New workshops from José Antonio Bowen offered virtually. Contact me for more info. Read Is Higher Ed Asking the Wrong Questions? in InsideHigherEd. OR watch my new TED talk on the New 3Rs.

Teaching 1/2 Naked: Preparing for Uncertainty

How can you prepare to create the most significant learning experiences possible for students this fall, regardless of the mode? Most faculty have neither the time nor expertise to create either an online course that utilizes the best new technology or the ability to pivot quickly to online in the case of a campus outbreak. Here is a way to plan for whatever comes and continue to support your students while also taking care of yourself. There are a few technical tricks, but mostly it is about setting up flexible communication channels, designing learning that motivates students, focusing on the most powerful experiences, and prioritizing your own efforts. Here are ways to lower stress and reframe rather than replace. Nimble design can prepare you for excellent teaching in rapidly changing circumstances.

Pandemic Strategy: Planning for Uncertainty

The hope for stability is a powerful cognitive bias. With uncertainty comes fear. For leaders that brings the fear of missteps and a bias to reassure and delay. If we just had a little more information, we could make a better decision. Covid-19 is an ambiguous threat. We do not know for how long it will continue and we certainly do not know how it will change people’s behavior. This is not the time to stay the course and downplay. Hope is not a strategy and there is no best rational response. There is no knowable “new normal,” only more chaos, volatility, stress and disorder to come. We like plans, but what we need is nimbleness. Efficiency becomes a vulnerability during rapid change: the more efficient supply chains of milk and toilet paper, for example, were not easily adaptable. Humans have a bias to wait for more certainty, but when new information is almost certain to be contradictory and random, we are waiting in vain. We need optionality and asymmetric opportunities. Leaders need to accept that we will make mistakes, but still act with urgency, transparency and honesty that you do not know the future and then iterate. 

Virtual Leadership

A crisis reduces motivation, creativity and cognitive bandwidth—for everyone. An ambiguous threat, like Covid-19, only intensifies the uncertainty that reduces performance. Loss of choice, only compounds this; so being forced to work from home is further demotivating. Virtual leadership requires new definitions of process, purpose and permission. Relationships, care and belonging matter more, but so does the opportunity to experiment. How can we create new ways for people to add value? Variety and extreme examples become more valuable during a time of uncertainty, so we need to create more potential for meaningful and creative work. Given the opening, anyone can become a hero in a time of crisis; now is a great time to support and encourage agency and forward thinking.

Crisis and Innovation 

One of the first things to go in times of crisis is innovation. This happens both because we are out of bandwidth, but also because we falsely perceive that now is not the time. There is a tendency to focus on the tactical (making sure people can do their jobs from home), but disruption is the time when market share moves the MOST. There is much more opportunity for strategy when a situation is fluid, especially if the basic business model seems to be failing.

Innovative ideas start as subtle, awkward ideas, but they benefit from disorder. In a chaotic situation, it is impossible to predict which new idea or which plan may be most useful in advance. But more options, more experiments and the ability to respond quickly are essential to thrive. We will explore a process for greater tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty.