FBLA Workshops - · PDF filePRI-Global.com Innovation – Using the Future to Create the Present® FBLA Workshops Preparing Students For Passionate Learning in College And Passionate

PRI-Global.comInnovation – Using the Future to Create the Present®

FBLA Workshops

Preparing StudentsFor

Passionate Learning in CollegeAnd

Passionate Work in a Career

Conducted by

Dr. Robert Harris and Dr. David JohnsonParadigm Research International, LLC

April 10 and 11, 2014

©Robert Harris, 2014


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A Report to the Students

This report was prepared primarily as feedback to you, the 137 students who attended andenergetically participated in two recent FBLA Workshops provided by PRI-Global andconducted by Dr. Robert Harris and Dr. David Johnson. It describes the process you letus take you through and the work products you produced. Your active participation inour workshops provided valuable insights that others can learn from, as well as personalinsights we hope you gained for yourself. Congratulations on a job well done! Thenames of the students who requested copies of this report are listed Appendix A.

Workshop Design: Find your passion. Use it to live, learn and work.

Recall that the theme of the two workshops was to remind you that you only live once, sowhy not: Create a passionate life of learning in college and a passionate life of work inyour career. The workshops were based on original ideas and material developed by PRIfor use with its clients. The two workshops for FBLA were originally designed to beconducted sequentially for a single audience, with the output of the first workshopprovided as input in the second workshop for completion of the overall goals by thataudience. However, limited schedule availability and increased demand at the FBLAConference required that we break the audience into two parts—two separate audiencesfor workshop #1 on Thursday, and two separate audiences for workshop 2 on Friday.This meant that neither group of workshop attendees would experience both workshops.We hope that by documenting each workshop in this report students will have a sense ofthe workshop as a whole, including the one they missed.

The first workshop (#1) on Thursday focused students on producing a list of the life workpassions they imagined for themselves, and using these passions to learn in college. Thesecond workshop (#2) on Friday focused the students on using the work passions fromthe first workshop to create imagined careers of work that fit these passions.

Workshop #1: Create a List of Career Passions

Two sessions of Workshop #1 were conducted for a total of 107 students (42 and 65) whowere divided into groups of 5 to 10 students to participate in interactive exercises. Ouropening premise was that everyone has something that excites them, some activity thatthey can’t wait to get up in the morning and start doing. We asked you to volunteerexamples, which we discussed as a group to clarify the meaning of “passionate learningand work.” Our advice to you on this introductory segment was that to discover yourpassion you have to participate fully in life, that no one can give you your passion; youwill only know it when you experience it. We described a job-hunting experience that


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illuminates this point by a recent graduate, which was posted last month in Dr. Harris’sblog:

http://viewshift.net/2014/03/25/cinderfellas-princely-job/

Passionate Learning in College

After a warm-up session to explore what passion meant in college, work and life ingeneral, the topic of “using your passion to learn in college” was addressed in a specialsegment of Workshop #1 conducted by Dr. Johnson, who currently teaches at MarymountCollege. The goal of this session was to describe what to expect in college.

Dr. Johnson set the stage for this segment by asking each student to imagine they areentering a 2000 year-old “parlor” where all known knowledge is kept and the collegeprofessors, all members of this august parlor, have the solemn responsibility of keepingthis knowledge safe and purveying it to the worthy. The student’s perspective is to winthe approval of the faculty priests to graduate from this parlor with a certified collegedegree.

Dr. Johnson took students through an exercise in unraveling the mystery of severalhistorical academic stories to illustrate the two major types of learning experiencesexpected in college. The first approach to learning is intentional questioning—challenging each other and professors with open-minded critique and dialog. This ispassionate fun and good news for most students. The bad news is that students also haveto learn by proof questioning in which the professor requires students to show that theyunderstand foundational knowledge by having them regurgitate answers to test questions.The student must master both kinds of learning in college. Case studies of personalexperience that illustrated this truth were presented by Drs. Harris and Johnson.

