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Improving Employability…

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Businesses reading the future of the labour market and feeding employment needs back in to the education system sounds like a great plan.

Except we haven’t yet found a way to do it.

We do not know enough about how the labour market will shape up with enough ‘notice’ to make any real difference to the educational process at all.

And then there is the small matter that education is not all about employability and entrepreneurship.

Few teachers join the education system as a kind of prep school for employers and have an innate suspicion of employers looking for ready made employment ‘fodder’. The vision for education is larger than slotting people into jobs. It is about the realisation of potential. In the heads of many education professionals the two goals of realising potential and developing employability make uncomfortable bed-fellows.

I have been involved in Vocational Education and Training, both on the policy side and in practice for over 25 years. Not one of those 25 years has gone by without similar diagnoses and prescriptions:

  • A stronger role for employers,
  • more business in the curriculum,
  • better specifications of what it means to be employable (whole careers can be developed in this field),
  • reformations of the careers service,
  • more employability projects, internships, mentoring, and so on.

And while our engagement as ‘business people’ may help us to feel like we are doing our part, and there are plenty of awards to be won, in the grand schemes of things it makes very little difference. 20+ years of ‘improving school standards’ and still employers complaining about the product…..

If we are serious about improving the life chances of our young people we need to radically revise the nature of the education process and system, not bolt on another committee.

We need to encourage young people to know themselves, their passions and and their potential (almost impossible when you are asked to turn interest on and off at the call of the school bell).  Instead of trying to take slivers of the real world into school we should do much, much more to get children into adult company in real work and non-work settings, public, private and third sector. It is not just business that needs to be more involved with schools, but adult society in general.  Personally I think that post 14 most young people should spend more time being educated outside the school than in it.

There is an argument to say that the only thing children really learn at school is how to relate to an authoritarian system, either through compliance or defiance.

If we are serious about the potential of all our young people then tinkering with the curriculum and the occasional day of smoothie making is just not going to cut it. We need to re-think how we prepare young people to play full lives in adult society. And as a nation that is a debate that we not seem to have the political will to hold.

Leeds as a twin track city…

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This was at the heart of the debate of the Inner South Leeds Area Committee meeting recently.

In short, our residents die too early, our streets are full of fast food take-aways, our air is polluted by the motorway and we need a new sports centre.

What should we do about it?

We will put health at the heart of local government and tackle it…

This is classic Visions of the Anointed Stuff!

I can be pretty sure that if I knocked on 1000 doors in south Leeds and asked ‘what keeps you awake at night’, or ‘what is it that really stops you from living the way you would want?’, not many would say,’Well, if only I could live as long as those folk in leafy north Leeds, or even those exotic southerners in Kensington and Chelsea!’ (K&C has the highest life expectancy of any local authority in the UK I believe).

These are the concerns of the health professionals and the public health statisticians. They are not the everyday concerns of local residents. And, if we want to do meaningful development work we have to start with these everyday concerns. Of course if we wish to build service empires around the ‘healthy living’ agenda…

We also know that the real determinants of longevity are, at root, not based in health, but poverty. Raise disposable incomes, raise educational attainment, help people build lives of meaning and dignity and they will live longer. This hints at the need for a more systemic understanding of quality of life in the city and more person centred approaches to development rather than just getting funding for some more smoking cessation and cancer screening services.  We need to work with potentials and aspirations not just problems.

One councillor got close to the mark when he said we must put more effort into the education of children and young families. But this must be education of a very particular kind. An education that is not led by a curriculum but by the very real concerns of local people.  An education that is not driven through the traditional mechanisms of schooling and assessment but on the streets.  And what about the rest? How do we offer them real opportunities for change – IF that is what they want?

