I have enjoyed this week’s Ulearn conference. Ewan McIntosh was a refreshing keynote speaker (in content as well as accent!). I enjoyed his discussion about audience and authenticity and also liked what he had to say about the spaces where we exist.

I want to think a bit further about something Ewan said about “death by risk aversion”. I had a bit of a brain moment (maybe I haven’t got early Altzheimers?) and sure enough Google pointed me back to Kathy Sierra who said,

Regularly review your sacred cows

Regularly review the assumptions behind all your decisions
Are those assumptions still valid?

Practice LETTING GO
Here’s where the Buddhists have an edge. Too many of us hold on to practices or ideas (including sacred cows) long past their sell-by date. If it doesn’t serve us any longer, it’s time to give it up no matter how well it served us in the past.

Some good reminders for all of us I think.

I think that one of the biggest highlights of the conference was the discussion and thinking that I encountered in a breakout presented by Jeremy Kedian from Waikato University’s Educational Leadership Centre. The breakout was entitled Renaissance – Not Change (which in itself is a bit of a counterpoint to my own breakout session) and looked at a range of ideas about educational change.

A few statements that I’d like to keep in mind:

“Leadership is not a status, it’s a resource”

“Stop following the coastline and start following the dolphins”

“Excellence is a given”

and finally, this oft quoted piece from Harmel and Prahalad

“So the urgent drives out the important; the future is left largely unexplored; and the capacity to act, rather than to think and imagine, becomes the sole measure of leadership.”

Thinking and imagining, and the time and energy to do so. Luxuries? Or necessities?

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