At HarvardBusiness.org, Tammy Erickson writes, Future leaders in all spheres will have to contend with a world with finite limits, no easy answers, and the sobering realization that we are facing significant, seemingly intractable problems on multiple fronts. Perhaps the biggest change from the past: leaders will have to listen and respond to diverse points [...]
education
Don Tapscott gets things rolling at Edge.org: The old-style lecture, with the professor standing at the podium in front of a large group of students, is still a fixture of university life on many campuses. It’s a model that is teacher-focused, one-way, one-size-fits-all and the student is isolated in the learning process. Yet the students, who [...]
I found this book by Eric A. Havelock at a used bookstore last week. It’s turning out to be more interesting than I expected. Specifically, there are some fascinating comparisons to the changes in our own media and cultural landscape. Preface to Plato (1963) focuses on the great philosopher’s attack on poetry — trying to [...]
Are conventional ideas about education actually counterproductive? Does advocacy based on those ideas set back the cause in the long run? The Globe and Mail ran an op-ed about education on Monday that got me on the subject. “Creating a culture of learning” addresses the problem of school dropouts, citing the success of Chinese immigrants [...]
Education and architecture may be my two favourite fields to trespass into (after philosophy, economics, journalism, management…) and right now there are a couple of interesting pieces from Metropolis Magazine that combine them. The short one is “IDEO’s Ten Tips for Creating a 21st Century Classroom Experience.” Anyone familiar with John Dewey’s progressive theories will recognize most of the [...]
I noticed this article yesterday in the New York Times about marquee marathons that are in danger of becoming too popular. Funny: “You are a victim of what you accomplish,” Morse said. “We want to be as big as we can be without compromising the integrity of the event. There’s a breaking point, and you may not [...]
‘Tis a melancholy experience for anyone who browses through this great medium, to see so much content of low and dubious quality, so much wasted time and energy, so much gaming and spamming and jockeying for attention. A once powerful conduit of ideas and insight, a meeting place of the world’s sharpest minds tackling the [...]
Back before the bubble-bust of 2000, there was a guy at my university — let’s call him Gordie — who tried convincing a couple of my business student friends that the future of the web would be less about e-commerce and more about entertainment. Our business friends didn’t buy the argument. They insisted rather that [...]
Before you read my Résumé/Manifesto, I want to call your attention to a recent essay by Paul Graham, a successful computer programmer and writer, who first came to my attention a few years ago via Arts & Letters Daily. (Graham’s essay about essays has stayed with me ever since; it’s why I call my posts [...]
[Originally written in March, 2007... It was the first complete & coherent thing I wrote outside of school. It's far from well-written, but the background behind everything I do is in here... somewhere (it demonstrates more than it articulates).] Contents: i. A Résumé, a story about itself, a creative consummation… ii. Common points of reference / [...]
Burying the Best and the Brightest
by OpenConceptual on 07-09-2009
in commentary
I’ve been thinking about the pernicious effects of our overachievement society again, this time by way of Philip Delves Broughton (via NYTimes Opinionator), in a post called The McNamara Syndrome. The following is actually from the author’s book, Ahead of the Curve: One of the most famous alumni of Harvard’s MBA program is Robert McNamara, [...]
Tagged as: best and the brightest, careers, creativity, education, leadership, learning, management, opportunity, overachievement, robert mcnamara, war, work