Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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July 3, 2008

The Pendulums, The Level, The Relationships and Commerce

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 7:27 am

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The Pendulum

Pendulum

After years in educational publishing, I began to see a pattern. The philosophy of the day would swing from open classroom and individualized instruction to high-structure and rote learning. It would take about ten years, then the pendulum would swing back again.

The swing was regular and predictable in every subject area. People jump in, change everything, and convert as if to a new religion. Then around year 6 or 7, folks would see how the new philosophy wasn’t meeting every student’s needs for learning. A rumbling would happen and the pendulum would swing again.

The Level

Elegant level

You’d think eventually we’d find that spot where things get level. The kids who learned with practice would get that structure and the kids who needed expression would have lots of room to discover. Seems they might even teach each other. Instead we keep arguing about which is better.

It’s not just a problem in education.

Pendulums swing through human things — huge and inconsequential. We take on new ideas and overdo them. We make them bigger than what they’re replacing. Is that insecurity or evangelism?

The Relationships and Commerce

Every writer, every architect, every business leader knows that lasting ideas balance structure and expression in dynamic tension. A musical masterpiece is both technical excellence and artistic genius. Classic design is simple and elegant. Just recall your favorite building . . . that’s still standing. The structure holds it up and the expression makes it worth entering.

A powerful business values its tangible assets and its relationships. Earning revenue is a critical value — as is investing in the people and partners who make that revenue happen. Potent business plans balance history and certainty with vision and possibility. Relationships and commerce are better together.

Dynamic tension is always present in work of lasting value.

Balanced rock sculpture


It’s my birthday. I’m reflecting.

Do you see dynamic tension or folks caught in a pendulum swing?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

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41 Comments to “The Pendulums, The Level, The Relationships and Commerce”

  1. July 2nd, 2008 at 10:46 pm
    SpaceAgeSage said

    Happy Birthday!

    Heavy thinking for this kind of anniversary, yes?

    I see people and cultures in a pendulum swing, but wisdom and common sense remain as lasting value.

  2. July 2nd, 2008 at 11:15 pm
    Marti said

    Happy Birthday sweetie! I hope it brings you much joy - you have certainly brought so much to my life, I wish I could give you the world!

  3. July 3rd, 2008 at 1:34 am
    Ankesh Kothari said

    Happy Birthday Liz!

    Hope you have a fantastic and prosperous year ahead!

  4. July 3rd, 2008 at 3:03 am
    Joanna Young said

    Hi Liz, big questions for your birthday - hope you manage to switch off and play as well as encouraging us all to reflect…

    Happy birthday and have a lovely day

    Joanna

  5. July 3rd, 2008 at 4:07 am
    Suzie Cheel said

    Dear Liz,

    Wishing you a wonderful joy filled day. Thankyou for being part of my life- i value your friendships

    Love & Hugs from paradise

    Suzie

  6. July 3rd, 2008 at 5:18 am
    BGreen said

    thank you for the reminder that change is constant and we just have to wait it out…

    Have a joyous birthday!
    Bonnie

  7. July 3rd, 2008 at 5:47 am
    Brad Shorr said

    Hi Liz, Happy, happy birthday! Hope you’re taking an extra long holiday weekend to celebrate.

  8. July 3rd, 2008 at 6:03 am
    Howard Cox said

    Liz,

    Happy belated birthday, I hope it was a great one.

    You are correct that we see the pendulum challenge everywhere. For example, just look at Wall Street! First we had the dot.com bubble burst and then the housing and subprime bubble all in the span of a decade. You don’t have to look to far back to see many more examples.

    I wish I could explain why the most intellectually intelligent people seem to do the most stupid things. The best I can come up with when I try to give us the benefit of the doubt is that you can chalk this phenomenon up to a simple lack of respect for the study of history. The more honest and less hopeful answer is that some of these business disasters are also caused by pure unadulterated greed.

    The basic cycles do seem to repeat themselves in predictable cycles in business as well as education. Jack Welch lists one of the important aspects of leadership as vision. He defines vision as the ability to see around corners and literally see the future. Seeing the future is made easier when we reference and understand the past. Seeing the future may seem superhuman, but it really isn’t. Certainly, not all of us are capable of vision, but we will only know if we are to the extent we are actually looking.

