Posts under ‘facilitation’

A panel of experts on NPR just warned us again that US organizations free fall daily, while developing countries advance emerging takeovers. All through squashing or boosting innovation and discovery. Have you seen it happen?
Invention will reignite broken bureaucracies,  only if novelty  parachutes back into profitable interventions.  Only if your organization reverses tumbling markets from [...]

For years I attended toxic meetings where one guy yammered on and one  fellow worker turned off his hearing aids. It’s the only time I can remember wishing for Gordon’s hearing disability.
That’s how bad these meetings were. People moved back and forth  from bored to bitching, while Gordon slept with his eyes open and [...]

The human brain comes with unique equipment to build and sustain innovative cultures, where design leads to profitability. How so?
1.  Kindle and design an idea. Just as the iPod started with an innovative  idea,  Steve Jobs and others continue to design Apple products that revolutionize communication. Fast Company celebrated the last decade’s 14 biggest such [...]

Government Funds Promote Failing Secondary Schools
People say stimulus money simply creates new layers of bureaucracy that prolong broken secondary school programs. My question is: How will the White House Campaign to Promote Science and Math Education support teens to climb new mental  peaks?  Will successful schools proliferate through fast growing charters?
President [...]

Great news from GE leaders today,  according to WSJ’s Paul Glader.  Any organization willing to change and grow, after a fall,  also holds potential to create a prototype for global change and growth.  Both qualities urgently needed in the broader business community. Bravo!
Let’s get behind GE’s  initiative and begin to move in new directions as [...]

Have you noticed that when innovative insights predominate, peaceful resolutions seem more attainable? Creative ideas  flit through  brains  like broadband connects internet to computers, then sadly tend to flee as fast. Why so?
The human brain craves action to convert  innovation into realities that work. Take all the recent talk on civil discourse. You hear urgent [...]

Written By Ellen Weber, PhD and Robyn McMaster, PhD
Higher Education and Brain Based Benefits

Challenges of Change
Renewal is to the university community today what Renaissance was to the Middle Ages. Both encompass a resurgence of learning. Both tap into more potential from the human brain. To reconfigure university teaching for a rebirth [...]

Two days ago, while in Jamaica to speak about MITA brain based renewal, I spotted revival alive and well from a car radio. In a vehicle that transported Dr. Robyn McMaster and I to the University of West Indies, radio guests discussed broken systems in general, and Jamaican policies that got  implemented without discussion [...]

Here are 2-footed questions addressed to HSM, WBF09 and top global leaders:

1). How can brainpower extend genius opportunities beyond a few who boast power from money?
2). What can be done to open new spigots of innovation within closed corporations that stockpile most resources and guard traditional gates?
3). How do you facilitate a wider diversity [...]

Facilitators with brains in mind, blast open 10 entry points that inspire innovation:

At meetings – facilitators add zip to roundtables because people speak and feel heard.
Across professions – facilitators inspire shared language that leaves behind jargon to favor communication.
In learning circles facilitators draw on multiple literacies to engage voices on the other side and [...]

Daily you see snippets of courage from leaders you admire – through questions asked and stories shared. Courage to embrace mental confidence, and face danger bravely,  remains the last virtue on center stage after you sacrifice who you are now, to embrace who you can become. Have you seen it?
Special thanks for this [...]

Few disagree on an urgent need to increase America’s science and math proficiency in order to compete in our fast paced world. But less art?
Sadly, the arts become an easy target when budgets get slashed. Yet both multi-dimensional advances of art along with empirical rigor of science both challenge and transform high performing minds. Like [...]

When you rev up mental equipment daily to either sink or swim, you discover how creativity and curiosity will trump criticism and intimidation. How then can you experience mental power in settings where no brain is left behind?
One friend and fellow leader Dave Caiazza, put it this way:

Work against the dangerous twins of jealousy and [...]

Imagine reinvigorated secondary schools or universities, designed with each learner’s brain in mind. It’s time for the death of education to become the dawn of learning. Time for learning renewal to reinvent your entire community! If you see past broken systems, or catch a glimpse of talented people ahead, you’ve already spotted the brain’s plasticity [...]

Have you experienced mental power that bubbles over in circles where no brain is left behind? Interactive sessions where creativity trumps criticism, and diversity’s the handmaiden of dignity and innovative virtue?
If so, would you agree that brilliant solutions tend to flow from pools just outside of the prevailing thought – where:

1. No Brain Left [...]

Surveys show that few parents of teens see any incentives to enter secondary schools, and yet LA’s worst school reached out to parents and became the best.  It turns out that many absentee adults disliked high school as their teens do, and tell you that not much changed since – regarding secondary school failure.
Interestingly,  research [...]

Each step to renew your workplace ethically and with the brain in mind – casts lights on mental barriers that prevent change in stagnant organizations. How so?
To rethink old approaches is also to take a stand against Hebbian hardwired thought that defaults back to ruts and routines.
To upgrade motivation and achievement at secondary or higher [...]

Ever shifted locations, and noticed new solutions to problems as a result?  Or have new ethical insights added zest to a project after a redesigned workspace? If so, you’ll be interested in research about buildings as mental stimulants for creativity and productivity. Have you seen it?
It makes sense since IQ comes from your gene pool [...]

Slavery works, cried dominant voices, while for centuries brilliant minority voices, with finer insights at times, could have led a richer way.  Had they been engaged, silenced voices could have broken chains that still bind most of us today. Did you know human brains build new neuron pathways with every jaded act, ruts for more [...]

Some  university faculty add value to the learning process. Others clearly do not. That’s not new. But what separates good faculty from those who fail the learning process?
New neuro-discoveries changed playing fields yet some faculty cling to sage-on-the-stage mentality. Poor faculty see their role to lecture and test for facts that stick through rote. [...]