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Music.

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Leadership isn't confined to boardrooms and business suits.

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Some of the most influential leaders are those who shape the minds and characters of the next generation.

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Tex Ture is an inspiring educator who teaches 11th and 12th grade English at

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Mary Institute and Country Day School in St. Louis, Missouri.

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With a deep commitment to his students and a passion for guiding them beyond

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academics, Tex serves as a faculty advisor to the school newspaper and the Honor

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Council, heads the Committee on Grants and Scholarships, and leads the 11th

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grade English curriculum. Beyond the classroom, he coaches middle school track and upper school tennis,

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instilling values of perseverance, teamwork, and dedication in young students

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and student-athletes alike. Tex Ture, welcome to InfoWork Insights. We're the leadership podcast where we

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interview leaders and find out their background, their inspirations,

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their motivations, their practices. And I have been interviewing mostly business leaders, some thought leaders.

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And this really kind of started to, as I'm building my list of guests,

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I started asking myself about leaders.

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And I don't want to just have the same type of leader, just people leading businesses.

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And then we got together a few weeks ago, we started talking and it just kind

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of hit me like, what more important leaders do we have in our society than the

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people that teach our children? And so, you know, I want to have educators and I really enjoy talking to you.

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And it only takes us about five minutes before we start digging in real deep.

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So if you're, why don't we put a camera on us so we can continue one of our

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sessions without the beer this time.

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So welcome and thank you for doing it. No problem. Happy to be here.

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Thank you for having me. So I guess maybe I'll just kick it off.

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Like when you think about your position and your job, we can get to be on the

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job as well at some point. Do you consider yourself a leader? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

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And I guess there's a couple.

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So there's the students, and I'm the leader there quite clearly.

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And then I am the team 11, English grade, the 11th grade English lead teacher.

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So among colleagues and things like that, you try to be a leader.

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But I mean, maybe my definition of leadership is a little more expansive because

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I am just a teacher, right? I'm an English teacher. That's what I was 21 years ago. That's what I am today.

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And that's probably what I'll retire as. I don't have aspirations really of

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being department chair or dean or upper school head.

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So I'm just in my function trying to do my function to the best of my abilities. And yeah.

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But I do run meetings within that capacity. I mean, that's what a teacher is,

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is I have a group of kids who come in and it's a 90 minute meeting that I'm running.

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And if I've got a 90 minute meeting and I've got 18 students in that room,

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then the way I look at that is that's 18 times 90. So that's 27 hours.

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And if that meeting goes well, then that's 27 well used hours.

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And if it doesn't, if I botch it in some way, shape or form,

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then that's 27 hours wasted. it. So I think, you know, I guess, I guess what I'm trying to say is I have a deep

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and abiding respect for other people's time. And I try when I'm in a position where I'm running a meeting or where I'm in

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the lead, then I try to manage things in order to respect that time and to do

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the things that are necessary to them. And maybe that's all that it takes.

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I don't know. Is that answer satisfying to you? All your answers are satisfying

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to me. There's no right answer. It's just different perspectives, and yours is a very valuable one,

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and it has been in my life since we've met.

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Keeping on that topic of leadership, and we'll keep on that topic throughout

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the podcast, but specifically to you and what you just said and how you define leadership,

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thinking back to maybe your early days, not in your career, but as you were

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coming to the conclusion that this is what you wanted to do for your career,

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did leadership play a role in that decision or was it more of kind of the love

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of literature, the love of books, the idea of teaching?

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Where did leadership kind of come into that decision-making process?

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Even when I was a little kid, I think I wanted to be a teacher. I liked school.

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I liked my teachers. I respected a lot of them.

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Obviously, if I didn't respect a teacher, that didn't go well.

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But the good teachers, I thought, were doing...

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They were somebody that I wanted to emulate. So, so then I got a degree and

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I got a business degree in marketing, but I also got an English degree and I

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was doing some marketing work when I came right out of college and,

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you know, I was doing like e-marketing. So if you got an email from Omaha Steaks or Macy's by mail or Heller Whirly

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gigs between 2000 and 2002, it came through me. As you.

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But that, and I was doing well, you know, I had some interns under me and things

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like that, but I, I didn't feel like a leader, certainly.

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I didn't feel like I was doing anything of value.

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I was connecting a customer to Macy's a little bit better through email,

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even if you get that done well, or even if you satisfy that job component.

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Yeah, I think I think I was suffering from that lack of that human connection

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piece of having a function where I felt like my impact on the people around

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me actually mattered, where my impact on clients actually mattered.

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And so, so that's where I decided to shift into teaching.

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And when the, you know, I took an interview, I taught a 45 minute class when I first got my first job.

