Published in the Independence Daily Reporter January 2019

Today’s vast bodies of knowledge, available at our fingertips, along with stunning new technologies give us greater-than-ever potential to solve our problems; personal, commercial and societal. Humans aren’t perfect and as long as humans are in the mix, things won’t work right, things will break, products and services will be lack-luster.  No matter what happens with new technology and greater knowledge, there will always be problems.  We need people that are better at recognizing problems as opportunities and finding creative solutions for them.

Whether we know it or not, we’re all in the business of solving problems.  In our work lives, whether we’re working for others of working for our customers, we’re supposed to be solving problems.  In our personal and student lives, there are problems too.  Better problem-solving skills make us better in our professional lives and happier in our personal lives.  As we become better problem solvers, we become better decision makers, realizing that the successful outcome of our lives depends on our choices, not our circumstances.  The psychologists call this special kind of self-confidence “self-efficacy” and increased self-efficacy is the primary objective of Fab Lab ICC and our Fab Force Training Program at Independence Community College.

Successful entrepreneurs—the ones that have identified problems, found creative solutions and offer those solutions to customers—have this special kind of problem-solving ability and outlook on life.  We could all benefit from looking at the world and the problems of the world the way entrepreneurs do.  Studying entrepreneurs has been a challenge.  Ask them to explain how they think, they can’t, let alone write it down.  Most know they think differently, but often don’t realize they have a better way of looking at things.  Indeed, many have felt isolated as their differences in thinking have not fit in with society’s thinking.

We found a method a few years ago that makes studying successful entrepreneurs not only possible, but interesting, inspiring and fun.  Best of all, it doesn’t require reading any long, dull text books or writing research papers.  “Entrepreneurial Mindset”, a class different than any other, is generally offered during the spring and fall semester each year.

At the same time, we recognize that employers are looking for people with critical thinking and problem-solving skills that go far beyond just knowing how to do one kind of work. The most competitive companies and organizations need to be staffed by entrepreneurial thinkers, using innovative and design thinking to help solve the problems of these organizations and those they serve. As technologies come and go, we believe workforce training should involve introductory training in a variety of technologies and disciplines all centered around entrepreneurial thinking. Our Fab Force program provides a buffet of technology introductions coupled with Entrepreneurial Mindset. All the training includes healthy doses of experiential, project-based learning. Besides a range of certificates, many industry-recognized, we are working to offer our “Fab Forcers” a digital portfolio. This can include images, still and video, of projects and collaborations. An employer can look into the insights of job applicants as they show off their projects in the digital portfolios, demonstrating how they overcame project-related challenges and the knowledge gained by solving the problems in completing the projects.

This kind of learning, using entrepreneurial mindset and design thinking to solve problems in an experiential, project-based learning environment will unleash hidden talents and abilities of many people who have not done well with the traditional teaching methods we’ve used in the United States for the last 100 years. We like to say about Fab Force, “It may not be for everybody, but it may just be for you.”

To remain competitive in a global economy, heading for massive disruption as new technologies and automation take over the factory floor, companies and organizations will need everyone to be engaged in solving the problems that will continue to come up in spite of or because of this disruption.

 

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellks.

 

 

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter January 2019

Our society is obsessed with saving money. Advertising and the media bombard us with messages presenting low cost as the number one goal we should have in our lives. One car dealer in Tulsa recently unveiled an electronic display board that supposedly shows comparative pricing of all area dealers on “identical” models of cars. Of course, theirs is always going to be the low price. Hmmmm. We may have gone a little overboard in our zeal to do all our business with the lowest bidder. At the risk of sounding like sacrilege to many accountants and business managers, many of us may have become too cost conscious.

In the late 1980’s, I became the purchasing manager at a machine and sheet metal job shop in Wichita; John Weitzel, Inc. (JWI) The company had been in business many years starting with Cessna as the main customer. When I arrived, Boeing was the main—nearly only customer. JWI had hired a new CEO and was in trouble with Boeing; 435 delinquent orders. It was JWI’s last chance. I was part of this team and news that JWI hired a fresh purchasing manager traveled fast. I had many free lunches over that first couple of months as many of the raw material and industrial supply dealers vied for our purchasing business.

