Following an earlier post about ‘Flip’, here’s an impressive bunch of young ‘flipstars’.

Pupils in South Camden Community School have conducted their own alternative, student-led Ofsted inspection that goes by the name ‘Instead’. The initiative was founded by Edge Learner Forum, an enterprising group of 13 to 21-year-olds, uniting pupils from schools across London - along with 7 other areas around the country - to discuss issues concerning their own education. Samia Meah writes here about the idea and how it came about:

The idea of a ‘Teenage OFSTED‘ surfaced while fellow learner forum member Huda Al Bander and I were brainstorming for our article in VISION. It came from our thought of using young people to solve problems which are about education and an example of this is school and its OFSTED inspections. The idea is simple, to bring young inspectors into a school to interview pupils for their opinions and to find the truth.

Pupil inspectors discuss the results with teachers in face-to-face meetings and submit a report analysing grouped teaching techniques, so no teachers are singled out for attention. Unlike Ofsted, the aim of Edge Instead is “entirely for the good of the school and comes with zero stress” - they work with the school to make things better, rather than merely judging the school’s successes and failures.

How many problems in education could be solved just be giving pupils some control over their own destiny? It puts me in mind of a quote from former Starbucks Executive Howard Behar: “People want to work on ideas that matter to them and make a difference. When they do, they find gold”.

Photo thanks to Qatari Mother.

“Invent best practice.”  ”Let action precede strategy.”  “Throw a whole lot of mud at the wall and see how much of it sticks.”

This is the advice of Peter Sheahan, the globally renowned expert in workplace change with a client list that reads like a prime time ad break (and all at the tender age of 28!). His book ‘Flip: How to Succeed by Turning Everything You Know on its Head’ flies refreshingly in the face of conventional thinking by highlighting the powers of counter-intuitive business strategies. ’Flip’ includes lessons on embracing change and succeeding in an ideas economy from ‘flipstars’ such as Richard Branson, Google and Nintendo.  

There are some intriguing concepts here, such as:

• Powerlessness, not power, corrupts
• Style is substance
• To get control, give it up
• Fashion is function
• Feelings are the most important facts
• The soft stuff is the hardest stuff, and the hardest to get right

But the overriding message is clear: “The only way you won’t be relevant in the future is if you keep doing exactly the same thing as you’ve done up until today.”

It seems so fluffy this thing called trust. Perhaps it is fluffy until such time as the P&L or the Reputation of a business takes a hit because of alleged or actual wrongdoing. Such has been the fate of Lee Kun-hee the Chairman of Samsung which is South Korea’s largest conglomerate turning over $150bn. So, Mr Lee and three other top executives suddenly resigned two days ago following a year of allegations of financial wrongdoing - he was indicted on charges of tax evasion and breach of trust.

Commenting on the resignations, the Financial Times said, “The move is unprecedented in corporate Korea, where tycoons usually continue to run business groups even after being convicted of serious white-collar crimes. It comes as Samsung faces rising competition from emerging Chinese rivals”.

Breach of trust? Mr Lee’s father established the company 70 years ago. He’s run it since the 1980’s.

This charge comes at a time when a number of elements are combining to create a possible perfect storm for South Korea:

• a global market turmoil
• a new government which only came into power two months ago
• rising competition from emerging Chinese rivals

Curious isn’t it that while good governance is never a guarantee of business success, bad governance can really be bad news with huge implications.

Back to the FT. “After months of investigating, a special prosecutor last week concluded that Mr Lee, the chairman, had breached his financial duty by letting his children buy bonds of Samsung’s affiliates through irregular financial transactions, incurring losses at the companies”.

Perhaps, even in hard-nosed business, trust is not such a fluffy thing after all. What do you think?

See also:

EnGadget

3gweek.net

RJ Koehler

Success can makes it all look so easy, or so web entrepreneur Glenn Kelman argues on Guy Kawasaki’s blog.

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