Twenty First Century Transfomers

Developing Transformative Student Leaders

By Rick Smyre

DRAFT CURRICULAR FRAMEWORK

Goal: The goal of this project is to develop a network of high school, college and university student leaders in targeted areas of the country able to understand and utilize the skills of building capacities for transformation.

Objectives:

The curricula for a "transformer" leader can be developed in many different ways according to the needs of the individual institution as long as the key concepts and methods of transformation are integrated. It is a feature of this COTF National Network Project that each coordinator and "Master Capacity Builder" will be given the latitude to experiment and develop individualized approaches and material for building capacities in high schools to develop "transformer" leaders.

The following is one example of how a student based curricula can be developed as an extra-curricula activity ( or for credit depending on how it is structured ). Although this example takes each new skill and knowledge base as a separate idea, the best of all capacity building approaches will be to introduce and connect different modules of the overall ideas and skills in a self-organizing way.

The facilitator of this type of transformative capacity building will need to develop the following skills:

Module One: To develop new ways of thinking about the future

Expectations:

1) That a student becomes comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity
2) That a student understands that prediction is not possible in a fast paced and constantly changing society and world. One can anticipate, but not specifically predict.
3) That a student realizes that we are shifting from a world of hierarchies, standards and best outcomes, to a world of webs/networks, choices, and multiple approaches.

Methodology:

1) Have student go to www.worldchanging.com and select a new idea that is just emerging.
2) Have each student take the day's paper and select some story or issue with which the community or nation is dealing.
3) Have groups of three students get into "futures generative dialogue" about how the new idea will impact one or more of the issues selected, and determine whether it directly impacts, indirectly impacts, or obliquely impacts the current issue.

Module Two: To be able to identify trends and weak signals

Expectations:

1) That each student understands the difference between a weak signal, a fad and a trend.
2) That each student understands how to connect trends and weak signals into a "futures context."

Methodology:

1) Have each student select two areas of interest to them ( e.g. business, computers, composite materials, sports, arts, etc ) that reflect different parts of the society.
2) Have each student keep one of the two categories and put the other into a box in which all second place categories are compiled.
3) Have each student select, at random, one of the other categories.
4) Have each student find five websites, three articles and two books that are directly/indirectly related to each of the two categories. The student must justify why each source selected is related to a trend or weak signal.

Module Three: To be able to ask appropriate questions

Expectations:

1) That all students learn the concept of dialogue to include the skill of asking appropriate questions.
2) That students become familiar with a family of different types of questions to a) infer information, b) seed new concepts, and c) make new connections of people and ideas.
3) That students be given different situations to apply this skill to include a) building personal relationships, b) evolving new ideas, and c) helping others to see impacts of trends and weak signals.

Methodology:

1) Have each student read appropriate chapters in the book Enlightened Leadership.
2) Have a representative from a team of three contact cutting-edge thinkers in the country who are building their professions around the concept of the ability to ask questions ( e.g. Bruce LaDuke at Eli Lilly, Bill Isaac at MIT, etc )
3) Assign students to interview people to whom they are not related in the community to apply their new art of asking questions. Tell them they cannot make their own personal statements unless a question is asked to them.

Module Four: To be able to listen for value and find new connections

Expectations:

1) That any student learns to listen in a different way…not just proactively….with the intent to see how what is being said can connect with some other idea within a futures context.
2) That any student comes to realize that their opinion needs to connect with another's idea when becoming a "master capacity builder" and "transformer" leader.

Methodology:

1) Have groups of four-five students sit around a circle, listen to whomever is designated to speak ( about some new idea seen or read ) and do not say anything until someone can affirm some aspect of what is being said, and ask someone else a question that the new person speaking feels is appropriate to the dialogue. No person can speak over two minutes at a time.
2) Have two students at a time sit down and dialogue about a new trend they have seen to look for ways that new idea can be important to their school and community.

Module Five: To be able to connect diverse ideas and people for continuous innovation

Expectations:

1) That students understand the difference between invention and innovation, to include how nonlinear thinking becomes imperative in a constantly changing, interconnected and increasingly complex society.
2) That students realize that continuous innovation is a key for the vitality and sustainability of our society.

Methodology:

1) Have students identify three new discoveries and post them on a story board or web site. Ask the students to self-organize into groups of three. Have each group select three of their own posting, and six from the overall board. Then ask the students to select two of the nine discoveries as core, connect them in some direct way, and then connect the other seven in indirect and oblique ways.
2) Have students search the Internet in groups of two to find innovations in each of the following areas: a) economic development, b) technical research and development, and
c) education. Have each group connect with one other group of two and combine all of the six ideas in some appropriate way. Give to a panel of advisors to judge the best innovative idea.

Module Six: To understand how to create "innovation networks"

Expectations:

1) That students will learn the skills of connecting ideas and people in different cultures and different areas of the local region, state, nation and world.
2) That students will determine the differences in skills of leadership when comparing projects with tangible outcomes to evolving and self-organizing transformative capacity
building networks.
3) That students understand how to seed and recruit a core network, and frame processes of self-organization to help the network grow.

Methodology:

1) Have two students form a team, develop a kernel of an innovative idea, and use the Internet to recruit a network of ten peers in at least five different countries and three different continents.
2) Have teams of 2-3 students look for already existing networks and find ways to connect them with some other network that is developed in the school or community.

Module Seven: To design and evolve parallel processes

Expectations:

1) That students get beyond linear, cause and effect decision making to understand how to connect and evolve different people, different organizations and different ideas at different rates and in different ways.
2) That as students design and implement parallel processes, they look for new connections that will help seed transformative thinking and action within the context of an emerging 21st century society.

Methodology:

1) Have teams of three students identify a future need in the society, suggest how it will impact their school/community, and then design a set of multiphase parallel processes meant to seed new] capacities to deal with the future need in their school or
community.
2) Have individual students draw "community based process maps" that reflect how they would seed a new idea in their school or community.

Module Eight: To be able to identify and utilize new and emerging patterns.

Expectations:

1) That students realize that in a constantly changing society it will not be conducive to look to the past for direction for the future.
2) That students develop the capability to look at different areas of life and see common principles of organization. For instance, traffic on the Internet is similar in pattern to the way social connections evolve….around nodes that form in a self-organizing way.
3) That each student realize that emerging patterns will require new knowledge and new ways of looking at the world.

Methodology:

1) Have the students read passages from the following books and material: a) Linked, b) It's Alive, and b) the Second Enlightenment by COTF.
2) Ask each student to tell how the following are related: a) A tree and fractal geometry.
b) Class 5 white water rapids and The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman.
c) The community, the brain, the Internet and a rain forest.

Module Nine: To be able to think systemically at a higher level of complexity.

Expectations:

1) That each student realize we are in a time of historical transformation that is forcing us to evolve to a higher level of complexity of organization, at the same time that a new concept of elegance and simplicity is required.
2) That students become familiar with the concept of "uplearning."

Methodology:

1) Have each student read the essays on Uplearning and Struggling with Complex Connections by Rick Smyre, Bob Stott and Susie Buss.
2) Use a computer program or tinker toys and have groups of three four students build a 21st century network of people, organizations and ideas appropriate for their concept of a 21st century society.

Module Ten: To be able to take appropriate individual and team risks to develop new ideas and methods

Expectations:

1) That each student will come to understand the need to struggle mentally and emotionally to be able to be a "transformer" leader.
2) That each student will realize a constantly changing future will be more complex and require patience and a willingness to try the unknown without expectations of instant gratification.

Methodology:

1) Have two students pair off and become connected at a deeper level because of the way they become open to each other. The one criteria is that the two cannot be good friends.
2) Have these two students interview a community leader whom they don't know and be ready to ask appropriate questions and dialogue within a futures context.
3) Have these two students design a project that will require them to take at least three different kinds of risk to insure that they learn how to become comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty.

© Copyright 2006, Communities of the Future

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