Both types of learning described above exist in this 2000 year-old parlor, but in differentproportions at different times. Students generally prefer inventive questioning becausetheir brains are eager to challenge and explore new ideas, ready or not. Inventivequestioning lets the student find new implications of old wisdom as well as to discovernew ideas about the world and themselves. Since this form of learning, however,requires a solid foundation of existing knowledge upon which new knowledge is built,professors require students to first master the proof questioning part of learning to showthat they understand existing knowledge and know how to use it.


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This can get boring because students get tired of memorizing and spitting back answers.Workshop participants jokingly referred to this style of learning during the workshop as“puking back answers” and “pass the test and forget the rest.”

The ratio of inventive to proof learning increases with each year of college, and inventivelearning becomes dominant for life-time learners after college. However, failure to buildup a strong foundation of existing knowledge, and continue learning, usually catches upwith the student, especially during the fast pace of accelerating change brought on bydigital technology. The two workshops presented at FBLA were designed to maximizeinventive learning, which tends to increase attendance and student focus since studentsare actively doing the creative work of the workshop. This approach also lets theirpassion out and whets their appetite for more adult learning experiences.

After this segment, we shifted the students’ focus to three interactive work exercises toexplore careers of passion in detail. The first two exercises were open interactivediscussions, and the third was closed and for private work discussions among students ateach table. Here are the three group exercises:

1. Name celebrities you respect for the passion they exhibit in their work.2. Name attributes that tell you a named celebrity is passionate about their work.3. Individuals share their passions and come up with a top 3 list for each group.

Celebrities with Passionate Careers

A list of 20 celebrities was produced in the first exercise ranging from rapper MGK (akaMachine Gun Kelly, named for the rapid rhythm of his lyrics) to Janet Yellen, the newchairwoman of the Federal Reserve (known for her slow and deliberate style of talking).

MKG Janet Yellen

Here is the list of celebrities in the order suggested: Beyoncé, Hugh Hefner, PresidentObama, Miley Cyrus, Ben Affleck, Tracy Gold, Ray Lewis, Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah,Steven Jobs, MGK, Bill Gates, Mahatma Gandhi, Warren Buffet, Walt Disney, JanetYellen, Ayn Rand, LeBron James, and John Lennon. Ellen DeGeneres was mentioned


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several times by both audiences in workshop #1, suggesting that her 4pm talk show is apopular TV choice of students coming home from school.

Attributes of Passion in these Celebrities

The list of common attributes of passion in these celebrities perceived by the studentswas short, easily named, and consisted of these five non-overlapping attributes:

1. Doing what they are interested in.2. Love what they do.3. Hunger to do it more and better.4. Belief in themselves.5. Courage to persist.

It was clear from the ease and speed with which you, the students, came up with theseuniversal drives of passion that you each know what passion looks like when you see it inthe careers of famous people. The question is, do you know what it feels like personally?You probably did as a small child; many people can trace their adult career passion backto early childhood activities they were drawn to. Dr. Harris described how his son, aprofessional jazz musician (guitar and composer) in Baltimore, loved patiently tinkeringwith his hands in creative ways since he was a child, from playing with toys to fixing thelawn mower. Michael jokes that his career destiny was to be a surgeon, a masseuse, or aguitar player.

Once you can feel the pull of passion in your heart from an activity, and it makes sense toyou, you have found an expression for your passion. You now have a built-in personalmeter to sort out your personal experiences and guide you on your unique path topassionate life of learning in college and working in a career.

Student Career Passions

Having defined “passion,” and identified celebrities who seem to have it in their career,and having defined what about celebrities tells you they live a life of passionate work,you, the students, were now ready to find your own passion for work. The way weaccomplished this was to have you discuss your career passions with each other privatelywithin your group. During this time facilitators Harris and Johnson both left theconference room to allow each work groups to be alone for 10 minutes while you sharedwith each other what you thought were the coolest individual career passions. You wereinstructed to take notes of all passion suggestions on small pads left at each table for agroup top 3 vote later.


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At the end of private work time the groups’ individual passions were discussed brieflyand a final top 3 voted by each group was collected for both sessions. The top-three listswere combined into a master list for all to see. A total of 72 non-overlapping work-passions were produced by the 107 people attending both sessions of Workshop #1.

