#SoftSkills #education #creativity #boldness
“What I find missing (when college grads don’t land jobs) is any sense of creativity. If you are going to get something, you have to think about what is an interesting and bold way to get it.”
So says Ted Dintersmaith, a former venture capitalist turned education advocate. He was quoted throughout The Atlanta Journal-Constitution education columnist Maureen Downey’s June 11, 2018, column.
Downey writes that Dintersmith recalled how impressed he was with a young entrepreneur seeking to meet him. The student pleaded with Dintersmith’s assistant to allow him to sit in the office so he could grab a moment with Dintersmith as he walked to his car.
Dintersmith’s two decades as a venture capitalist brought him much success. He came to believe that success demanded both innovation and entrepreneurship.
In other words, if you go through channels to find an opportunity, you probably will not hear anything back. If you do something outside the box to get someone’s attention, that person might be impressed enough to hire you.
This type of thinking may differ greatly with what you’ve been taught since childhood. Remember your parents or other advisers telling you, “don’t make waves,” “do everything properly,” or, even, “do what you are told to do?”
Today’s society put value on wave-makers. Even if you are getting a W-2 job, with a set job description, you have to show some entrepreneurship in that role to get noticed, or get ahead.
Conduct yourself with the attitude of, it’s better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.
America must re-imagine education, Downey quotes Dintersmith, so millions of people aren’t stranded by an economy that prizes creativity, innovation and invention.
Of course, as a practical matter, we still need people toiling at tasks that require a set job description. It’s tough to think outside the box if you wait tables, wash dishes or do some other minimum-wage work. In that case, though, you’re creativity and innovation must come to the fore as you imagine yourself in the near future doing something other than what you are doing.
For students, the best path may be to give more meaning to a high school diploma by requiring students to work in real-life challenges, for an organization or community, Downey quotes Dintersmith. He has seen teachers doing this in places like North Dakota and Hawaii, she writes.
Schools will change, “one classroom at time by teacher-driven, well-thought-out small steps leading to big change,” Downey quotes Dintersmith.
Maybe you, today, are following your parents’ advice and cherishing the security of following a set of rules. But, perhaps, you long for something more.
If you are bold enough to look for something better, something that rewards your boldness, something that requires you to look at something completely different from what you thought you would do in life, there are many such vehicles out there. To check out one of the best, message me.
Otherwise, if you are doing something that bores you, that doesn’t reward you the way you think it should, or that eats away at too much of your life, look for a change. Perhaps not today, or tomorrow, but put a goal in front of you that says something like: I’m only going to do this for X years at most. Then, start looking for a change that will better suit you.
Remember, as Dintersmith advises, just sending a resume, or filling out an application, and waiting to hear something probably won’t cut it, no matter how impressive your qualifications are.
If the opportunity is worth pursuing, don’t hesitate to visit the employer and ask to see a person of influence. You may have to do some research to see who that is, but, in the process, you may actually meet someone who can formally introduce you.
Be bold. Be creative. Go after it!
Peter
Tag Archives: Ted Dintersmith
WHAT WE LEARN IN HIGH SCHOOL
“When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all.”
Paul Simon lyric from “Kodachrome”
#HighSchool #learning #education
What did you learn in high school that you use today?
Perhaps you use some household math. Perhaps, if you took vocational courses, you use what you learned in auto mechanics, machine shop etc.
Most of us, though, would be hard pressed to think of much that we use today from our high school learning.
As it turns out, high schools were designed more than a century ago to produce efficient workers who could follow instructions, according to Ted Dintersmith, venture-capitalist-turned reformer.
“Henry Ford did not need creative, bold innovative assembly-line workers,” Dintersmith said.
Maureen Downey, education columnist for The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, took on the topic of high schools in a January 2016 column. She interviewed Dintersmith as part of it.
Now that the U.S. economy has changed from manufacturing to innovation, have high schools changed with it? Downey asks.
Downey points out that most of us believed that basic jobs, such as truck driving and delivery services, were immune to change as technology advanced. But Google’s self-driving car and Amazon Prime Air delivery drones are changing that.
So that begs the question: will high schools change the way they educate to conform to the changing economy, and the changing technological requirements?
Today, a high school education is not good enough, in many cases, to land a good-paying job. Even some who graduate college are finding they cannot parlay their brainpower into an economically exhilarating career.
So will high schools become irrelevant? Will some college curriculums become an expensive luxury?
Let’s break down the concept of education. Throughout most of our years in school, we learn “things.” We were expected to spit back those “things” on tests, to get our grades. Now, with technology, the “things” we were taught are available at our fingertips. What we really need to know is how to take those “things,” turn them first into ideas and then into action. In other words, gather your “things,” go forth and innovate.
It’s tough to put a finger on those jobs that will never go away. Perhaps some of you have had jobs you thought would never go away, but have. Were you replaced by a machine? Did what you do become irrelevant to the company as technology changed? Or, more likely, did the company just find it too expensive to keep you, so it figured out a way to do without you?
All those “things” you learned help you in trivia games, but they don’t move you forward in a changing world.
Let’s look further into colleges. We are starting to hear that the liberal arts is virtually useless in terms of finding one a job. We are hearing that the STEM programs (science, technology, engineering and math) are the only really employable fields to get into. But we all know that not everyone is cut out for those fields. So what is a person who wants to study the arts to do?
There are many ways to earn money while one pursues his artistic passion. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You may find a way to work full time on your passion, and part time on your fortune.
We will always need people to do basic jobs. But those jobs hardly create lucrative careers. Are you learning to think the way innovators do? Or, are you just learning “things,” or how to follow orders?
Schools will eventually have to catch up with the rest of the world. In the meantime, if your school isn’t doing what you think is right for you, use your time outside of school to make things right by you.
Peter