordinate the activities of a large number of people if they're within one institution rather than spread out across many independent organizations.

But here's the challenge. Scalable efficiency works best in stable environments that are not evolving rapidly. It also assumes that the constituencies served by these institutions will settle for standardized products and services that meet the lowest common denominator of need.

Today we live in a world that is increasingly shaped by exponentially improving digital technologies that are accelerating change, increasing uncertainty, and driving performance pressure on a global scale. Consumers are less and less willing to settle for the standardized offerings that drove the success of large institutions in the past. Our research into the long-term decline of return on assets for all public companies in the US from 1965 to today (it's gone down by 75%) is just one indicator of this pressure. Another indicator is the shrinking life span of companies on the S&P 500. A third is the declining rates of trust indicated by the Edelman Trust Barometer - as the gap grows between what we want and expect and what we receive, our trust in the ability of these institutions to serve our needs erodes.

To reverse these trends, we need to move beyond narrow discussions of product or service innovation, or even more sophisticated conversations about process innovation or business model innovation. Instead, we need to talk about institutional innovation, or re-thinking the rationale for why we have institutions to begin with.

We believe there still is a compelling rationale for large institutions, but it's a very different one from scalable efficiency. It's scalable learning. In a world that is more rapidly changing and where our needs are evolving at an accelerating rate, the institutions that are most likely to thrive will be those that provide an opportunity to learn faster together.

We're not talking about sharing existing knowledge more effectively (although there's certainly a lot of opportunity there). In a world of exponential change, existing knowledge depreciates at an accelerating rate. The most powerful learning in this kind of world involves creating new knowledge. This kind of learning does not occur in a training room; it occurs on the job, in the day-to-day work environment.

For example, our informal survey of where employees are spending their time in major departments across large companies suggests that 60-70% of their time is consumed in "exception handling" - addressing unexpected events that the existing processes can't handle. These exceptions are a great opportunity to create new knowledge - how to handle something never anticipated. Yet, today this work is generally done inefficiently - workers struggle to find each other and to access the relevant data and analytics required to resolve the exception. Once they resolve the exception, what they did and learned is largely lost to the rest of the organization.

Moreover, most organizations seem to use digital technology to simply automate tasks and eliminate people. But scalable learning harnesses technology to augment the capabilities of people. Routine tasks do need to be automated, but for the purpose of freeing up people to explore new approaches to create even more value. In this context, one key dimension of learning is for workers to discover how to more effectively use increasingly powerful digital tools in specific contexts. Historical studies of the Industrial Revolution have shown that there was a significant lag between the introduction of new industrial machinery into the workplace and resulting productivity improvements because it took time for workers to develop the skills required to get the most value out of the machinery - skills that could only be taught in a very limited form because they had to be adapted to specific contexts and needs.

Scalable learning not only helps people inside the institution learn faster. It also scales learning by connecting with others outside the institution and building deep, trust-based relationships that can help all participants to learn faster by working together. For example, a number of entrepreneurial motorcycle companies in Chongqing, China have created product design networks connecting a large number of technologists and component vendors and helping them to work together to improve the designs of the components in ways that have led to significant cost reduction while maintaining or improving product performance and reliability.

What if we went further, redesigning our work environments (physical, virtual, and management systems) to help accelerate learning and performance improvement on the job? We have not been able to find a single company that has undertaken this in a systematic and holistic way. We did find some intriguing examples of companies that have introduced interesting elements into the work environment to accelerate learning. For example, Intuit has deployed experimentation platforms throughout the company to encourage employees to try and test new approaches to deliver more value while managing the risk associated with these experiments.

In institutions driven by scalable efficiency, it is the responsibility of the individual to fit into the assigned tasks and roles required by the institution. In institutions driven by scalable learning, the institutions must find ways to evolve and adapt to the needs of the individuals within their organization.

Scalable efficiency doesn't just demand conformity among the individuals within the institution. It also seeks conformity among those it serves - that's the path to scalable efficiency.

Scalable learning on the other hand is driven by the desire to learn more about those who are being served by the institutions and then to provide ever more value to those constituencies by tailoring products and services to address the individual and evolving needs of those being served. That learning is a prerequisite to understanding how to deliver more and more value to those being served. Becoming more responsive to the evolving unique needs of the individuals being served by institutions could help to restore the trust that has been eroding.

Not only could innovating around scalable learning help to rebuild trust in our institutions, it could also lead to a profound shift in the nature of performance improvement. The scalable efficiency institutional model is inherently a diminishing returns model - the more efficient these institutions become, the longer and harder they will need to work to get the next increment of performance improvement. Scalable learning, on the other hand, for the first time offers the potential to shift to an increasing returns model where the more people who join together to learn faster, the more rapidly value gets created.

