System (or societal) level problems require system-level solutions

“System (or societal) level problems require system-level solutions. Due to massive disruption in society and education, the resulting and uneven impact on students (particularly the vulnerable), along with incredible uncertainty for the past two years, educators need more school-based support to thrive in their work.

In the remainder of this year, how will we design for thriving in this new reality?”

Ideate for New Realities

Let your teamwork, creativity, and processes crawl outside of the box and do a little dance!? Let’s ideate for thriving.

In order to ideate well, be sure to define the propelling question effectively.

“Propelling questions bind a bold ambition to a significant constraint. The solution has to make use of the constraint, denying us what would make the answer easier, ensuring that we address real challenges and not indulge in blue-sky fantasies.”

A Beautiful Constraint — How to Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It’s Everyone’s Business, Adam Morgan & Mark Barden

Now, we turn to curiosity and the climate is conversational. The objective is to get to ‘flow.’

Use your favorite ideating strategy, brainstorm or brain-write, with a variety of stakeholder(s) groups. Bonus points if you include:

• students,
• parents,
• two or three people who have no direct experience with the problem,
• or those whose cognitive style or worldview is starkly different from yours.

For more information, consider Better Brainstorming – Focus on questions, not answers, for breakthrough insights.

If your ideation gets stalled or before you start, you know you have significant resistance, use the following strategy.? Invite team members to integrate a new approach by beginning sentences with “We can if…,” instead of “We can’t because….”

Let’s ideate new ideas for thriving.? This is part of being resilient, recovering, and re-imagining education as we move past the pandemic.