Education

“Slow and steady wins the race” is garbage

As long as I can remember, I've considered the phrase "slow and steady wins the race" garbage. I don't understand why they teach it to kids instead of useful lessons. We all know the fable by Aesop about the tortoise and the hare from which it comes. The hare makes fun of the slower tortoise. They race. With a big lead, the hare takes a nap then wakes up to find the tortoise, crawling slowly but steadily, about to win. The hare tries to catch up but doesn't. Then the tortoise or the storyteller says "Slow and steady wins the race." The animals' speeds or variations of them isn't the issue! The issue is the hare went to sleep in the middle of a footrace.…

July 17, 2014

Education / Entrepreneurship

“Should I go to graduate school?”

People often ask if graduate school was worth it. I've made it work for me. As someone who left his field of graduate study, I wrote the following on graduate school to someone asking if it will suck out your life power, you'll have no social life, no free time, low pay, a lot of stress etc. I got a PhD in physics at Columbia in 2000. I helped build an X-ray observational satellite (XMM-Newton). I left the field to start a company and I don't know anyone who enjoys life more than I do. People often ask if I use my physics education now. I don't solve hard problems, but having written and defended a thesis, I constantly use my ability to solve hard…

July 16, 2014

Education / Entrepreneurship

Inspiration from high school entrepreneurs

The other day I was invited to speak to a couple groups of high school students in a summer program at Columbia on entrepreneurship and leadership. The students inspired me then for the questions they asked. Their teacher asked them to comment on my talk after I left, which he sent to me, and their comments inspired me again. Many of the comments are insightful beyond what I would have expected from high school students. I find that inspiring because when others show me I can expect more from them, I can expect more from myself. I asked if I could share them here and he encouraged me to. In bold is the question the teacher asked. Everything after is from the students. Question: We…

July 11, 2014

Awareness / Education / Entrepreneurship / Tips

Op/ed Fridays: Does “Stay in school, work hard” produce mediocrity? Can it produce greatness?

The more I spend time out of school, the more I find value in non-academic things I learned. The more I see people who just work hard---by "just work hard" I mean working hard for other people for a pay check without choosing the job---the more they don't seem to create greatness or deep satisfaction with their lives. The more I see the great people our society admires don't seem to have emerged from our schools or from working hard at a regular job. They seem to work hard, often harder than most people, but at things that matter to them, often sacrificing pay, status, and such until they succeed. So I have to distinguish between working hard for someone else who directs your work…

June 27, 2014

Education / Leadership / Tips

How to engage people you lead

The insight below prompted spontaneous applause during a keynote talk I saw at a recent conference. The speaker, whose work brings him sometimes to the White House, was talking about principles of teaching, but you'll see it applies to managing and leading too. He said he was talking to a teacher about creating assignments and test questions. Teachers perennially face challenges of creating problems that the students haven't seen before and can't game. They often resort to abstract problems. Abstract problems address those challenges, but at the cost of relevancy to the students' lives, which leads students to disengage, to ask questions like "How will I use this in my life," devalue institutionalized education, and devalue that teacher. The speaker asked the audience: We have…

June 22, 2014

Awareness / Education / Freedom / Leadership

Why is “know thyself” hard?

Why is "know thyself" hard? You'd think you'd know yourself better than anything. Here's a major reason why: because almost everyone in the world benefits from you not knowing yourself. Because organizations mediate your interactions with everyone in the world except the dozen or so people closest to youÂ and nearly all organizations benefit from you not knowing yourself. They benefit from manipulating you. Don't believe me? Think of the most influential organizations in the world---governments, religions, corporations, schools, etc. Each says it's right or the best or something like that and all others should be more like it. These claims are patently bogus. As much as each government says its history and people are the best, the others do too. They can't all be best.…

