Teaching What I Do. Doing What I Teach. Learning as I Go.

Maybe I should adopt Mark Twain’s view on learning, “A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.” I sometimes get frustrated with myself, as much as, I get frustrated with some, not all of my students, who through no fault of their own are like deer staring into the headlights. Yeah, some days it’s like corralling cats because they all seem to want to go their own direction while, at the same time, looking to me. Like the big ol’ dog in the Looney Tune cartoon they want to know, “Which way did he go? Which way did he go, huh George?” Did this dog have no nose? What is a dog without a sense of smell?

They want me to provide them with the secret “recipe” that alleviates them from thinking the problem I’ve challenged them with through. They want to know how much of this and how many of that? And, most importantly, what is it that I want them to do? How do you want us to do this? I tell them, I want you to do it well. How do we do that? I tell them, by doing it the best way you can using what you’ve learned so far. But we don’t know how you want it. I want it on time and done as well as it could be done. I want to be impressed. But how do we do that? Define the problem, identify possible solutions to the best of your ability and select a course of action that you feel, with the knowledge and experience you’ve accumulated so far; present is as clearly, as confidently and as professionally as you can - how else?

The simple fact is; they’re only driven by the grade goal and how much or how little they need to do in order to achieve that goal. It is a task item. Not, a learning agenda. The acquisition of the grade is more important than the experience of solving the problem and confidently presenting the solution. I’m constantly reminding them that I don’t abide by the 3Rs (Read. Remember. Regurgitate) method of teaching. In my courses, it’s all about experiential learning – learning by doing. If I had to site a methodology, it would have to be the instructional model medical schools use. They teach young doctors to; learn, do and teach. It’s hands-on learning! Listen to the lecture, jump in and solve the problem or challenge as presented and demonstrate to others what you’ve learned.

Another “thing” students don’t get is learner-centered teaching, which offers them the opportunity to invest in their education by taking the responsibility to do what they know needs to be done, as required and as stated on the course schedule. Are they afraid to fail? Yes. Are they unsure of themselves? Yes. Have they been trained to believe that there is only one correct answer to every problem? Yes. But, here, I believe, is the crux of the matter. They refuse to read the instructions. When they do, they fail to fully understand them before they begin the assignment. And finally, they fail to follow the instructions that they say they so desperately need in order to know what is I expect of them!

Look, I teach marketing. It isn’t rocket science. It does require a skill base as does any other discipline. But, most importantly, it can’t be learned solely by rote learning. It must be experienced! I do my best to create real-world situations for them; as real as can be real in a classroom setting. The course is designed to get them involved in discovering how for example, if marketing were such a precise science, then why is the business landscape littered with the wreckage of the idiocy of the New Coke, the Ford Edsel and Sonny’s Betamax, just to name three of way too many – um, screw ups?

Listen, I can’t and I don’t teach out of a textbook. To me it’s like a preacher who only refers to the Bible without thought or reason or human experience. The Bible is a text and a text is a source - a compendium of theories. The message of the Bible however, must be practiced! Theory guides process and practice but it is not a substitute for it. I teach what I do every day. I do what I teach in class. I tell them that. I also remind them that their survival in my class depends on them being “smarter than the av-er-age bear, Boo Boo,” as that cartoon classic bear, Yogi Bear, would say. The goal is snatching the picnic basket. Do you have to read a book to figure it out?

Theory is great. But out there, where they’ll end up trying to earn their pay, the boss will want them to apply practice within the established process of the organization. And, not to forget the other Yogi who said, “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.” As far as I’m concerned, there is a widening gap between marketing subjects taught in classrooms and the actual knowledge of marketing as required in today’s workplace. Alvin Toffler, in his best seller, Future Shock wrote, “Long before the year 2000, the entire antiquated structure of college degrees, majors and credits will be a shambles. No two students will move along exactly the same educational track." He’s only off by a few years since there have been pockets of this new thinking and teaching being practiced but, we’re not totally there yet. We do, however, need to be there as soon as possible.

Tangles, Bangles and Angles

Genetic memory?

Seems I’ve always had a fascination with tangled string. It could be OCD. But, whenever I do see tangled string, line or rope, I have a compulsion to untangle it. The challenge is not cutting it – ever! It helps refine my problem-solving skills. It helps me to further develop my observation skills. Others in the family love doing puzzles. I can’t stand them.

The more I do and teach marketing, the more similarities I see between it and tangled string. Marketing, to me, controls current, as well as, potential problems. The cause is more important than the effect. Yet, many business owners and marketers concentrate on the effect. Tangled string is the effect of the lack of attention or improper handling and storage. Line, what sailors call rope, has a specific lay. It “curls” naturally and when the nature of the line is ignored, the line gets fouled – tangled.