These 72 work-passions ranged from the technical (science, math, technology,innovation, medicine, etc.) to the humanitarian (poverty, elderly, challenged, spiritual,etc.), to the entertaining (art, music, dancing, traveling, sports, etc. and to the playful(eating, sleeping, shopping). As Dr. Harris listed “eating, sleeping and shopping” on aflip chart (all were suggested several times), he commented in fun: “You all get a pass onthese because you know that your brain is still growing and won’t achieve its fullcapability until your frontal lobe is fully developed by about your mid-twenties” (frontallobe is that part of your brain in the forehead region responsible for judgment anddecision-making. I know about this now because I foolishly got married at 19 andfoolishly began to have babies during my first year in college.)

Output of Workshop #1: List of Career Passions

The third and last exercise of Workshop #1 had the students vote for their favorite work-passions on the list of 72. The votes of this crowd-sourced process were organized thatevening by Dr. Harris into broad meta-categories, which fit naturally into the followingfour Meta categories:

1. Creating the Future - innovation, science, technology, medicine (35%)2. Caring for Others - helping the poor and elderly, religion, family services 29%)3. Caring for Me - focusing on solo careers like singing, writing, sports (24%)4. Debating Each Other - sales, legal services, mediating, social media (13%)

The top three passion categories above were provided the next day as input to Workshop#2 to simulate the process of developing a specific passionate work career for eachcategory.

Workshop #2: Create Careers from the Passions of Workshop #1

This workshop began by summarizing the interactive process and output of workshop #1from the previous day (see above text) for a new audience. In addition to providing theinput to workshop #2 in terms of top three passion categories listed above, a student


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asked a question at the end of workshop #1that shaped how we would conduct workshop#2. He asked this question:

“Can you tell us what employers are looking for in interviews?’

Dr. Harris answered this question briefly at the end of workshop #1 by saying that, inreality, employers and employees are looking for the same thing—matching therespective passions and capabilities of each to the other.

This question (sorry I don’t have the student’s name to give him credit) led us to designthe workshop #2 for students to experience the process of matching passion to careerfrom the “other side” by reversing the usual student-advisor relationship—makingstudents the expert career advisors!

The students were asked to play the role of Expert Career Counselors as a member of agroup whose job was to create a career path for an imagined college senior. Playing therole of “expert” seemed to excite them, which was important late on a Friday afternoon.

The workshop participants of 30 students were divided into three groups that were eachassigned one of the three passion categories produced by Workshop #1: Creating theFuture; Caring for Others; Caring for Me.

Each group’s task was to create a specific passionate work career that fit their assignedpassion category, and then develop a career path and present it to the workshop. Thistask would require some prior training for students in order to play the role of “ExpertCareer Counselors.” In addition, private group work time would be needed for eachgroup to use this training to develop their career plan as well as time to present their planto all attendees for feedback and discussion.

After giving background on workshop #1, and explaining the premise for workshop #2,the remaining 45 minutes of the workshop was consumed evenly with these threesegments: Training, Formulating a Career Path, and Presenting the Career Path.

Training for the Task

A 15 minute training session was given by Dr. Harris who presented three essentialaspects that must be developed by each group for a career which sustains a livelihood:

1. W- Nature of Work: Figure out what actual work would be done in thiscareer for the chosen passion of an imagined candidate.


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2. V – Value of Work: Figure out what value this work produces as abenefit that others desire.

3. C – Communication of this Value: Figure out how this value iscommunicated to others.

Life-Value Map

After discussing each of these three career attributes separately, Dr. Harris showed howthey fit in the context of PRI’s Life-Value Map®, which he uses with clients to explorewhat they and their employees want from each to succeed. This map was discussed withthe workshop participants as an “ability framework” that is used as a guide for employersto decide whether to hire a person or not, and for prospective employees to decidewhether to accept a job offer or not. The Life-Value Map® is based on the idea that thebest work a person or a company can do flows from their Passion through a network ofthree interrelated value-producing branches—Knowledge, Skill and Preferences—thatform the life patterns of value they offer, and the work that they do using these patterns ofvalue. This idea is illustrated in the attached chart at the end of this report.