June 17, 2014

Education / Entrepreneurship

What I call great teaching

One of my students jumped for joy last semester. She got a job offer during class---specifically, during a field trip. I consider the exercise an example of great teaching. Context I couldn't make the last class of the semester and wanted to make it up. An email from NYU inspired me. It was about a series of job fairs including one for start-ups. I had already planned a session on applying the course's skills to contexts other than basic marketing and sales---for example, to treat raising capital as marketing and selling shares in a company, to treat hiring as marketing and selling your company to potential hires, to treat making proposals as marketing and selling ideas to your boss. My idea My idea was to…

June 13, 2014

Intelligence? Emotional Intelligence? I’ll take someone with skill over intelligence

Awareness / Education / Entrepreneurship

Intelligence? Emotional Intelligence? I’ll take someone with skill over intelligence

I'm not impressed with intelligence. I say that as someone people often describe as intelligent. Too many people (including myself in the past) consider themselves strong in the abstract ability to solve problems over the activity of solving them. I value execution over ideas. Concrete over abstract. Earned over entitled. Experience over observation. I wasn't always like this. I used to hold the opposite values---mind over body. Note the difference between the definitions of intelligence and skill. Intelligence generally involves abstract problem solving. People tend to view it as something innate or inborn and hard or impossible to change. This perspective often leads to people who consider themselves intelligent feeling they could solve something but not actually solving it. The problem is that abstract problems…

June 12, 2014

Does lecturing turn schools into prisons?

I would be ashamed of myself to teach a class with the passage below in its syllabus. I found it on a public site on the web for a science class---genetics, in particular. You're putting your children in prison if the punitive passage represents how teachers should manage their classes. Should it seem foreign to me because I chose to study a particularly hard branch of science because I loved the subject? I don't remember anyone treating me like this professor is treating his or her students. Medical schools require this class, so should we not expect the students to appreciate the subject, only to know it? I just can't see sense in that reasoning to write something so demeaning and presumptuous of guilty behavior.…

June 2, 2014

Education / Leadership

Op/Ed Fridays: military leadership and conscientious objection

I read this commencement speech on leadership given by a military man at the University of Texas at Austin. As much as I found the speech inspiring, I couldn't help but think the following and post it at Hacker News. Here is the full discussion there on the speech, which, as you'll see, contained some controversy. It sounds like an impressive speech. I understand people share his values. The bravest and most meaningful action I saw from a military person was a college roommate who had returned from active duty as a Marine in the Gulf War. I don't know if his training was as intense as a SEAL's but he saw active duty and looked long and hard at his actions and those of…

May 30, 2014

Education / Entrepreneurship

A student’s testimonial

NYU-Poly collects student evaluations of courses and Professors. One of my students liked the class so much she sent me her evaluation to post independently and publicly. I feel honored and flattered. Professor Spodek's dynamic personality captured my attention from the start ofÂ the first class in January 2014. I have an entrepreneurial mind and I still remember lessons from the first day applying, making me a better business thinker already. The course was Entrepreneurial Marketing and Sales, which he covered. It went above and beyond my expectations in refining my Marketing skills. We started by identifying unmet needs, coming up with solutions, and taking it to the next level in talking to people and developing the ideas. Through simple steps, I developed the idea…

May 25, 2014

Education / Leadership

See my Ivy Exec talk

Last week I led a webinar for Ivy Exec. They posted the video on their blog, "Great Leaders Inspire from Within". Check it out!

