Strawberries!

A totally selfish moment here, readers... but isn't that what wild strawberries are? Moments when you just savor the unexpected.

In my last entry, I remarked that I was tired of adult education ideas that smacked of middle school. That was only part of the impetus for starting this blog. The other influence was Guy Kawasaki's Art of the Start presentation. He is right up there with Drucker for me. I'm a big fan on common sense when it comes to management.

Guy's speech was fresh in my mind as I sat through a particularly painful presentation on classroom facilitation in early June -- and it was during those three long hours that Ferocious Tigers was born.

Needless to say, I bravely sent Guy a "guess who you inspired" e-mail. He sent me a very nice reply. I was pretty happy, believe me. Imagine, someone like him replying to someone like me!

Today, however... wow. HE wrote to ME to ask how a Truemors-related economics project went.

Somewhere there's a lesson in there. You see, I like to think that I have a healthy mix of confidence and humility within; thus, when someone I admire shows interest, I can respond appropriately. When I told my students that someone "important and famous" would actually write to ask about their work, they didn't believe me at first. The idea that someone else has a degree of interest in their thoughts was too out there for most of them.

What I see is the other part of the problem-solving issue that exists: a lack of confidence. You see, while I'm enjoying my symbolic strawberry (enough to post this blog in fact), they're too hesitant to look for/at it (read: believe it's there) let alone pick it.

And so we add this to the mix: get them to be unreasonable regarding everyone else's expectations for them. Get them to doubt other people's negative expectations rather then believe them. Being "reasonable" about their lives, and doing what their neighborhood and family cultures expect, is rather poisonous.

No wonder I quit teaching and started managing.