The outrage at the number of fast food shops in South Leeds is understandable. Lots of fast food, bookmakers, pawn shops and off-licences no doubt, because these are the legal, affordable ‘pleasures’ of the poor. No doubt there are plenty of illegal ones too. These are not the causes of poverty and early mortality – but the symptoms. These are the industries that have learned to profit from the poor. Danone and Grameen are learning how to do the same but supplying yogurt rather than alcohol. Perhaps they offer us some clues? Closing down the bookies, off-licences and credit shops would be like excising chicken pox with a knife. Its just going to leave nasty scars and not deter the pox. The fast food outlets and the bookies did not make people poor and susceptible to an early death. They are there because people are poor and unhealthy!  Planning restrictions on peoples pleasures are not the way forward.

Nor will building sports centres or ventilating the motorway help. The challenge of regeneration is primarily one of psychology rather than physiology and infrastructure. Until individuals and communities change the way they see themselves, as full of potential and possibility rather than full of problems (obesity, cancer, addiction, unwanted pregnancies etc) then we can build all the facilities we like and they will not be used by the people we most want to help.

Instead of using twin track Leeds statistics to argue for further investment in infrastructure, sports centres, swimming pools, clinics and whatever other ‘solutions’ our respective empires can offer, we should use this opportunity to shut up, listen carefully and respond with all our might to local residents who want to make a difference in their own lives and the lives of those who they love.

Get that ball rolling and things might just start to change.

Are we learning? Or just looking good?

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Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck made a great distinction between performance goals and learning goals.

  • Performance goals are about “winning positive judgements of your competence and avoiding negative ones. In other words, when students pursue performance goals they’re concerned with their level of intelligence: They want to look smart (to themselves or others) and avoid looking dumb.” A person usually does this by playing it safe.
  • Learning goals are ones that are about increasing your competence. “It reflects a desire to learn new skills, master new tasks, or understand new things—a desire to get smarter.”

Both goals are common and can drive achievement. So there’s nothing wrong with either.

“In fact,” she says, “in the best of all possible worlds, students could achieve both goals at the same time.” Unfortunately, we don’t live in the best of all possible worlds. One is usually pitted against the other. “The tasks that are best for learning are often challenging ones that involve displaying ignorance and risking periods of confusion and errors. The tasks that are best for looking smart are often ones that students are already good at and won’t really learn as much from doing.”

What she has found is that an overemphasis on performance goals – wanting to look good – can foster a helpless response. In a 1988 study they found that “many of the students with performance goals showed a clear helpless pattern in response to difficulty. A number of them condemned their ability, and their problem solving deteriorated.

“In sharp contrast, most of the students with learning goals showed a clear mastery-oriented pattern. In the face of failure, they did not worry about their intellect, they remained focused on the task, and they maintained their effective problem-solving strategies.

“When children are focused on measuring themselves from their performance, failure is more likely to provoke a helpless response. When children are instead focused on learning, failure is likely to provoke continued effort.”

Another interesting tidbit came out of the study. “Some children were told at the start of the study that they had the ability to do really well at the task. Others were told (temporarily) that their level of ability at the task was not so high. For students with performance goals, this message made a real difference: Students who were certain of their high ability were more likely to hold on in the face of failure and remain mastery-oriented. But students who thought their ability was lower fell right into a helpless response.” It made no difference to the student with learning goals.

How are we structuring the environment in our schools and organizations? It seems to me, we foster environments that encourage and reward levels of achievement and not degrees of learning. In such a case, most people would opt out for performance goals. Who wants to take a chance of being criticized for looking dumb? Are we learning or looking good?

Incidentally, an important book by Carol Dweck has just been released in paperback. It covers some of this material. Check out Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.

What Can You Learn from Netflix Culture?

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[slideshare id=1798664&doc=culture9-090801103430-phpapp02]

There is some great content here, but then there should be in a 128 slide deck!  This is not to be presented, but read.  And thought about.

Look at how this information is communicated.

Performance on this in the private sector is often poor.

Performance in public and third sectors is usually worse, in my experience, because the disconnect between espoused values and reality is often wider.

In very small businesses it is not a big issue.  But as things scale up, as middle managers and team leaders start to appear this type of issue can become ‘make or break’.

Everyone is clear on what works at Netflix.  Employees, customers and shareholders.

  • How do you communicate about culture?
  • Do words and actions match up in your organisation?
  • What can you do to improve things?