Training to Create a Career Path

A fifteen minute training session was given to students using the Life-Value Map™ thatshowed how to think about unique career paths. Knowledge is what you know in theabstract, Skill is your ability to use your knowledge in practice, and Preferences is theway you uniquely interact with the world on many levels, including how you tend tocommunicate and interact with others in using your knowledge and skill. Each of thesebranches is bifurcated into two complementary capabilities—static and dynamic—making 6 independent attributes. Together these 6 attributes represent 2 to the sixthpower, or 64, different combinations of influence that connect a person’s passion to thework they do, or connect a company’s passion for its products and services to itscustomers.

Not all combinations of influence support a particular passion; For example, a dynamiccreative person working on a static 9 to 5 schedule doing repetitive skill work does notusually work out. Also, as another example, an introverted analytical specialist is notusually suited for a career in sales. The Life-Value Map™ indicates how the flow andaccumulation of knowledge, skill, and personal preferences through each of these threebranches continues throughout life to form an evolving career path. Each path definesthe evolving “patterns of value” that each person can offer to society according the needsof the evolving economy at the time of offer. Today, the economy is shifting rapidlyaway from a static “repetitive economy” to a dynamic “creative economy.”


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The New Creative Economy

We can see that the “value” a person can learn has changed dramatically over time ineach branch of the Life-Value Map™. If we go way back to when humans were cavedwelling nomads, our KNOWLEDGE was almost all tacit, or instinctual. Our onlySKILLS were a few crude repetitive craft skills of survival that could only be passed onpersonally by a “master” craftsman. Our PREFERENCES were 99% “taste good, feelsgood, my tribe.”

Fast forward to today where we have recently passed through an industrial age that wasbased on explicit documented knowledge that could be easily passed on to others,repetitive skills many could master, and a stable 50/50 mix of gene/cultural influence ona growing set of personal preferences. (Percentages in the map are the current averagecontribution each of the three “value branches,” and the red arrows are trend directions ofpercentage changes.) The industrial age lasted few centuries. The world had basicallyfigured out a way to operate during this time. Then about 20 years ago digital computersbecame common place, very powerful, very cheap, and then interconnected virtually allof humanity in a fraction of a lifetime.

We have entered a new age of hyper change that demands creativity just to keep up withthe change, and to harvest the fruits of this new age of fundamental change. The Rise ofthe Creative Class written by Richard Florida popularized the coming of this age in 2002.Students, this is your future from today on. In terms of being able to create life-value fora career, CREATIVITY has become the new organizing principle for all three branchesof value development in the life-value map, ™ and for living, learning and working. Toread more, click on: America's Creative Economy

Ultimately, career paths come down to what specific WORK is done, the VALUE that aperson’s combined abilities produce doing this work, and how well this value can beCOMMUNICATED to co-workers, bosses, the market, friends, and to the personthemselves as their own reflection of the work they are doing.

Formulating a Career Path

After training, each of three groups was given 15 minutes in private to work up theirrespective ideas for a passionate career within their assigned passion category, and topresent it on a flip chart standing before all. Each group was tasked to create and presentfive items of information from their deliberations and given 5 minutes to present:


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1. N: Name of their expert counselor group.2. P: Passion that fits within the assigned category.3. W: Work to be actually done by the person with this passion.4. V: Value produced by this work for all.5. C: Communication of this value to all.

This abbreviation scheme was created by the participants when the first presenter keptasking for the flip chart to be turned back for definitions of the five presentation items.

Most of you who were chosen by your group to bravely present your group’s report hadsome difficulty organizing the consensus of your group because you were purposelygiven a difficult time-constrained task (like a real workplace) to complete in order tostimulate your creativity. However, each group was helped through rough spots by Q&Afrom the audience and with facilitation guidance given during your presentation. Thisamounted to a little “on the spot” presentation training, because a lot was being asked ofyou.

Admittedly, this was a lot to throw at you in a short time, but you were fully engaged,you absorbed the key ideas, and you seem to have fun creating and performing yourpresentation roles. Each group received a loud applause from all after each presentation.Below are summaries of three very different presentations.

Passion Category: Creating the Future

Name: Future Jobs of America, Inc.