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Great Businesses Scale Their Learning, Not Just Their Operations

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Executive Summary Ronald Coase nailed it back in 1937 when he identified scalable efficiency as the key driver of the growth of large institutions. But here's the challenge. Scalable efficiency works best in stable environments that are not evolving rapidly.

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"Lifelong Learning"

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THE RECEPTION AREA contains a segment of a decommissioned Underground train carriage, where visitors wait to be collected. The surfaces are wood and glass. In each room the talk is of code, web development and data science. At first sight the London office of General Assembly looks like that of any other tech startup. But there is one big difference: whereas most firms use technology to sell their products online, General Assembly uses the physical world to teach technology. Its office is also a campus. The rooms are full of students learning and practising code, many of whom have quit their jobs to come here. Full-time participants have paid between £8,000 and £10,000 ($9,900-12,400) to learn the lingua franca of the digital economy in a programme lasting 10-12 weeks.

General Assembly, with campuses in 20 cities from Seattle to Sydney, has an alumni body of around 35,000 graduates. Most of those who enroll for full-time courses expect them to lead to new careers. The company's curriculum is based on conversations with employers about the skills they are critically short of. It holds "meet and hire" events where firms can see the coding work done by its students. Career advisers help students with their presentation and interview techniques. General Assembly measures its success by how many of its graduates get a paid, permanent, full-time job in their desired field. Of its 2014-15 crop, three-quarters used the firm's career-advisory services, and 99% of those were hired within 180 days of beginning their job hunt.

The company's founder, Jake Schwartz, was inspired to start the company by two personal experiences: a spell of drifting after he realised that his degree from Yale conferred no practical skills, and a two-year MBA that he felt had cost too much time and money: "I wanted to change the return-on-investment equation in education by bringing down the costs and providing the skills that employers were desperate for."

In rich countries the link between learning and earning has tended to follow a simple rule: get as much formal education as you can early in life, and reap corresponding rewards for the rest of your career. The literature suggests that each additional year of schooling is associated with an 8-13% rise in hourly earnings. In the period since the financial crisis, the costs of leaving school early have become even clearer. In America, the unemployment rate steadily drops as you go up the educational ladder.

Many believe that technological change only strengthens the case for more formal education. Jobs made up of routine tasks that are easy to automate or offshore have been in decline. The usual flipside of that observation is that the number of jobs requiring greater cognitive skill has been growing. The labour market is forking, and those with college degrees will naturally shift into the lane that leads to higher-paying jobs.

The reality seems to be more complex. The returns to education, even for the high-skilled, have become less clear-cut. Between 1982 and 2001 the average wages earned by American workers with a bachelor's degree rose by 31%, whereas those of high-school graduates did not budge, according to the New York Federal Reserve. But in the following 12 years the wages of college graduates fell by more than those of their less educated peers. Meanwhile, tuition costs at universities have been rising.

A question of degree, and then some

The decision to go to college still makes sense for most, but the idea of a mechanistic relationship between education and wages has taken a knock. A recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Centre showed that a mere 16% of Americans think that a four-year degree course prepares students very well for a high-paying job in the modern economy. Some of this may be a cyclical effect of the financial crisis and its economic aftermath. Some of it may be simply a matter of supply: as more people hold college degrees, the associated premium goes down. But technology also seems to be complicating the picture.

A paper published in 2013 by a trio of Canadian economists, Paul Beaudry, David Green and Benjamin Sand, questions optimistic assumptions about demand for non-routine work. In the two decades prior to 2000, demand for cognitive skills soared as the basic infrastructure of the IT age (computers, servers, base stations and fibre-optic cables) was being built; now that the technology is largely in place, this demand has waned, say the authors. They show that since 2000 the share of employment accounted for by high-skilled jobs in America has been falling. As a result, college-educated workers are taking on jobs that are cognitively less demanding (see chart), displacing less educated workers.

This analysis buttresses the view that technology is already playing havoc with employment. Skilled and unskilled workers alike are in trouble. Those with a better education are still more likely to find work, but there is now a fair chance that it will be unenjoyable. Those who never made it to college face being squeezed out of the workforce altogether. This is the argument of the techno-pessimists, exemplified by the projections of Carl-Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne, of Oxford University, who in 2013 famously calculated that 47% of existing jobs in America are susceptible to automation.

There is another, less apocalyptic possibility. James Bessen, an economist at Boston University, has worked out the effects of automation on specific professions and finds that since 1980 employment has been growing faster in occupations that use computers than in those that do not. That is because automation tends to affect tasks within an occupation rather than wiping out jobs in their entirety. Partial automation can actually increase demand by reducing costs: despite the introduction of the barcode scanner in supermarkets and the ATM in banks, for example, the number of cashiers and bank tellers has grown.

