This is the final blog in “What does your mission require of you?” series. Starting with questions, serving the team, never creating for today, shipping ideas lose significance unless you enjoy the ride. Opportunities, challenges, setbacks, moments of acceleration, resistance, and success are an inevitable part of fulfilling your mission and executing on your vision.

Enjoy the ride is about having fun.

Enjoy the ride is about embracing whimsy. Bob Goff in Donald Miller’s book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, says “Don’t be afraid to embrace whimsy. Whimsy is the nagging idea that life could be magical; it could be special if we were only willing to take a few risks.”

Enjoy the ride is about savoring the moment. @JeffGoins tweeted out a nice challenge for us…”If I could choose ONE WORD to define your new year, it’d be this: ‘savor.’ As in, everything. Savor it all, every moment.” Jeff also says, “Many of us fail to recognize that the best moments are the ones happening right now.” So true.

Enjoying the ride is placing your palms up. Instead of closed fists, Dweck’s work on growth mindset is essential…always willing to learn, grow, and develop.

Enjoy the ride is showing up. On behalf of our students, let’s go do stuff together. Let’s go do stuff that matters. How might we make a dent?

We get one shot at today. We don’t get it back.

Enjoy the ride.

In the fall, I began to post a blog series around “What does your mission require of you (students, faculty/staff, parents)?” Entering the spring semester of the school year, this is a great time to reflect on the question. If you missed any of the series check out…

Start with a powerful question
Serve the team
Never create for today

Your mission/destination/desired result is a non-negotiable imperative. It is why you exist, what you do, how you behave.

The fourth installment of this series focuses on shipping ideas. Inspired by Seth Godin and his work–Purple Cow, Linchpin, Icarus Deception, Poke the Box, shipping ideas is about making it happen, launching something, taking initiative, being bothered by something, not worrying about perfection. Shipping is about paying attention to your intention.

What ideas are we trying to ship? They are built around three critical commitments:

1. designing and demonstrating 21st century learning

2. connecting and collaborating locally and globally

3. investing and impacting the future

To ship requires you to think about the destination (mission), driver (student), routes (learning outcomes), mode of travel (approach, method, process), and navigation system (assessments).

To ship requires partnerships. Partnerships are central to the future of any school’s ability to transform learning in a relevant and applicable educational experience; to amplify and accelerate growth from innovative experts in the business community, nonprofit organizations, and the education sector; and to be a contributor in strengthening the local community and assisting in global needs.

To ship requires imperfection. So many times in the education sector, we feel compelled to ship perfectly designed, well packaged ideas. Anything less than this, we drop it and move onto another idea we will never ship. As Seth would say, “In a long distance race, everyone gets tired. The winner is the runner who figures out where to put the tired, figures out how to store it away until after the race is over. Sure, he’s tired. Everyone is. That’s not the point. The point is to run.”

How might we impact our students today? Ship now, ship again, ship with them, ship tomorrow, let students ship, ship again…keep shipping.

Glad the Wright Brothers shipped an idea. Saved me a great deal of time traveling from Georgia to Texas over the holidays.

Happy shipping in 2014.

Mount Vernon: Accelerating Innovation from Mount Vernon on Vimeo.

Mount Vernon Presbyterian School will launch a new program, PlayMaker, in the 2014-2015 school year. PlayMaker is an innovative program designed to allow students to explore their questions, passions, or interests in an experiential, engaging, and fun learning environment. During the school year, PlayMaker takes place in the PM, after school, and in the summer months, Summer PlayMaker will have opportunities for students throughout the day.

Available June 2014, Mount Vernon is currently accepting applications for the 12-month position of PM Program Designer.

Position Description

The high-performing position of PM Program Designer plays a strategic leadership role in advancing the mission of the School:  We are a school of inquiry, innovation, and impact. Grounded in Christian values, we prepare all students to be college ready, globally competitive, and engaged citizen leaders.

Design Role

• Collaborate with ELC, Preschool, Lower School, Middle School (5-6 only) to develop learning experiences and offerings for students
• enhance existing after school/extended day/summer programs aligned with vision of the School
• create new programs designed for creating, inventing, experimenting, and playing
• create market strategies to promote PlayMaker program within MVPS community during the school year
• create market strategies to promote Summer PlayMaker in Atlanta

Administrative Role

• supervise entire PlayMaker program
• be familiar with Bright from the Start licensing standards
• retain and evaluate the services of appropriate staff to organize and run programs
• oversee all communication with parents
• create and maintain all records as required by the School
• collaborate with CFO to develop a budget, oversee billing process, and ensure the profitability of each program

If interested in applying, send a letter of interest/resume and email employment@mountvernonschool.org.

Recently, Mount Vernon’s work of innovation has been highlighted in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Huffington Post, and Education Week. As Head of School of a high performing staff, I am proud of their work, agility to fail up, and willingness to share the well. Take a look and let us know what you think.

