What if the funders stopped looking at corporate structure and instead focused on amount and level of impact? What if we totally shifted our mindset around this issue? We would see a large percentage of these philanthropic dollars go much further than they currently do.

If anyone knows of other creative organizations that fund companies with a purpose (both nonprofit and for profit) please share them on this blog.

All three parties must be dedicated on improving outcomes and approaching education the right way. Understand that the system is broken on so many levels, but really think about the different avenues to penetrate it system to make peoples’ lives easier on all fronts. Another fault I see with the leadership of educational technology companies is they are chasing the dollars and market opportunity instead of focusing on creating real value and massive wealth.
The point of this rant comes down to one thing, recruit a bad ass team dedicated to the cause.

There were several issues, challenges, ideas, and solutions shared by the participants. What stood out was I found myself sitting at a table with educators, administrators, foundations, and parents, all bringing different perspectives in to the conversation, yet we all had the same goal to dramatically improve literacy education inside and outside of the classroom. What also stood out was the power and energy that resulted in putting 40+ like-minded people together in one room and the different connections that were made among our networks. It almost felt a bit like magic. This “inner circle” of literacy stakeholders is going to do something special and I am honored to be a part of it.

This leads to a bigger point and call to action. What if we can turn this 40 to 400, then 4000, then 40,000 stakeholders completely dedicated to dramatically improving the education system. This includes teachers, administrators, parents, foundations and private sector business owners that can make this a reality. I welcome any person interested in getting involved with this grassroots movement to contact me directly at jordan@uwemp.com.

For those out there who do not realize how important literacy is. Let me ask you a simple question – how can we expect society to learn science, math, and other concepts if they can not read, write, or spell? Exactly.

This was refreshing to hear as one of core tenants of business is to focus on what you do really well and work with others that provides complimentary products and services to enhance your offerings The publishing industry is at an important inflection point, it can either sink or swim. There must be the honest realization that the legacy cost structure and revenue models are about to be flipped upside down with the publishers. We will look back at the industry in 10 years and say, “I can not believe publishers used to operate that way.”

My call to action for the publishers – throw out the way you have always done things. Work with companies of all sizes who provide a variety of authoring, assessment, and data-driven technologies that can completely redefine the learning experience. Be entrepreneurial, try new things, create new business relationships and revenue-share agreements. Get crazy, cause some chaos!

Publishers have one extremely valuable differentiator in the education and training markets, large distribution channels. Use  THEM!

It goes a little something like this: energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but it can be transformed from one state to another.

We choose to expend our personal and professional energy on solutions that result in varying degrees of success. Some of us spend our energy on developing new ideas, like repurposing course content to target the interests of students and trying new activities. Others spend their allotted energy complaining about incomplete data, or making excuses for not shipping on their work.

In education, many of us spend the greatest percentage of our energy maintaining a system that fundamentally doesn’t work.

Let’s try something crazy and assume physics got this theory right; that in the immediate future, we’re not going to have any more resources, time, money or energy than we had yesterday.

We need to work with what we have, transforming how we divvy up our allotment in to more useful, value-added activities. I’m worried that we’re going to continue down the path of wasting our time whining about what we can’t control, about how our principals won’t let us do what we need to in order to redefine learning in our classrooms, or how our students just don’t care.

Personally, I’m spending my energy on surrounding myself with the support of others so that I can continue to try and fail as much as I have to in order to change how we deliver education in this country.

How will you spend yours?

This was one of the most energizing and reinforcing conversations I have had in a long time as uwemp was founded to answer many of these questions above. Make people uncomfortable by thinking big, acting even bigger, and relentlessly pursuing the goal of dramatically improving the education and training industries. This will only happen if true chaos is created among educators, administrators, policy makers, and entrepreneurs. Let’s go!

As an entrepreneur it is a completely different ball game. Scrape and claw, pivot, change direction, give out your product at a highly discounted rate for the first few clients, and eat ramen noodles rather then four to five course meals multiple times a week. While this does not sound sexy, for me it is probably one of the most interesting processes to go through. The ability to start from a completely blank computer screen and make your vision become a reality is a rush unlike any other. The key here is vision – having a big vision and then working backwards step by step to make that vision become a reality.

A mentor of mine taught me a very important lesson at an early age, do not chase dollars or wealth, wealth follows. This is probably the best advice any entrepreneur can follow. Do not go for financial gain in the near term. In many instances, bypass the upfront financial reward in exchange for executing on your vision. It will pay for itself 10 times over.