    We get caught up in the irrational exuberance of the day to day. We don’t find the truth because we don’t look for it. We want to believe that the current business bubble du jour will not burst even though this is not rational thought. We become too emotional and lose sight of basic common sense knowledge. Things that seem to good to be true will not be sustainable over the long haul.

    I love Jim Collins’ story about Winston Churchill’s “Ministry of Truth” from “Good to Great”. We all need these Ministries of Truth in our lives. We need to surround ourselves with people with the wisdom to look to the past to assist them in seeing the future. We need to make sure that they also possess the strength of character to speak out loud and clear and are determined and persistent enough to be heard.

    One basic truth in life is that common sense is NOT too common. That said there are people who have this intangible talent and we need to seek them out and make sure they are part of our inner circles.

    Thanks again for the thoughtful post and have a great holiday weekend.

    Howard

  9. July 3rd, 2008 at 6:09 am
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi Sage!
    Thanks for the birthday wishes. :)

    I’m wondering about so many people so caught up in this social media thing. . . . I agree and believe that common sense and values will level us out.

  10. July 3rd, 2008 at 6:09 am
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi Marti!
    What a lovely thought. Thank you for that!

  11. July 3rd, 2008 at 6:10 am
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Thank you Ankesh!

  12. July 3rd, 2008 at 6:11 am
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Ah Joanna!
    Thank you for your thoughts!

    That’s why I wrote this blog post last night. I have some offline time planned for today!!

    No worries about that!!

  13. July 3rd, 2008 at 6:11 am
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi Suzie!
    It’s a mutual admiration. You can bet on that!

  14. July 3rd, 2008 at 6:12 am
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Yeah Bonnie,
    I don’t have energy I used to have for going all the way out on each pendulum swing. So I enjoy observing much more now!!

  15. July 3rd, 2008 at 6:15 am
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Thanks, Brad
    I’m pleased to say that I’ve got lots of nice things planned with friends. :)

  16. July 3rd, 2008 at 6:19 am
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi Howard,
    You’re not late, the timestamp was wrong. I corrected it. :)

    Thank you for seeing what I was trying to say and expressing it so well. I don’t if it’s greed, lack of respect for history, or the simple fact that we don’t learn to challenge our own thinking as much as we should.

    I see us separate opposites into boxes and keep them apart when they belong in the same picture making sure that the tension is right.

    I appreciate your thoughts!

  17. July 3rd, 2008 at 8:15 am
    MiMi said

    Happy Birthday! Chris Brogan wrote so nicely about you and your day today that I just had to stop by with some good wishes. The world needs lots more people like you. Bless you on your day.

    Unfortunately, for education, I see the pendulum swinging. Slowly, almost to a standstill.

  18. July 3rd, 2008 at 8:30 am
    Kusani said

    Happy Birthday! :D

    More often than I see dynamic tension or a long pendulum arc, I see folks caught spinning in loop-de-loops and wandering erratically all over the place, following what seems to work best in the moment without thinking about future effects and results. Like a stream meandering through particularly uneven terrain, many people take the path of least resistance - or, really, quickest results - without planning ahead for what happens next.

  19. July 3rd, 2008 at 8:48 am
    Mother Earth said

    Oh very Happy Day to YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!

    I follow the dynamic tension theory religiously. The tension makes me realize the edge that I need to sometimes be uncomfortable. In trusting that I can get to the other side of things.

  20. July 3rd, 2008 at 10:02 am
    Barbara LIng said

    Happy BirdieDay!

    Definitely dynamic tension. Learning is always an ever-changing brilliant event; one teeny bit of knowledge gained today might result in you casting your mind to the stars and creating something you’d never have considered prior to that event.

    Dynamics, tension, courage…it’s all wrapped into one.

    Enjoy,

    Barbara

  21. July 3rd, 2008 at 10:30 am
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi MiMi
    Welcome and thank you for coming over on my birthday to see what it’s all about.

    I’m watching the education world too. Maybe if we keep our blogs talking we can get that pendulum to level out.