But even though technology may not destroy jobs in aggregate, it does force change upon many people. Between 1996 and 2015 the share of the American workforce employed in routine office jobs declined from 25.5% to 21%, eliminating 7m jobs. According to research by Pascual Restrepo of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the 2007-08 financial crisis made things worse: between 2007 and 2015 job openings for unskilled routine work suffered a 55% decline relative to other jobs.

In many occupations it has become essential to acquire new skills as established ones become obsolete. Burning Glass Technologies, a Boston-based startup that analyses labour markets by scraping data from online job advertisements, finds that the biggest demand is for new combinations of skills-what its boss, Matt Sigelman, calls "hybrid jobs". Coding skills, for example, are now being required well beyond the technology sector. In America, 49% of postings in the quartile of occupations with the highest pay are for jobs that frequently ask for coding skills (see chart). The composition of new jobs is also changing rapidly. Over the past five years, demand for data analysts has grown by 372%; within that segment, demand for data-visualisation skills has shot up by 2,574%.

A college degree at the start of a working career does not answer the need for the continuous acquisition of new skills, especially as career spans are lengthening. Vocational training is good at giving people job-specific skills, but those, too, will need to be updated over and over again during a career lasting decades. "Germany is often lauded for its apprenticeships, but the economy has failed to adapt to the knowledge economy," says Andreas Schleicher, head of the education directorate of the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries. "Vocational training has a role, but training someone early to do one thing all their lives is not the answer to lifelong learning."

Such specific expertise is meant to be acquired on the job, but employers seem to have become less willing to invest in training their workforces. In its 2015 Economic Report of the President, America's Council of Economic Advisers found that the share of the country's workers receiving either paid-for or on-the-job training had fallen steadily between 1996 and 2008. In Britain the average amount of training received by workers almost halved between 1997 and 2009, to just 0.69 hours a week.

Perhaps employers themselves are not sure what kind of expertise they need. But it could also be that training budgets are particularly vulnerable to cuts when the pressure is on. Changes in labour-market patterns may play a part too: companies now have a broader range of options for getting the job done, from automation and offshoring to using self-employed workers and crowdsourcing. "Organisations have moved from creating talent to consuming work," says Jonas Prising, the boss of Manpower, an employment consultancy.

Add all of this up, and it becomes clear that times have got tougher for workers of all kinds. A college degree is still a prerequisite for many jobs, but employers often do not trust it enough to hire workers just on the strength of that, without experience. In many occupations workers on company payrolls face the prospect that their existing skills will become obsolete, yet it is often not obvious how they can gain new ones. "It is now reasonable to ask a marketing professional to be able to develop algorithms," says Mr Sigelman, "but a linear career in marketing doesn't offer an opportunity to acquire those skills." And a growing number of people are self-employed. In America the share of temporary workers, contractors and freelancers in the workforce rose from 10.1% in 2005 to 15.8% in 2015.

Reboot camp

The answer seems obvious. To remain competitive, and to give low- and high-skilled workers alike the best chance of success, economies need to offer training and career-focused education throughout people's working lives. This special report will chart some of the efforts being made to connect education and employment in new ways, both by smoothing entry into the labour force and by enabling people to learn new skills throughout their careers. Many of these initiatives are still embryonic, but they offer a glimpse into the future and a guide to the problems raised by lifelong reskilling.

Quite a lot is already happening on the ground. General Assembly, for example, is just one of a number of coding-bootcamp providers. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) offered by companies such as Coursera and Udacity, feted at the start of this decade and then dismissed as hype within a couple of years, have embraced new employment-focused business models. LinkedIn, a professional-networking site, bought an online training business, Lynda, in 2015 and is now offering courses through a service called LinkedIn Learning. Pluralsight has a library of on-demand training videos and a valuation in unicorn territory. Amazon's cloud-computing division also has an education arm.

Universities are embracing online and modular learning more vigorously. Places like Singapore are investing heavily in providing their citizens with learning credits that they can draw on throughout their working lives. Individuals, too, increasingly seem to accept the need for continuous rebooting. According to the Pew survey, 54% of all working Americans think it will be essential to develop new skills throughout their working lives; among adults under 30 the number goes up to 61%. Another survey, conducted by Manpower in 2016, found that 93% of millennials were willing to spend their own money on further training. Meanwhile, employers are putting increasing emphasis on learning as a skill in its own right.

Learning and earning More in this special report:

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Lifelong learning is becoming an economic imperative

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THE RECEPTION AREA contains a segment of a decommissioned Underground train carriage, where visitors wait to be collected. The surfaces are wood and glass. In each room the talk is of code, web development and data science. At first sight the London office of General Assembly looks like that of any other tech startup.

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Personal success skills
Soft skills
Foundational skills

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https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tOJWugrhSWi0e4XBQ9dAfZae5Fsttqq8BoTnhvhy_C8/edit#gid=0

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You are able to handle more of the extrinsic pressure when you have more of the intrinsic drive.

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http://personalizationinpractice.org/#pip-intro-pipnic