My reflections on the Office of Schools Conference: July

I really enjoyed the keynote and workshop by Jason Clarke:
5 things I heard from Jason Clarke were:
1. People want to work in, buy from, invest in and contribute to innovative organisations. I think this is becoming very true of MacICT at the moment.
2. Ownership doesn’t work, but authorship does; but everyone needs to contribute to be an author. We are gradually getting contributions from every stakeholder: project team, teachers, students.
3. Attract praise; avoid blame; don’t stand near the fan: I love this.
4. You need to go through the 4 doors to successfully implement change. Make a list of:

• things we used to do and will continue to do now: (it's usually a long list which is reassuring)   
• things we couldn’t do before, and can’t do now (usually a short list, once again very reassuring)   
• things we used to be able to do but can’t do now (short list - boohoo, get over it)   
• things we couldn’t do before, can do now (this is the 'go for it' message)

5. In every team there should be IDEAs (people who have particular strengths)
Ideas: dreamers, visionaries   
Designs: planners ( see the marshmallow test)  
Evaluations: cynics, testers, critics  
Actions: doers, task-oriented people
We need to double-check that each team has all of these. Some of our teams are too small  and maybe this is what we need here.