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[\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″ prev_background_color=”#000000″ next_background_color=”#000000″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.0.48″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_testimonial author=”Shunryu Suzuki” _builder_version=”3.12″]<\/p>\n
In the beginner\u2019s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert\u2019s mind there are few.<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_testimonial][et_pb_divider divider_weight=”5″ height=”5px” _builder_version=”3.12″]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [\/et_pb_divider][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″ custom_padding=”0|0px|42.5833px|0px|false|false” prev_background_color=”#000000″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.0.48″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.12.2″]<\/p>\n Welcome! We have created this text to serve as an introduction, as well as a guide, to my classes.\u00a0 As you will soon discover, this class is – in many ways – very different than any college class you have taken up to now.\u00a0 The primary reason is that i came back to academia after years spent working and managing.\u00a0 What was evident to me on returning to college – and still is based on the experience of many Alums – is how poorly higher education does in preparing students for life after college.\u00a0 A solid liberal arts – even business – education gives you a ton of information, even some knowledge.\u00a0 But whereas knowledge serves you quite well in your schooling, what are you supposed to do with it?\u00a0 Outside of the classroom, doing – especially doing well – is what counts.<\/p>\n There will be a lot of detail in this text about how to get the most out of it.\u00a0 The important thing up front is something your parents – and every inspirational (including commencement) speaker always say –\u00a0 Like life itself, “what you get out of this course depends on how much you put into it.<\/em>”<\/p>\n As you will come to understand, there are a lot of \u201cvoices<\/em>\u201d in this playbook.\u00a0 Not only mine, but you\u2019ll read stories and advice from those who have taken my classes as well as those who have team-taught with me.\u00a0 Many of whom were still students at the time.\u00a0 Because this playbook is interactive, you will all add your voices as well.\u00a0 At the end of the semester, this site will be less of a \u201cHow to<\/em>\u201d text, and more of a history of our learning together this semester.<\/p>\n One challenge i get continuously from students is information about me, especially stories that help them understand why i\u2019m whacked.\u00a0 i always feel uncomfortable doing this.\u00a0 Given how hard i work to build classes around student voices, as opposed to my own, i tend to say little about me.\u00a0 But since this course will – by design – take you far out of your comfort zones (a necessity in any real learning), it is only fair that i do the same to myself.\u00a0 The class will really take a leap forward, however, when you are the ones who push me out of my comfort zone.<\/p>\n i was born in a log cabin. . .<\/strong><\/p>\n i did not do well as a college student; i was miserable and my grades reflected my attitudes.\u00a0 Part of it was a lack of maturity, but another part was that things did not make a whole lot of sense to me in school.\u00a0 They still don\u2019t.<\/p>\n Daniel Quinn said that, in indigenous (so-called, \u201cprimitive<\/em>\u201d) tribes, by the time children reached puberty, they learned everything they needed to survive in the world on their own.\u00a0 It\u2019s interesting that our students, upon graduation from college\u2014many years beyond puberty\u2014have almost no survival skills.\u00a0 They need a job, or their families\u2019 ongoing support, in order to even begin learning those skills.\u00a0 And while this has more to do with the world we have created, institutionalized education has not kept up and changed its ways in order to adapt to a rapidly changing world.<\/p>\n College didn\u2019t make much sense to me because it wasn\u2019t helping me learn how to survive, let alone thrive, beyond college.\u00a0 It tried to teach me a whole lot about how to thrive in college.\u00a0 i always thought it odd that, despite all the rhetoric about why we were in school, schooling only taught one how to be good at one thing:\u00a0 schooling.\u00a0 The things i practiced in school: memorizing, regurgitating the information on command, figuring out what someone wanted me to say – and make them believe that i knew it, even sometimes believed it – following commands and orders even though they made no sense to me, hardly seemed to be the kind of skills i was interested in having when i graduated.\u00a0 i had already practiced those skills in my schooling before college.\u00a0 i didn\u2019t need four more years to practice things that i couldn’t find in a paid job.<\/p>\n After four years of college, even though i hadn\u2019t finished, i left to develop survival skills.\u00a0 The next four years provided the toughest, and most profound, education i\u2019ve ever had.