Working At The Edge

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Culture of Dissent

By Randy Ziegenfuss

If you’re in education, you probably have just winced at the title of this post. That’s because most education cultures don’t engage in dissent very well. And maybe that’s part of our problem. If we are constantly spending time “covering up” the sucky stuff about what we do and where we work and not facing the problems head-on, we’ll never achieve greatness. As Tim Harford, author of Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure, says in the short video linked below, every organization has moments and areas that suck. It’s the ability to identify those areas and engage in conversation about improving them that will move suck to non-suck. That conversation will often be fierce with good, healthy, dissenting opinions on how to change.

The challenge, though, is not simply being willing to define areas that suck, but to want to improve and become great, even when you differ on how improvement (or non-suck) should look.

Tim Harford – Big Think video

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Randy Ziegenfuss
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Randy Ziegenfuss
I've retired from public education after 34 years, most recently as Superintendent. In addition to blogging at WorkingAtTheEdge.org, I co-host two podcasts at TLTalkRadio.org and ShiftYourParadigm.org. Learn more at https://workingattheedge.org/about/.
Randy Ziegenfuss
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About Working At The Edge:

My name is Randy Ziegenfuss, and I'm a retired public school superintendent and a life-long educator with over 34 years experience developing a passion for teaching, learning, leadership and technology. <read more...>

I first came across the phrase working at the edge while learning about the work of Marzano, et al. School Leadership That Works: From Research to Results. In this work, the researchers define 21 responsibilities of the school leader, one being change agent. A change agent is defined as one who is, "...willing to challenge school practices that have been in place for a long time and promoting the value of working at the edge of one's competence."

Randy Ziegenfuss, Ed.D.

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