From Melody's Desk: October 15

October 15, 2015

I just returned from the EACUBO annual meeting in
Philadelphia where I heard great presentations, met interesting colleagues,
became inspired and re-energized, and explored the Reading Terminal Market (the
fresh squeezed lemonade and cinnamon sugar pretzel from Miller’s Twist
were excellent).

I wanted to share with you a few
take-away ideas from a session by Jeff Hoffman, a very successful entrepreneur
(heard of Priceline.com?) and motivational speaker. Mr. Hoffman spoke about
innovation, specifically five actions that we can take to be more innovative. I’ll
give you a quick summary and suggest that you watch his TED talk for more. His five suggested
actions that we can all take:

1.      Don't get used to your surroundings. Be sure
to stop and see everything like it was your first time. Watch the TED talk to hear about the “why?” game.

2.      Be an “info-sponge” by constantly scanning
the rest of the world, especially the world beyond our homes, our offices, and
even higher education. Take 10 minutes every day to read or watch or observe
something new.

3.      Hold “blue sky sessions” with co-workers,
colleagues, and key stakeholders where we ask the question “if we could start
all over, what could we do better?” Don’t worry about the reasonableness of the
responses… 99 of the ideas might not be implementable, then the 100th may be
the best idea ever.

4.      Deepen our understanding of our primary
stakeholders - students, parents, researchers, business administrators. Do this
by meeting them in their comfort zone, dressed similarly to them, and without
an agenda – just “hang out,” listen, and learn.

5.      Re-think of our workplace with a culture of
experimentation. Do small things differently on a regular basis and see if we
stumble on a better way. If the experiment isn’t better, it is not a big deal
to go back to the old way or to try a new way.

One idea from Mr. Hoffman’s presentation really made me stop
and think:  he advocated for each of us
to be unreasonable at times. Doesn’t that sound odd? I’ve always tried to be
reasonable and practical. And I think that approach has served me well in many
situations.  But, I’ll leave you with one
last quote from George Bernard Shaw on reasonableness and ask you to think
about what this means to you.

“The
reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in
trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends upon the
unreasonable man."

Have a great weekend and hope to see you at the CVC Cornhole
tournament tomorrow!

Melody