The “open classroom” concept: This isn’t your parents’ school

Making education more like real life through design thinking

Taking a relationship-centered approach to education

Must schools be these horrible, boring places? Apparently yes. It’s in their DNA.

Part 3 of What does your mission require of you? blog series

Preparing students to be college ready, globally competitive, and engaged citizen leaders, our mission requires us to never create for today.

For what are we preparing our students? The future. What is the future?

How might we understand the future? What is emerging?

How might we deal with the drivers of change? What are the disruptive shifts reshaping the workforce landscape? What are the skills needed to adapt, adjust to changing a workforce?

What are the signals we need to be paying attention to and how can these signals forecast the future?

I have more questions than answers, but it is important we look to research organizations as a means to position this generation for the future. The Institute for the Future (IFF) and the Horizon Report are great resources for companies/organizations/schools.

As an exercise, take your leadership team and reflect on the Institute for the Future’s forecasting of Workplace 2020 or watch the Future of Coordination.

How might we think differently?

How might we never create for today?

This generation of students does not have time for adults to catch up. It is time to do something.

Continuing “What does your mission require of you?” blog series…Summarizing last week, a team must start with a powerful question. Central to design thinking, Mount Vernon is starting with “How Might We?” HMW evokes access, opportunity, empathy, community, limitless opportunities, creative thinking, solution seeking, and much more.

In addition to starting with a powerful question, our mission requires us to serve the team. As a school, we have three distinct groups–students, teachers, parents–with different needs and expectations. You cannot serve the cause (mission) without serving the team.

Serving the team is about…

partnership.
understanding one another.
encouraging one another.
supporting one another
asking the question, What can I do to help?
taking strategic risks.
differing well.
What is like being on the other side of me?
you and I versus the problem.
foresight.
leveraging our authority for the benefit of those we serve.
communication.
assuming the best.
persistence.
building community.
commitment to the growth of people.
emulating the greatest example, model and teacher of servant-leadership,Jesus.

How might we serve the team?

Last week, I left off with…

In order to fulfill this living, breathing mission, I have been thinking about…what does our mission require of us? Over the next several weeks, I will share what I think our bold, ambitious, aggressive mission requires of us.

So what does our mission require of us (students, faculty/staff, parents)?

You have to start with a powerful question. As a school community, we have chosen to start with a question central to one of our signature programs in the Mount Vernon Institute for Innovation, Design Thinking – “How might we?”

“How might we?” evokes access, opportunity, empathy, community, limitless opportunities, creative thinking, solution seeking, and much more.

Inspired by AT&T, our administrative team thought we would have some fun with HMW and asked our younger students how they would answer the question. Take a look.

In all seriousness, How might we ____?

How might we make it more likely–by our design–that more students really understand what they are being asked to learn? How might we be the best in the world at developing and delivering a 21st century learning experience? How might we build a new Upper School academic building? Excite students with their learning experiences as much as possible everyday? Redesign the first week of school? Positively impact our students for life? Adapt to change? Create more awareness on local and global issues among our students and the community at large? Lead ed transformation by empowering learners to be doers for a better world?

How might we?

How would you complete this sentence for your school/community/organization/company? Then, together go make it happen. It’s time to do something.

The 2013-2014 school year marks Mount Vernon’s 42nd year as a school of inquiry, innovation and impact.

During the mad rush of August, I have the honor to give an annual address to our school community. Appropriately so, teachers, students, and parents have “zoomed in” to the beginnings of a year and the checklist of things to do, but I think it is important for a community of learners to join in on a conversation by “zooming out” and looking at the big picture. It is a strategic moment to dialogue about our destination and discuss our desired result as a school.

Mount Vernon’s desired result is our mission. We are a school of inquiry, innovation, and impact. Grounded in Christian values, we prepare all students to be college ready, globally competitive, and engaged citizen leaders. Our mission/destination/desired result is a non-negotiable imperative. It is why we exist, what we do, how we behave.

During pre-planning, I asked our faculty and staff to describe our mission. I loved it. They said, our cause is “bold, ambitious, aggressive, now, relevant, community-based, Christ-centered, forward-thinking, and extends beyond the traditional college prep school.” This is a tall order.

This is not an aspirational mission, but a mission we want to achieve. We are building something exceptional here. It is purposeful, intentional, and directional. It is about preparing and positioning this generation of students. It is focused on supporting the most important relationship at our school: the relationship between a teacher and a student, both actively involved in a continuous state of learning.

So in order to fulfill this living, breathing mission, I have been thinking about…what does our mission require of us? Over the next several weeks, I will share what I think our bold, ambitious, aggressive mission requires of us.

What does your mission require of you? Begin to ask this important question to your team. Share your answers with us.