http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10764982

—how on earth is NZ to compete in the international marketplace if the kids can’t speak Maori? Or worse, if we waste precious childhood education time on meaningless trivia like maths, sciences etc instead of learning kapa haka, eye rolling, tongue poking, hopping, prancing, and piupiu weaving?

Honestly … talk about being behind the times.

To me it seems that the main challenge is to break the “education spell”: to interrupt the set of assumptions and expectations that we all have and maintain, especially those of us who are well schooled, about what knowledge is and how we get it; what work is and how to organise it.

Industrial school culture tacitly dominates most everyone’s expectations and practice of education and management and it’s not effective (any more). Only as we break its spell will we be able to do coaching that savvy business people will pay good money for.

I’ve coached many firms in the $1M – $50M turnover; 5 – 50 employee range. They survived the >80% ‘infant’ mortality of the 1st year or three typically because they landed “butter side up”: they happened to start out with a technical skill, hence product or service for which there happened to be a ready market for and for which they happened to command an adequate margin.

That works fine until the environment changes or they grow too complex for the boss to personally handle. Then some bosses seek help. Of those, the ones who are prepared to admit they don’t know, and are prepared to learn new behaviours, are coachable. They others aren’t. That doesn’t leave many!

In practice, coaching isn’t about communicating extensive knowledge of business theories. The knowledge required is typically basic. The main knowledge is in the art and practice of business coaching. It’s an extemporised dance for coach and client.

In contrast to industrial education, the coaching process is essentially opportunistic and learning is experiential. It crucially produces results through behaviour change. It’s about establishing systems and processes to encourage and support people to risk behavioural changes around the way they relate to colleagues, customers, and suppliers.

“That’s education, but not as we know it Jim”. So I maintain that we have to risk stepping right away from our classrooms, props and typically irrelevant assessment, to market and deliver a radically different experience and result. If we really want to help then we have to radically change the way we do teaching and learning and the way we market it (in the broadest sense of the term).