Mind your lines and you won’t get them tangled or worse yet, get tangled in them. Solving a marketing mystery as to why something is either unexpectedly working or, not working as expected requires experience in untangling string. Many businesses try to pinpoint the cause of their under-performance as if it were a puzzle to be solved. A puzzle has all of the pieces of a bigger picture. The challenge is putting them together to reveal the whole picture. Untangling string, on the other hand, is a lot different because it is a deconstructive process while puzzle making is a constructive or reconstructive process, if you prefer. The difference is in the thought processes.

When the puzzle picture (the problem) is reassembled it’s the same old picture you started out with. When line is untangled, it is the same line as before but, the only difference is that now it’s functional. And, in its re-purposed state, the cause of the tangle remains clear and the actions that lead to the tangle can be avoided.

Hope this is making sense to you! A tangle is a muddle and a muddle is something that is unclear. Most products are not properly promoted because their true nature, representation or what they signify hasn’t been made clear to consumers. Pricing issues can also become quite muddled because price is promoted when a better way would be to tout the value representation. Price is logic. Value is emotion. Consumers, no matter what they say, buy on emotion. And if your store or web page doesn’t clearly show customers where to go, what to do and how to do it; they will not only be in a muddle, they’ll elsewhere and buy there.

There was once an off-price (factory outlet) in New Bedford that featured high-end designer fashions at deep discounted pricing. They muddled their communication message by aligning London, Rome and Paris with Milan and New Bedford. The obvious lack of credibility was just part of the larger problem. Local shoppers, seeing how serious the positioning message was aligning these major international cities with New Bedford felt that they could not afford most of what the designer factory outlet was offering. Customers had to be shipped in from New York and Connecticut.

The reason for my fascination with tangled string it seems is based in genetic memory. My ancestor, Antoine Fortier, came to the new world, actually New France (Canada) in 1654 with his father. He married one of the richest women in Canada and it has been said that the cream of Canadian society (French) was at the wedding. The only persons of power not in attendance at this social event of the year were Louis XIV, Cardinal Richelieu and Pope Blessed Innocent XI. Antoine used his marriage connections well. He was chartered by France to fish and trade in designated areas. Seems fishing regulations have been around for awhile. Legend has it that he was always imploring his sons to mind their deck lines. The irony of it all was that his foot became tangled in the anchor line and he plummeted to the bottom of the St. Lawrence River to his death.

No matter how well a business is doing, it can always do better. Shiny advertising promotions (bangles) don’t always cut it. The newest “thing” or the quick and “sure fire” way to do business is also not always the most effective. From my perspective, looking out for the tangles that choke up your business operation and straightening them out is always a better way to solve the problem. The problem can usually be traced to not having or consistently employing a unique selling proposition, or promise or, offer. Another is not trying hard enough to standout from your competition. Even worse in my estimation is not owning the word that describes what you do or offer. Purdue owes the word chicken. iPod is the word for mp3 player. Not having or employing a wow factor makes what you do seem boring and homogenized. To borrow from a classic Dunkin Donuts slogan, It’s time to untangle the string and get the kinks out of your business.

Fix the Village. Fix the CHhld.

No - that's not a typo in the headline! It's an illustration to support the concept...

Not too long ago, then First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote a best-seller called It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us. In the book, she focused on how diverse individuals and groups, not associated with, or those outside the family, do whether for better or otherwise, leave a lasting impression that is connected to a child's well-being. Society, then, according to the author must meet the needs of the child.

Locally and recently, the public school administration and the school committee have been expressing their frustration and anxiety of ever plummeting graduation rates. A possible culprit could be, according to these public school representatives, charter schools. Why? Well, it seems the charter schools have skimmed the cream off the top and, the result of this is, the traditional public schools have what’s left; special education students and those whose first language is not English. Plus, most of the public school children in the system are from the lower economic households.

Charter schools; talk of a perfect example of perfuming the pig. Or, better yet, a brilliant counter measure against integration. Actually, it was a well-planned agenda by those who didn’t want their children in inner-city schools and more specifically bused to schools outside of their neighborhoods. The busing “solution” was an ill-conceived solution to a still festering, thirty year old, problem.

Once you gave “these” parents the option of where to send their children to school, those who were the most upwardly mobile took advantage. The families of “those” children were again left with little option. Yes, I’m painting this snapshot with a broad brush and mixing my metaphors. The neighborhood (village) schools all pretty much stayed the same; while the new charter schools came on line with the best of everything including smaller classes, better facilities and fewer problems. Most of those problems were left in the neighborhood schools.

So many businesses solve one, several or all of their marketing mix problems the same way. Remember: internal factors are controllable factors. Returning to the public school issue totally in a marketing light, here’s what’s at the core of it all. Neighborhoods have not been supported and sustained. With the flight to suburbia, the urban vacuum was filled with those on the bottom of the economic ladder. Block upon block of multi-family apartments were allowed to be bought up as income property or investment portfolio stuffing. When the cat’s away… Mismanaged or under-managed properties are like corn fields. Corn strips the soil bare of its essential nutrients. So to do most properties that are not properly managed and, those are, for the most part non-owner occupied.

Already we see the genesis of a ground zero for the public school problem. There is a theory out there that’s existed since the eighties. Some call it an urban myth. But, a theory was introduced in an Atlantic Monthly article in 1982 James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling. Wilson and Kelling were by social scientists who offered one of many examples, “Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.”

Some of us may say it’s no theory. We’ve seen neighborhoods deteriorate before our own eyes. Perhaps the reason for this is that those who have the power; status, education and good paying jobs don’t live in those neighborhoods. In South Boston, the old-timers have a less than endearing term to describe those in the neighborhood who moved to the suburbs. They call them two-toilet-Irish. These suburban Irish left their neighborhoods, their parish and their pubs for the luxury of having more than one toilet in a new home; turning their backs on who and what they were. Those who owned owner-occupied multi -family dwellings sold to absentee landlords and there, based on the old-timers opinion, went the neighborhood.

Maybe mentioning South Boston and busing in the same article in an iffy venture on my part. But look at it this way. Good neighborhoods where the residents are invested in several ways, whether financially, emotionally or culturally are just that. Good schools are found in good neighborhoods and utilized and supported by good neighbors. Every school can be a “charter” school. The quality of education is not solely dictated by the neighborhood’s diversity as by its economic base. Residents of these neighborhoods own shops and other small businesses in the neighborhood that employ the people who live there.

Fix the neighborhoods and fix the schools. Fix the schools and fix the children. Fix the children and fix the future. It takes a village to raise a child is said to have originated from the Nigerian Igbo culture. The source and attributed proverb are still debated but regardless of the concept’s pedigree, neighborhoods house and sustain families whose children's futures are dependent on the entire village. Not just the parents or the schools but everything and everyone in the neighborhood that forms the social and cultural and individual identities of everyone who lives there. David Ogilvy said, "A blind pig can sometimes find a truffle. But it helps to know that they're found in oak forests."

Customer Service – It Either Rings a Bell or it Doesn't!

Way back when in the seventies on this very campus you could hear the iconic group of the day, Chicago belting out the lyrics, “Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?” Flash forward to 2010. Bearing in mind that this is a university, perhaps Tolstoy was correct in saying, “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

So here begins my simple, but truthful tale of how, when it comes to customer service, it’s the little things that really do matter. Consumer perception is reality. What the customer thinks is right, is indeed, from their perspective – correct. With that in mind, a couple of semesters ago, one of my students noticed that the campus campanile “clock” was not bonging the right time. Now for those not familiar with this campus, there is no “clock” or at least one that is visible as in the case of London’s Big Ben. But a “clock” presence is announced by an electronic Big Ben-esque bonging at the quarter, half and, at the top of the hour. This conscientious student took (let the puns reign or should it be ring) the time to take the responsibility to, I can’t help it, right the bong.

What ensued was an unbelievable series of emails that were for the most part, to borrow from another musical legend, Johnny Mathis , too much, too little, too late. The bong remained wrong and the campus was alerted every hour specifically that the campus was not in sync with Eastern Standard Time. And, it was obvious, it seemed, only to the concerned student that the problem would not be fixed in time for the annual campus open house.

This particular incidence of student-citizen responsibility took this individual; I’ll call him John, through a maze of departments to finally get the chime in time with the rest of the Eastern Seaboard. Yeah, here it comes. How many campus administrators does it take to set a clock? You can entertain yourself providing the punch line. Finally, the email was filtered to a respondent who said that they had only “heard” of the problem when John’s email was forwarded to then. The respondent verified John’s observation after they had made it a point to stop and listen.

Okay, but it still amazes me how the missing bong problem, actually it was off by two hours or two bongs, took so long to fix. The campanile, or as it’s referred to, the Campanile (the capitalization didn’t seem to warrant it greater esteem) is also the name of a campus publication.

Now the purpose of this blog is not to bash anyone on campus but it is a great teaching tool. It’s sadly, a real-life example or issue, or event if you prefer, that seems to be just the tip of a rather large iceberg. Customer service is comprised of simple little details. These details represent things that, when functioning properly are invisible or unnoticed. Toilet paper is not an issue. Not replacing it is. Not caring whether it is or not is a huge issue.

It seems that, yes, an improperly set timepiece is an issue that illustrates lack of community pride, consumer comfort and communication. A broken clock, it’s said, is right only twice a day. One that’s off by two hours is wrong every hour of every day. The bongs that emanate from that architectural structure, the campanile (small “c”) marks the center of the campus and is also the icon and brand of the University’s main glossy magazine. It’s sort of, if you will allow, the nose on your face. It heralds more than the time. The overlooked error loudly and continually announced – who cares – who cares – who cares!

What does this say about an institution’s commitment to customer service when no one seems to care that something as simple as the correct time is not being monitored. Furthermore, when a helpful observation (not complaint) is communicated by a student, you know, a customer, no one responds! Ah, no official campus timekeeper? In the mean time, the campus remained on Mountain Time. Martin Luther King, Jr. was correct to assume, “The time is always right to do what is right.” The correction was finally made but it was a long time coming.

Corralling Cats, Recipes and Other Classroom Adventures

There’s a nasty little saying – those who can, do and, those who can’t, teach. It evolved from the original thought by George Bernard Shaw, the celebrated Irish playwright and co-founder of the London School of Economics. What he said, or was quoted as saying was, “He who can does. He, who cannot, teaches.” The phrase came from Shaw’s Maxims for Revolutionists: Man and Superman. He opined on everything from education, marriage and religion to government, health care, and class privilege. He was an especially ardent critic of those whom he perceived as exploiting the working class. And, he railed against them as bitter, misguided failures from other fields that used the school system as an excuse or as a refuge.

But regardless of the accuracy of the quote; it still rankles me. Especially when it spews out on some elitist’s mouth, one, who never has stood in front of a classroom full of students of varying backgrounds and abilities. Teachers aren’t faucets. Teachers aren’t necessarily repositories of vast amounts of facts, figures and forgotten information. Socrates, considered one of the greatest teachers of his age, said “I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think. Education and learning is not teacher centric. It is, or should be, student centered. A Buddhist proverb relates, “When the student is willing, the teacher appears.”

With all of the above in mind, I'll return from yet another class and wonder, is it me or is it them? Don’t get me wrong. I love teaching marketing. And, as someone once said, sometimes the fox gets the chicken and sometimes; feathers.

The more I think about it, the more I believe it’s neither of us. It’s the system! The system still perpetuates the old 3R method of teaching. Read, remember and regurgitate. Even when it’s been proven that, within three months of the completion of the course, the student only retains ten percent of what they learned. Within a year, the retention is down to one percent or less. What a colossal waste of time and college funds!

So, according to those who throw around the G. B. Shaw quote, teachers are a bunch of clowns. One of my colleagues, tongue in cheek, does refer to teaching as edutainment. With that said, maybe Chuckles the Clown, the often-mentioned and seldom seen children's television show host character on the vintage seventies sit com, The Mary Tyler Moore Show was right. Chuckles philosophy was, “a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.” Sure, some days, I’m tap dancing up there. But every day, I’m giving it my all and that’s what prompted this entry.

It is like corralling cats! Students don’t read, fully understand or follow directions. They paradoxically want the instructor to tell them point-by-point what to do while grumbling about the restrictions. They truly believe that life outside of the institution is better and more structured than it is in the classroom. They want real-life experiences yet, they can’t or won’t allow themselves room for failure. The system is grade and cum driven and their only goal is the grade or GPA. And, the only way they can reach their goal is by absolutely knowing what is required to reach that goal and no more.

The other day in class, I was trying to illustrate how this system is so similar to a recipe. Any fool with a minimum of culinary instruction can follow a recipe – ah; read, react and recreate as specified! But even this comfort level is compromised by the fact that they don’t willingly read, fully understand and completely follow the recipe. I told them that when I was in charge of hiring cooks that I stayed away from a certain institute's students. They could not function beyond the confines of the recipe. Instead, I hired cooks who had a solid comprehension of culinary basics. They were better able to “think outside the box” and were higher functioning.

Every time I enter the classroom I try to live up to my perspective of what it is I believe I contribute to their educational experience. The effort is guided by my creed; I do what I teach and teach what I do. Walt Disney encouraged and empowered his staff to dream and believe; to dare and to do. It is as I said earlier, like corralling cats in the classroom. But, what keeps me going is what happened today when five of my seven marketing project groups successfully delivered their first progressive presentations. Watching and listening and evaluating and assessing every word, graphic and point of delivery this morning, I felt as though I got through to them.

They finally forgot about failure and restrictive context parameters - the recipe - and allowed themselves to be as close to being real marketers as they could be. A couple of the groups gave me that and a whole lot more. I was at peace with myself and my god; feeling, that if I had to exit the planet at that moment, I would be okay with it. Saint Francis of Assisi prayed to be a channel to bring truth where there is error and faith where there is doubt and hope where there is despair. I hope I’m real close to accomplishing that.

Alvin Toffler who wrote Future Shock, one of the seventies' best sellers wrote that, "the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." I’m sure it goes for teachers as well.