Teaching Essentials

As a professional educator, I take teaching and life-long learning seriously. Teaching poses open-ended questions for learners to ponder, discuss, and act through. Teaching offers opportunities and environments for learners to observe, learn, and experience pertinent life issues. Effective teaching insists on a safe environment in which learners can be engaged and empowered with knowledge and insight. Teaching takes commitment and learning takes awareness. The bottom-line: we are all teachers and learners. What are you doing today to teach someone close or near to you? What have you learned today? How will you acknowledge or share that learning tomorrow?

History Is Being Made

What happened to previous history when Nazis overran Germany, Communists took over Russia, when any dictator wants to delete nonbelievers or non-supporters? History becomes edited. What happens when history makers fail to record their efforts, innovations, and findings and they are overlooked by other historians who document events? History celebrates the wrong discoverers. How much history have we gotten wrong over the centuries? We are at the mercy and folly of what was or was not recorded in a place that was or was not found in time for the next edition of our human historical record. Thomas Ayers writes about such stories in That's Not in my History Book: A Compilation of little-known Events and Forgotten Heroes.
Reading this book has caused me to think about our businesses. Which stories do we choose to record or delete, and how will those choices affect our business outcomes? How do success, ethics, and profits play a part in those decisions? Who is the business editor? Good questions for business owners and leaders to answer.

Meet SHARIE during a Crisis

Both natural disasters and human-made disasters have taught us some valuable lessons in past decades. Think about the Cerro Grande fire (2000), the Indian Ocean tsunami (2004), Hurricane Katrina (2005), the Chilean mine collapse (2010), the Gulf of Mexico/BP oil spill (2010), the Japan tsunami (2011)--and even earlier in history--the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe (1986), the Tylenol murder mysteries (1982). If your business or organization faces a crisis, follow the simple lessons and steps that have emerged from the successes (like Tylenol and the mine collapse) and the failures (like Chernobyl and Katrina) of those referenced events. Although simply described, each step defies being easy to accomplish. Meet "SHARIE: A Model for Controlling Crisis" (TM):

S - State the emergency situation and all the known facts.
H - Hasten the communication and access processes.
A - Ask for help, inside and outside the organization.
R - Resource all possibilities for remedy.
I - Innovate to arrive at the best resolutions.
E - Evaluate the efforts and the results.

Discuss this model with your team: How would you implement it in a crisis? How could you use social media and press releases? Who are the experts in your industry and how can you contact them? What universities specialize in research in your industry? What partners or alliances do you have in place that could help in an emergency?