Ready to leap

Spent sometime with my middle managers last week about why we always tend to fall back into safety positions. My challenge is why to do we have some many text books around when again the vast majority of information is released in digital form.

The inevitable comments about lack of access etc came forward. But why do we still teach atlases, and dictionary, voltmeters and so on when none ever uses them anymore. The challenge is just because something is hard does not mean it should not happen.

Have recently come across a blog called Extreme Leadership by Steve Farber. He talks about the OS!M.
Steve says
"Fear is a natural part of growth, and since growth, change and revolution are all on the Extreme Leader's agenda, fear comes with the territory.
In the right context, therefore, your experience of fear (or exhilaration, for that matter) is your internal indicator that you're moving in the right direction. That you really are leading, in other words. That scary/exhilarating experience is what I call the Oh S**t! Moment or OS!M.
To put it bluntly: if you're using all the buzzwords and reading all the latest leadership books, and holding forth at every meeting on the latest management fads, but you're not experiencing that visceral churning in your gut, and you're not scaring yourself every day, and you're not feeling that OhS**t!Moment as regularly as clockwork, then you are not doing anything significant -- let alone changing the world -- and you are certainly not leading anyone else."

That OS!M needs to occur daily as we constantly push beyond our boundaries into new places. In education we desparately need leaders like this. Those who are going to push the boundaries even further and make the changes we so urgently need. It won't come from the established leadership places but it will come if we push hard enough.