September 30th, 2010 | Strategic | 0 Comments
Once, hacking was confined to breaching the security of computer systems, often for malicious purposes. Now, hacking has a much more general and constructive meaning – it’s all about positive disruption. Many ‘systems’ are content with the status quo as it’s comfortable, satisfactory and reasonable. Change, should it occur at all, is modest and incremental. This form of ‘change’ may not affect the substance of activities; rather, it may just tinker with the appearance. Welcome to the world of branding and re-branding!
Hackers look at the way things are and imagine very different, much better ways of doing things. They aren’t interested in marginal improvements; they are interested in significant enhancement, a different way. People may look at a ‘hack’ and then wonder why things weren’t always done that way. Hackers aren’t interested in ‘business as usual’ :
In one sense, hacking starts in the gap between the empirical and the experiential, between what the evidence suggests and what the actual experience is. A great example is education, which can have a large gap between theory and practice. The difference between educational rhetoric and educational realities can be of Grand Canyon proportions. If there was one system that would have an overriding interest in learning and aligning itself with best practice, surely it would the education system. But this is often not the case.
There are many examples, perhaps the best of which is the empirical debunking of the learning styles approach. There is a chasm between its popularity and lack of empirical support. Nevertheless, poor recipes for learning and study are continually reinforced. Once you leave the ‘controlled’ educational environment and enter the world of experiential learning, the relevance and value of these recipes diminishes greatly. A ‘one size fits all’ approach does not work in the classroom so how can a ‘one size fits you’ approach work outside the classroom?
Your experiential learning and behavioural change needs can never be business as usual. It’s a question of ‘your size fits you’ and you get to define ‘your size’ on an ongoing basis, for ‘your size’ and your needs will change over time. This approach remains unusual, so it is up to you to transform it to the usual. Find your own way, usually by hacking the usual.