I was determined to be cost conscious. Our manufacturing resource planning (MRP, anyone remember when we called them that?) system did great once you put materials on order but offered nothing to keep track of quotes from various vendors. Relational database software, affordable to small businesses, was fairly new so I wrote program (now we would call it an app) to keep track of the quoting activity as I acquired the raw materials, industrial and office supplies needed to run this company of 150 – 200 employees.

For nearly every purchase I sent out requests for quote to three or four vendors. No email back then so we used something called a fax machine. The quotes would come back on the fax machine and I would enter the information into my database. A report would show the results of all the quotes so I could process purchase orders to the lowest bidder for each item.

This process did a great job of showing me everyone’s quoted price, was a lot of work, just as much work for a $5,000 raw material order as it was for a $250 drum of machine coolant. Continuing the process for the raw materials we needed was worth the time, but for the smaller orders of supplies, was unsustainable. I had too many demands on my time, including restocking a depleted tool crib with the stuff we needed to make air craft parts. In addition, it was difficult to get the smaller supply dealers to respond quickly to my emergent needs—and there were many—when they each received just a small piece of our purchasing pie.

One of the industrial supply dealers came by one day and said “Look, why don’t you buy most all of your supplies from us for a trial period of six months. We’ll provide good service, especially when you need something fast, and we’ll give you a good price. Also, we’ll provide you with good information since you’re new to this industry.” I decided to try it. Did I mention sacrilege? That’s what the production manager thought of this new plan, however, I reported to the CEO and he did not micro-manage. Overall this was a successful strategy. The new team worked well together and in 1993 JWI won Boeing’s Small Business Supplier of the Year Award. It was during the trip to Seattle to receive the award I met Susan, later to become wife of JWI’ purchasing and inventory manager, but that’s another story.

For a growing number of us in business and our personal lives, we should consider more than just price when making our purchases. Convenience, time savings, knowledgeable help available and an overall pleasant experience by vendors are necessary considerations and should all be part of the process. That’s where small local businesses have the opportunity to thrive. Most of the larger businesses can’t figure out to make the overall experience enjoyable so they advertise the lowest price.

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellks.

 

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter January 2019

In a previous column about the importance of telephone relationships and that we should be putting best efforts, not our most inexperienced people or ineffective message systems toward handling our incoming phone calls.

Long term, in-person relationships are important too. Building these relationships is like feeding a steam engine; it may take a while, but once you reach 212 degrees, things start to happen.

Recently, Lab manager Tim Haynes and I along with two great guys from the ICC maintenance department brought to the Lab, from the former Condon National Bank in Coffeyville, thousands of dollars’ worth of office furniture to use in our business incubator, we call the Entrepreneurs Bullpen. I had not yet figured out where we were going to get the money to provide the Bullpen furniture and this generous donation resulted from a long-term relationship with a banker from Coffeyville.

Mike Ewy and I go back to a time in 2006 when I joined a group to help create the Coffeyville Main Street organization that became known as Downtown Coffeyville. There was lots of discussion and many meetings in the competitive process to become part of the now defunct Kansas Main Street program. (Governor Sam Brownback axed the state-wide program sometime in 2012 after being elected in 2011; likely part of his failed tax-cut experiment.) Mike and I served on the inaugural board of directors of Downtown Coffeyville and each of us had a part in hiring an energetic young woman named Shelley Paasch as the groups’ first—and only—executive director.

Mike and I are both farm boys from small towns in western Kansas; he, Hanston, me, Satanta. Growing up, he admired his local banker, Lendell Bass, for his character and community involvement. After stints with the Federal Land Bank in Wichita and a private bank in Okmulgee, Oklahoma Ewy came Coffeyville to work for Community State Bank (CSB). When the bank brought him on board, they said “Surprise, you’re going to be president of this bank,” the position he held when I first met him in 2006. I’ve always recognized Mike as being entrepreneurial. I credit his farm background and coming from a small town for why he sees the world differently.