Passion: Education on how the think about the future, starting young and going throughcollege.

Work: Teach how to combine art & science to imagine scenarios for possible futuressince no one can know the future, and it’s likely that creativity and technology will definethe future.

Value: By learning how to imagine possible futures and describing them in stories, wewill be better able to recognize the future when it arrives, and adapt to it more easily.

Communication: Use story telling in a new form called “Future Fiction.” and socialmedia for wide distribution and feedback.


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Passion Category: Caring for Others

Name: Rainbow Passion Food Drivers, Inc.

Passion: People in need get hooked living on unhealthy junk food because it is all theycan afford. You can help change this by working for RPFD, a non-profit chain ofneighborhood fresh and healthy food stores owned, operated, and used exclusively by theresidents, and partially subsidized by donations from the major food distributors.

Work: Jobs include food delivery, community outreach for store ownership andoperation, fund raising from Whole Foods and other companies, nutritional counselingfor residents.

Value: Show that investing in a way for needy people to afford healthy food returns valueto society through reduced health costs from diabetes, high blood pressure, and otherhealth ailments caused by obesity.

Communication: Get the word out to the community through church and school events,and talk Whole Foods and similar companies into donating to RPFD as a startup, andthen use their support to advertise their humanitarian role and to urge their patrons tosupport RPFD as well.

Passion Category: Caring for Me

Name: Swag Dominance, Inc.

Passion: Since it is all about us, we want to be the King of Swag, the ones with the mostcelebrity, the most stuff, the most viewed on ET because we, by ourselves, entertain you.

Work: To be one of us, you not only have to have talent, but more than this, you have tocrave audience love like we do. Because it is only you on the stage soaking up all theadulation for making throngs of people happy for a short while, it is only about you.

Value: I transport you out of your routine little humdrum life for an hour or two andmake you feel my passion for a fee of usually less than $100, and you think it about you,and that’s good. But it is really about me because I need you more than you need me. AllI have after I perform is my swag, which is why I need Swag Dominance.

Communication: To succeed I have to be seen everywhere—on TV, social media, in thenews. I have an agent and publicist whose full time jobs are to makes sure my career isalways going up, up and up to the moon! And that I get more swag than anyone else inmy field of entertainment. Because it is always about me, dummy!


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The students had the most fun with the “Swag Dominance, Inc.” presentation in whichthe group went over the top in playing their role as an entertainer in a “me” solo career.They got huge applause.

Thanks again to all.


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Life-Value Path™

STARTUP

PASSION

V-A-L-U-E D-E-V-E-L-O-P-M-E-N-T

KNOWLEDGE SKILL PREFERENCES

Explicit(10%)

Tacit(90%)

Repeat(35%)

Create(65%)

DNA(45%)

Culture(55%)

TrendDirection

New Born CompanyNew Born Human


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Appendix A

Names of 78 ParticipantsRequesting Workshop Report

Anita Amin Isabella Gallagher Sarah JacksonAnthony Chung Jack Blaes Saylor MealingBecca Brnich Jennifer Siewierski Shasta BraithwaiteBen Claudemans Jess Molander Sophie SunBrianna Barth Jhamica Curru-Williams Stephanie LetourneauBrianna Mentle John Basbas Stephen WolfeCamille Shanley Kalwin T Sunita RamkissoonCarly Compton Kate Bush Tabitha LangfordCasey Meyer Kati Wehrung Tavis LipscombChiomaekwhnazu Kelsey Cooper Taylor BladesChristian Gillis Kerry Zhao Tyler FrenzelClark Outridge Lelsey Crum Tyler KurekClarke Hooper Maliha Ashraf Tynasia JohnsonConnor Svarda Matthew Miklosovich Victoria BrownDaje' Murphy Melissa Delcher Victoria GulasDallas Arthur Miracle Jones Weihang QinDanielle Nultecel Molly Clark Will McKeanDanny Wesselhoff Morgan Herrell Yoona EonDevin Beachy Nayano Green Zackary Sharer (twice)

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FBLA Workshops - · PDF filePRI-Global.com Innovation – Using the Future to Create the Present® FBLA Workshops Preparing Students For Passionate Learning in College And Passionate