{"id":173,"date":"2005-11-20T14:56:40","date_gmt":"2005-11-20T06:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/?p=173"},"modified":"2008-01-17T20:35:04","modified_gmt":"2008-01-17T12:35:04","slug":"the-deluded-zombie-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/learning\/the-deluded-zombie-school-173","title":{"rendered":"The deluded &#8216;zombie&#8217; school"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"imgRt\"><img src='\/blog\/wp-content\/images\/2012\/04\/Why_Smart_Executives_Fail.jpg' alt='smart executives fail' \/><\/div>\n<p>The ideas in Sydney Finkelstein's book \"Why Smart Executives Fail\" could also apply to educational institutions.<\/p>\n<p>In a recent article, he described a company that was very positive and where divisions were very supportive of each other, but said they could be heading for disaster, since:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>[The] company has created an insulated culture that systematically excludes any information that could contradict its reigning picture of reality.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>After analysing 51 companies that had made major mistakes, he concluded that an accumulation of mind-numbing policies can be ultimately destructive. Everybody wants to maintain the illusion of success and no-one wants to rock the boat. People avoid mentioning unsettling ideas because they don't want to sound negative or get blamed for them. Problem is, when a crisis happens, no-one can cope.<\/p>\n<p>Finkelstein's article concludes with advice on how to avoid such pitfalls. Key ones are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Acknowledge and learn from failure<\/li>\n<li>Reward experiments (including failures) that have knowledge returns<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Food for thought...<\/p>\n<p class=\"alt\"><a href=\"#respond\" id=\"comms\">Be the first to comment<\/a> below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The ideas in Sydney Finkelstein's book \"Why Smart Executives Fail\" could also apply to educational institutions. In a recent article, he described a company that was very positive and where divisions were very supportive of each other, but said they could be heading for disaster, since: [The] company has created an insulated culture that systematically [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[124],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}