In 2013, while I was facilitating Entrepreneurial Mindset on the campus of Coffeyville Community College, Mike visited class in October as our guest entrepreneur. Though very busy—CSB was nearly finished in the acquisition of the massive Condon National Bank (CNB)-historic CNB was chartered in 1886 and one of the two banks the Dalton’s attempted to rob in 1892. Under the CSB brand Ewy continued operations in the Condon building for a time but eventually consolidated most business to the main location at 11^th and Buckeye in Coffeyville, leaving much of the furniture and fixtures in the shuttered facility.

In 2018, Mike decided to donate the former Condon National Bank building to the Coffeyville Historical Society so they could move the Dalton Defenders’ Museum to the building, giving them room to display thousands more artifacts currently in storage due to space limitations. This decision was likely influenced by the character of home-town banker Lendell Bass when Ewy was growing up.

In an email several months ago, Mike told me that in conversation with Shelley she had mentioned that we might be needing some furnishings. He wanted to know if I’d be interested in some cubicles (the term cubicles doesn’t do them justice—the industry calls them modular office suites; very nice.) Of course, I said yes.

Nearly all donations of money and resources to Fab Lab ICC result from relationships with community members built by me and others involved with the Lab. In a world of impersonal technologies and large unresponsive organizations long-term relationships developed through personal contact and community involvement pay big dividends in attracting customers and donors.

 

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellks.

 

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter December 2018

School needs to change. In this case, “school” means the whole model of K – 16 education in America. By and large, the model we’re using, especially in higher education, is based on a model well over 100 years old and supports an economy, indeed, a society that no longer exists. The current model does not support the American way of life and is not sustainable.

First, the disclaimers. These thoughts are mine and don’t necessarily reflect the thoughts of my colleagues at ICC. However, I can tell you that my Fab Lab ICC staff agree to the need to change the way we educate our youth and all our community colleges and universities should recognize the need to change too. These thoughts are not meant to be critical of the legions of dedicated teachers and administrators throughout the United States. Many are working hard to figure out a way to buck the system of standardized testing and rote memorization that plagues our schools and kids today.

Many of the thoughts here are inspired by a new book by a Ted Dintersmith titled “What School Could Be.” He toured all 50 states over a year or two, seeing schools in the traditional model, mostly failing our students, to pockets of innovation in various schools involving students of all ages from kindergarten through college. Most of the innovative school environments having the most positive results involved students working on projects of meaning to them. It validates what we’ve learned in four years of Fab Lab ICC; students will learn whatever they need to learn in order to make a project work if it has meaning to them. Dintersmith spells out four common principles that emerge from the innovative schooling he saw during his tour.

Purpose-  Students attack challenges they know to be important, that make their world better.

Essentials- Students acquire the skill sets and mind-sets needed in an increasingly innovative world.

Agency- Students own their learning, becoming self-directed, intrinsically motivated adults.

Knowledge- What students learn is deep and retained, enabling them to create, to make, to teach others. 

Dintersmith calls these PEAK principles. PEAK does not result from standardized testing and the passive pedagogy (teaching method) used in the traditional educational model. This includes college entrance testing and much of the curriculum in higher education.

The current model was developed in the late 19th century by a “Committee of Ten” university and government leaders who developed a model based on the factories of the industrial revolution. Standardized class periods of 40 to 50 minutes with students all sorted by age. Learning was all geared toward giving students suitable skills for the repetitive work of the factories of the day.

Students today don’t want to do repetitive work. They want to do work that matters, solving problems in a world that’s changing fast and needs too many new solutions to be supplied by an elite few.

Today this model churns college graduates with five-figure college debt (some, six-figures) and half of them can’t find work in the disciplines they’ve studied. Paying back the debt is bad enough if they’re making good money, but nearly hopeless when making substantially less. This model is not sustainable

The change we need in schools can start with a change in focus. The goal should not be to prepare students to be “college ready” or “career ready.” The goal of all education should be to make students “life ready.” That will give them the PEAK needed to take ownership of a path that will lead to a life of service to others, whether working for someone else or working directly with customers in their own businesses.

 

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349 or by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu.