Week 1: Seeing the gap
Your reality versus your aspiration
Welcome to Shoulder-to-Shoulder´s Ethical Leadership Institute. I am excited to have you all here. My hope is that class will be as hands-on and practical as possible, despite being an ¨online¨ course. It is also meant to feel as personal as a ¨normal¨ class, which is why you each have me as a mentor as well as an on campus mentor to check in with. With that in mind let´s jump in and begin.
Introduction: The ¨gap¨ and your moral vision
In this course you will be learning different tools and techniques for diagnosing and addressing problems that you see in your community. To do this, we will be drawing from the ideas of adaptive leadership, ethics and design thinking.
For this week, there are two main ideas that we will be working with. The first idea is that of the ¨gap¨ which comes from adaptive leadership. When we are talking about the ¨gap,¨ we are referring to ¨the gap between your current reality (the way things are today) and your aspiration (an audacious and courageous belief in how things should be) (Acumen).¨
In ethics, we call this ¨gap¨ your moral vision, which is your vision for how things ought to be in the future. At it´s most fundamental level, ethics is about what ¨ought¨ to be. Much like the adaptive leadership model discussed above, it considers the space between how the world¨is¨ and how the world ¨ought¨ to be.
In design thinking, which you will learn about more in later weeks, this ¨gap¨ is where designers use the design cycle and¨the principles of human-centered design to solve problems in the business, social, and educational sectors. Human-centered design places people at the center of the design process (SSIR).¨
Assignment: 10–15 Problems
For this weeks assignment you will need to go out and observe, as well brainstorm, the current problems you see in your school or your community. By defining these problems, you will be identifying the ¨current reality¨ or the ¨way it is.¨ Later in the course we will begin working on your ¨aspiration¨ or the way it ¨ought to be.¨
As you are observing and brainstorming don´t be afraid to share all of your ideas. Maybe you think your school schedule does not meet the needs of students or that your school lunch could be improved. Maybe you feel that your community lacks a safe place for students to spend time after school or that there is little support for the homeless population. This week is the time to put out all of your ideas, as crazy as they may seem. For some inspiration you can see ideas from IDEO, student ideas from Design For Change, these ideas from OpenIDEO, or this example of redesigning school lunch.
By Sunday, September 17 respond to this post with 10–15 problems that you see in your school or larger community. To respond to the post, click the speech bubble below (to the left of the Twitter symbol) and leave a response.