So, now let’s talk about education. This is an industry where you definitely do not want to chase the wealth. There are fundamental impediments and challenges to creating a pure technology company that will gain mass adoption in the space. Limited budgets, a slow rate of adoption of technology among educators, politics, the challenges go on and on.

I am a true believer that the real wealth will be created by the technology providers who work with content providers and educators developing innovative approaches and methodologies that incorporate how the brain and memory works. Think about this from an execution perspective, it gets a bit more hairy and complex. But hey, someone once told me Rome was not built in a day.

I spent my weekend researching over 250 grant-making organizations and private family foundations. It’s not my business to tell philanthropic individuals how to donate their money or to demand that they narrow their giving constraints. It is a little odd to me that a grant maker has guidelines as broad as “education,” “community development,” and “helping the disenfranchised,” but I’ll give it to them – they earned the dollars, they can choose how to dole them out.

I am, however, completely frustrated by this notion of granters providing funding for “innovative change,” while simultaneously demanding up to three years of retroactive documentation on board members, financial statements, and projects completed. If you want to fund innovation, fund entrepreneurs. Fund new programs by grassroots organizations, not two-day teacher development seminars in stuffy hotels. Truly innovative projects may not offer any guarantee of success, but isn’t that better than the guarantee that your philanthropic dollars are being put towards a marginally effective initiative?

I am by no means encouraging recklessness. I’m simply asking foundations to consider ideas that are actually innovative, such as measuring the effectiveness of tablet devices like the iPad in a variety of educational settings. Or, try funding an idea like using video games as a system to evaluate deep learning and as a new way of measuring progress.  Try anything you want – the key here is investing in something without a guarantee, and learning from your mistakes. Isn’t that what education is all about?

The entire logic behind grant-makers directed at education is that the public system works too slowly. If we waited until our districts had empirical, substantiated proof that a new technology or method undoubtedly works, the effort would be outdated by 3-5 years minimum. The red tape involved in implementing innovation through traditional means is not something that anyone can afford. Grant-makers in education should exist to expedite new ideas, to compliment established school budget systems, and to try things that a conservative school board cannot.

If you truly demand innovative disruption, then put your money where your mouth is – it would be reckless not to.

I would say we were speaking for no more than five minutes before she made that statement. We both shared our backgrounds and journeys that led us to having a conversation about working together. Let me repeat, five minutes. Who knows where everything will go at this point, but the fact that it took us a matter of minutes to determine that we should find a way to work together is magical.

I also had a conversation last night with my brother-in-law who is a high school AP Physics teacher. He notified me that his school is pink slipping the entire staff as a way to get rid of poor performing teachers. Further, a neighboring district just announced a 10% pay cut to teachers that retroactively goes back to December 2010. It is March 2011… We then got to talking about unions negotiating on the behalf of individual teachers, a potential work stoppage, and continuous pay cuts over the last several years. We ended with him talking about leaving the teaching profession for the private sector where he can be rewarded for his efforts. This statement was extremely troublesome to me. My brother-in-law is a very intelligent guy who will be successful with whatever he does. He has no incentive to keep pushing and providing his students with new innovative ways to learn. Further, his pay keeps decreasing and there are half drunk teachers next door to him making twice as much.

We all know the system is broken, the entire way we deliver education must be changed, and new business and economic models must be created. I am tired writing about this.

My goal is to create a real call to action. One that will bring together a ground up, grassroots movement at both the k-12 and higher education levels where change agents with a variety of backgrounds and industries can gather and enact real change. Over the coming months uwemp is reaching out to individuals and groups to drive this mission forward to enact real change. We are actively creating a list and database of individuals we can launch a community around so please get in touch with me any time day or night at jordan@uwemp.com.

I am driven by a challenge. Breaking down deep strategic problems and attacking them in a formulaic way. But, unlike strategic consultants making $200,000 a year flying around the world offering companies ideas and then going to the next engagement, I am about executing on those ideas that solving these deep strategic problems. Developing the business models, team, and infrastructure to execute on an idea or vision is where the rubber meets the road.

I recently had a meeting with a very bright fellow who was in the community building, education, and talent retention space where the first words out of his mouth were, “I am practitioner, not a theorist.” He was focused on executing and doing, not just providing frameworks and ideas. Do not worry, I will be stealing this religously for future meetings.

This is why we are attacking education head on. It is a deep strategic problem that  has many layers and requires a well thought out approach to dramatically improve outcomes. People love to talk about how to fix the problems or building technology to become the next Facebook for Education.

Sorry all – it is going to be a bit tougher than that.