\u00a0 And not once did i use any of the schooling skills i learned beyond the reading, writing, and arithmetic i received years before i entered college.<\/p>\n When i came back to college, i saw things very differently.\u00a0 i had my own questions, those that had arisen out of my experience in organizations and as a manager, and i was like a sponge, reading and asking questions of everyone, just trying to get some answers.\u00a0 i would read an assigned chapter in a text and be wholly unsatisfied with the material (i also didn\u2019t like how it \u201ctalked down\u201d to me and ignored the experience i had attained).\u00a0 i felt that the only answers there were for 8 – 9th graders (the level at which most college textbooks are written<\/a>).<\/p>\n i noticed at the end of the chapters there were usually references, \u201cFor Further Reading<\/em>,\u201d so i would read those.\u00a0 Because they were often primary sources, those were better but they just raised more questions.\u00a0 i would go into class with the questions from those readings.\u00a0 It completely shocked me that, most of the time, one of two things would happen:\u00a0 professors would get defensive and silence my questions in a variety of ways, or they simply said they would have to get back to me (most of the time, they didn\u2019t).\u00a0 My suspicions about something being very wrong with college grew deeper.<\/p>\n My first management class<\/strong><\/p>\n Those suspicions developed into full-blown skepticism when i took my first management class.\u00a0 Keep in mind that, for a few years, i had been employed full-time in a management position.<\/p>\n The first thing that made little sense to me was that we were handed a syllabus.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t the syllabus that was the problem, however. It was what it symbolized.\u00a0 i noticed that, throughout the semester we were going to learn things like decision-making, planning, evaluating, and organizing.\u00a0 Well, i certainly knew those topics and knew how important they were for managers; i wanted to learn much more about them.\u00a0 So what was bothering me so much?<\/p>\n As the professor went through the syllabus, it came to me.\u00a0 Almost all of the decisions, planning, and organizing had already occurred and it was right there in the syllabus.\u00a0 What a paradox!\u00a0 The professor had already done it before the class even started.\u00a0 And then, throughout the semester the professor was going to evaluate me.\u00a0 i was being asked to learn management through show and tell!\u00a0 To me, having been a manager this made as much sense as a coach asking a group of people to meet in a gym and learn to play basketball by merely demonstrating the shots, positions, and plays himself.<\/p>\n The second thing that troubled me was that, when i was a manager, i was constantly thinking about my department and organization.\u00a0 i saw my own performance directly tied to the performance of the whole, really, more dependent on the people i was managing and anything i was doing.\u00a0 In the management class, however, i was being asked to focus almost solely on my own performance; i did not need to care at all how my classmates did.\u00a0 There was a group project, but i soon learned that there is a huge difference between a group project in a classroom setting, and feeling responsible for a group.\u00a0 In the former, i was still basically concerned about my own performance in the exercise.\u00a0 i could succeed by simply putting in more work than others (thereby learning to hate group projects since i always had to work harder for the same result).\u00a0 In my job, it was always about the group, the division; the quality of performance of my colleagues was as important as my own.<\/p>\n i realized that i was going to learn about<\/strong><\/em> management, not how to<\/strong><\/em> manage!\u00a0\u00a0 i was appalled and felt cheated.\u00a0 Unlike most students who get to that point, however, i refused to just give in and take it for what i could get out of it. . .a grade and another notch toward the degree.\u00a0 i wanted much more.\u00a0 After all, i was going to take this knowledge back to my career.\u00a0 i had already learned what made people successful in their jobs; strategies to help them improve is what i needed to know!<\/p>\n About or to?<\/strong><\/p>\n Management involves skills, it is both art and science.\u00a0 But the art and science are learned chiefly through application, that is, one learns the skills, learns how to manage and lead, by doing.\u00a0 Is teaching students about<\/em><\/strong> management the best we can do?\u00a0 Or can we also teach them how to<\/em><\/strong> manage in college?<\/p>\n So, to begin understanding the differences between this course and the others you take, here are some basic assumptions of both approaches to a college class:\u00a0 A traditional class where you learn about<\/em><\/strong> management vs. this class, where you will actually learn how to<\/em><\/strong> manage, organize, even lead through hands-on practice.<\/p>\n Assumptions involved in a traditional class (the assumptions you have now about a class)<\/strong><\/p>\n
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