  22. July 3rd, 2008 at 10:31 am
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi Kusani!
    Thank you!

    Yeah. I’m seeing some of what you see. I hope that it’s only that we’re so close to the wanderers that it seems like there are so many here. ;)

  23. July 3rd, 2008 at 10:32 am
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Thank you, Mother Earth!
    You keep following your dynamic tension. It’s serving you well!

  24. July 3rd, 2008 at 10:33 am
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi Barbara!
    Thanks for your owlfully nice message. :)

    Your comment is beautifully expressed. I so agree.

  25. July 3rd, 2008 at 11:07 am
    Hendry Lee said

    Happy birthday Liz!

    If you still reply to messages, you don’t enough enough offline plan. :-)

  26. July 3rd, 2008 at 12:47 pm
    Rick Grant said

    Happy Birthday, Liz. All the best.

  27. July 3rd, 2008 at 6:01 pm
    Mark Salinas said

    Great visual analogies. Happy Birthday!

  28. July 3rd, 2008 at 6:14 pm
    Trisha said

    Happy Birthday!

  29. July 3rd, 2008 at 6:36 pm
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Thanks Henry, Rick, Mark, and Trisha!

    It’s been a great day!

  30. July 3rd, 2008 at 9:29 pm
    Janice C Cartier said

    Happy Birthday!

    Dynamic tension fascinates me. The Bean is so much more with the changeable sky, people entering and exiting, pausing, interacting with it, flowing around it. Don’t you think? And birthdays, they sometimes engage us to take a look away at how we “correspond” with the world around us.

  31. July 3rd, 2008 at 9:40 pm
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi Janice!
    Thanks for the birthday wishes!
    I’m taken by the dynamic tension as well. It’s more than balance. It’s interweaving of thought and feelings.

    I’ll at The Bean tomorrow. Will you?

  32. July 3rd, 2008 at 9:45 pm
    Janice C Cartier said

    Nope. I ‘m in Dallas still. Cannot believe it, but I have yet to go to Chicago. I watched with great interest from New Orleans as that park and all it’s components were put in place. I think it is stupendous. If I am lucky enough to come to SOBCon next year, I will so be right there at the Bean. :)

  33. July 3rd, 2008 at 10:52 pm
    Tomoso said

    I trust you have had a great birthday. You are certainly spot on in terms of your analysis of the swings in both education and other organisations. The primary cause is vested interest driven by those who have most to lose by a change. I have witnessed this in business in a number of countries I have worked in and although many of the initiatives are potentially very good they threaten the old order. Almost every constructive initiative introduced into corporations are eventually marginalised into mediocrity even given the apparently enthusiastic support by the top executives. The old boy network and the traditional silos work together to eventually return everything to the status quo except that it has been given an new name - progress. Your example of children learning in different ways is the way that most sensible know, yet the educationalist experts still yearn for the ‘one size fits all’ solution. I do trust that people power through the internet such as your blogging will eventually make a measurable difference.

  34. July 4th, 2008 at 3:38 am
    Cath Lawson said

    Happy Birthday Liz. Would this pendulum swing apply to the folks who have just started freelancing and they’re trying to find a balance between getting the work done and marketing?

  35. July 4th, 2008 at 11:22 am
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hey Janice,
    I’ll look for you in the Bean anyway. :)

  36. July 4th, 2008 at 11:24 am
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi Tomoso!
    Some, I suppose, is a management issue. That “one size fits all” thing makes it easier to deliver a service to a group. Of course the problems is that no one exactly fits that one size . . .

  37. July 4th, 2008 at 11:24 am
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi Cath!
    I think it applies to everything worth doing well. :)

  38. July 4th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
    Janice C Cartier said

    Om….that’s me being in the Bean. :) Sending you fabulous happy day thoughts….

  39. July 4th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
    Wealth and Wisdom » Happy fourth of July…and weekly links said

    [...] Successful Blog The Pendulums, The Level, The Relationships and Commerce [...]

  40. July 4th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
    ME Liz Strauss said

    I had a feeling that was you! :)

  41. July 15th, 2008 at 8:30 am
    Somerset Business Success Strategies » Blog Archive » Ministries of Truth said

    [...] http://www.successful-blog.com/1/the-pendulums-the-level-the-relationships-and-commerce/ [...]

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