May 21, 2014

Education / Leadership

Why I avoid lecturing when I lead and teach

Science Magazine's daily web page, reported research that "Lectures Aren't Just Boring, They're Ineffective, Too, Study Finds." I agree, especially after decades of learning from teachers lecturing on me compared with inquiry-driven project-based learning, which I wrote about recently, "Inquiry-driven project-based learning rocks!," and have been learning about for years. I shared the following on an online discussion about that article. I used inquiry-driven project-based learning -- https://joshuaspodek.com/inquiry-driven-project-based-learnin... -- to teach my class at NYU-Poly, "Entrepreneurial Marketing and Sales" this semester. Experiential learning rocks! I never want to go back to lecturing. I had only recently learned of the teaching style, mainly from a K-12 education conference where I was the only university professor, which KQED reported on -- http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/03/can-university-profe.... After the conference I redid…

May 18, 2014

Education / Entrepreneurship / Events / Leadership

See Joshua Spodek lead a leadership workshop at General Assembly, May 22

If you don't know about General Assembly, you should. They started as an incubator for startups in New York, then found offering courses met a larger demand and transformed into an educational institution and community, now all over the country, Europe, and Asia. Very exciting, dynamic, entrepreneurial, and building community. They've invited me to speak on leadership next Thursday in Manhattan, 6:30-8pm. Below is the announcement of the event. I look forward to seeing you there. Entrepreneur Meetup Joshua Spodek Adjunct Professor at NYU About This Event You're invited! Join us for a special entrepreneur meetup & workshop. The topic will be "How to lead people so they want you to lead them again". During this workshop consisting of discussion, exercises, and Q&A, Joshua Spodek…

May 16, 2014

How to follow up a referral

Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

How to follow up a referral

Referrals help get things done. After all, your network is often your greatest asset in any project and referrals increase your network. More valuable than a single referral is someone who will refer you again---a goose that lays golden eggs. You want people like that in your world and you want them motivated to refer you more. Sometimes people get so enamored with a new connection they forget what created the connection: the person who referred them. If they gave you one great referral, they probably have more. My policy for following up a referral: Make the person who referred me glad to have referred me. When someone refers you, they risk that you might hurt their relationship. Until they know their contact appreciates meeting…

May 14, 2014

Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

See my webinar at Ivy Exec at 12:30pm today!

[EDIT: Download the presentation slides here] Ivy Exec is an online set of resources for building community among those serious about getting ahead. Among other resources, they host webinars on workplace skills. Today at 12:30 I'll host a webinar on the core of my seminar "How to Lead People So They Want You to Lead Them Again," principally the central exercise. As with all my seminars, I will give a core skill you can use immediately and a simple explanation of why it works so you can make it your own. This exercise helps you motivate people deeply to contribute as much as they can and to thank you for enabling them to work so hard. They'll describe your leadership as liberating. Click here to…

May 13, 2014

Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

My semester at NYU

With the semester finishing, I wanted to record what I did at NYU. My main goal was to help my students and give to the NYU community. Taught Entrepreneurial Marketing and Sales. One of main roles NYU hired me for was to teach this elective for graduate students. Several students said it was the best course they took at NYU and I was their best instructor. More than half said they are continuing the projects they started in the course after it ends. At least one got a job offer from a class exercise. At least one got an internship in the process. Coached and mentored graduate students, as part of Management of Technology program. This was my other main role NYU hired me for.…

May 10, 2014

Education / Leadership / Tips

Personal development: take your training wheels off after you learn to ride

I coach and work with a lot of people with MBAs. A lot of people without too. They keep doing what school taught them for social and business interactions. It kills me. School teaches you the bare fundamentals. It gives you training wheels to practice new behaviors, if it even does that, since it mostly just teaches abstract skills. Training wheels are great for getting you on a bicycle but if you want to ride, you have to take them off. When you ride a bike without training wheels you have to tilt it to be stable even though that position wouldn't be stable if the bike were still. You can't do that if you keep the training wheels off. Likewise, when you work with…

May 6, 2014

See the April 21 NYU panel on Women in Entrepreneurship video

Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

See the April 21 NYU panel on Women in Entrepreneurship video

Here is the video from April 21st's panel on women in entrepreneurship I posted about before. From the April 21, 2014 event announcement: Bridge at Wagner, NYU Special Interest Housing and NYU Entrepreneur's Network Present Women in Entrepreneurship Many entrepreneurs face similar challenges: getting the first round of funding, launching while in school, or avoiding burnout in the lean years before your business becomes profitable. While we often look for ways to solve these challenges, we rarely talk about how this experience is different for women. Join NYU Entrepreneurship Special Interest Housing, the NYU Entrepreneur's Network and Bridge at Wagner for a lively discussion with leading women entrepreneurs. From just out of school to established startups and investors, these speakers will draw on their diverse…

April 26, 2014

Education / Entrepreneurship

What is entrepreneurial marketing and why should I care?

I'm teaching Entrepreneurial Marketing and Sales at NYU. People ask me what entrepreneurial marketing means as opposed to any other kind of marketing. The disciplines didn't arise out of the blue. They arose out of what works. If you want to run a company or lead a group that wants to influence others, you'll benefit from knowing what works, so you'll benefit from understanding marketing in general and entrepreneurial marketing in particular. For most people marketing means advertising---that is, one-way communication from a company to its market. The business world views marketing as the two-way communication between a company and its customers and potential customers. Marketing from the company includes advertising as well as pricing and other forms of communication. Marketing to the company includes…

April 24, 2014

Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

The problem with business books, and a solution

Why do you read business books? I've asked people that question lately and a common theme runs through their answers. They read business books to improve their performance. They read them to get this feeling, like when the read something like that mastery takes ten thousand hours of dedicated effort: "That's a useful piece of information [or technique]. Now that I know it I can use it to get ahead." That is, they read business books to change their behavior. Some people clarify that they read them to improve skills so they can leadÂ others better, meaning to change others' behavior, but they do that by changing their behavior first, so they have the same goal. It's not the only reason, but I found it common.…

April 17, 2014

See my Harvard talk on not dwelling on decisions

Education / Leadership / Tips

See my Harvard talk on not dwelling on decisions

Here's my talk at Harvard. I talked about not dwelling on deciding, when appropriate, and instead moving toward execution, a major part of leadership. Someone in the front row recorded it with a small camera, so I hope the casualness of the recording doesn't distract. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-FviiKulBk

April 14, 2014

Education / Leadership

The value of low-level instruction

Between coaching, teaching, and seminars, I give a lot of exercises. People want to make big transitions and grow. Time and again, the biggest advances come from very low-level instruction---things like say these words in this order to this person, avoid using these words, or take only cold showers for a month. The lower the level of instruction, the higher the level of insight my clients and students get. That used to seem ironic to me until I got how experiential learning works (and lecturing doesn't). If you lead or manage people, I'm sure you'll see the relevance of keeping instruction low-level to your interactions with your reports. If you start with low-level instruction, people know what to do, like learning to play scales on…

April 12, 2014

Awareness / Education

Specifics: more general than generalities

The moderator at my recent group talks at NYU-Stern and Harvard started the question-and-answer period with an instruction to the audience I hadn't heard before. I found it tremendously effective at making the questions useful and poignant. He asked that everyone ask only personal questions from their lives, not to ask about general points. Did you also first think, "Wait, if people only ask about personal issues to themselves, won't they not matter to everyone else in the room? Don't we want to learn general principles that apply to everyone?"? I thought so too, but I saw that the instruction had the opposite effect. What was the effect? First, most people had trouble with the instruction. If someone asked something like "What's the best way…

April 11, 2014

Education / Entrepreneurship / Nature

See my New York Academy of Science interview!

"Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin were members of this organization!" I thought when I first spoke at the New York Academy of Sciences. So were Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Edison, I later found. To speak at the same organization isn't that big a deal, but it feels like it counts for something. I've spoken there several more times, generally about leadership skills for scientists and geeky people like myself. Many of its members focused mainly on learning academic things, less on social, business, and emotional awareness and skills, which I've focused on. They're creating a series of video interviews of people with academic science backgrounds who didn't go into academia. Last year they interviewed me as someone who started a company. The other day they…

April 10, 2014

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