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It was, I had 45 minutes of teaching experience, and it was the interview.

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But I think it was part of that desire to, you know, I did feel like I had some skills.

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I felt like I wasn't break the bank smart, but I was too smart to be sitting

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on the sidelines and that I had something to offer.

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And so that's what precipitated the shift.

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And I think it was that desire to maybe be a better leader and the hope that

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the attempt to be a better leader would make me a better person.

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And I do think ultimately that that happened. I think that I'm a very different person now,

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21 years later, after devoting so much time and effort to being a better lead

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when it comes to students or whoever else, or people who are now I'm mentoring

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as they enter the profession. I hope that some of the people that are listening or watching this podcast.

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One of our core focuses is helping people that have a dream,

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an entrepreneurial dream, giving them the tools to be able to take that step and helping them succeed

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with all the different features that we have in InfoWork that make it easy for

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them to operate their business. But I think that what you just said in terms of your early job and with email

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and it really, even when we met, I was CEO of this large company, but I wasn't fulfilled.

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And it was the same thing. It was just like what I was doing did not connect

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to what I thought I should be doing. The job and the soul were kind of out of alignment.

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And I think that a lot of people maybe put money ahead of that.

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And I guess I just want to make sure people know that it doesn't matter how much money you make.

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If you're not doing something that you feel like you were put on this earth

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to do, then that happiness is going to be elusive and fulfillment is going to be elusive.

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Wondering if maybe that was part of the decision that kind of drove you to take

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a look at this and sort of change the page.

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Yeah. And to root it back in the business world a little bit,

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when you are spending your time building a class, whether it's 11th grade English,

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American Lit or something like that, when that's your end product or your workflow

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is, all right, I'm going to create this class that connects together.

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Gather, the students come in and then they experience that class and you're

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getting real second to second, minute to minute feedback on how that's going

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on the end result of your work. The end user is in the room.

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Now, obviously the parents are there too, kind of hovering in the background

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and you're not going to, you know, different students have different affects.

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And so, you know, you're not going to hear about some of your greatest successes right in the moment.

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There will be some students where some moment hits them in a way that really

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impacts hacks them, they're going to remember for the rest of your life.

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And you might not find that out for two, three years until you get a letter

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or an email with that student finally telling you how important you were to them.

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Even for just the smaller, they're just.

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You construct this entire architecture for a lesson of 90 minutes that all fits together.

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But then the most important thing that you do that day is there's some kid with

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like a little rain cloud over their head and you slip them a note that says, are you okay?

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And in that moment, that moment is wildly significant to those students.

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And so you never know when that's going to happen, but you are getting that.

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I think, again, part of it is, whatever it is you produce, whatever you use

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your time in order to create, are you getting feedback on how that's going?

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Because I do think that that's important. And it's not an arrogance thing in

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my mind. It's just, we are all just social creatures.

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We're constantly minute to minute trying to check with, okay,

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how did this comment go over? Or did this joke land? Or am I wearing the right thing? Or do I smell?

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And when you're talking about your work life, that is 8, 10, you know, 12 hours a day.

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If you're not getting anything back on how you're doing, except for maybe a

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spreadsheet or maybe some superior or some boss whose.

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Feedback you may or may not respect, if you have no sense of how the end user

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is actually either appreciating or not appreciating the time and effort you're

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putting in, for me at least, that's really difficult.

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Now, I'm on the very extreme of that to where I've dropped myself into an environment

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where I'm going to get, I can see the 18 faces sitting right there.

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And that's my daily experience. And I have that three, four times a day,

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or just meeting after meeting, essentially. And if I'm doing something wrong, if a class doesn't go well,

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you know, I'll be honest with you, today's classes, I had a class that did not

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go well the first time, it did not meet my expectations of what that class should

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be, in terms of what was learned and in terms of the excitement of learning.

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And then I made some changes in the second class with better,

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but still not happy about it. It's not, it's not a good Monday for me.

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I, you know, I want it to be better. I want them to be entertained and enlightened. And I don't know that it was

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the worst class that they came to today. I don't know that they're even going to remember it as being a particularly bad class.

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I don't think that that's the case, but I know what I'm capable of.

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I know what that class should be. And I know I did not meet that.

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And that's good. That's good for me to know. And it gives me something to try

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and improve upon tomorrow. Where's the, you know, obviously I can sell cigarettes to a lot of people and that makes them happy.

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You know, I can lower the price and they could, you know, be even happier.

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And in one sense there, I'm getting a feedback that, you know,

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what I'm doing is making my customer happy, but there's also something beyond that.

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And I think that maybe it's inherent in teaching is is that you're kind of like

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you're building skills, you're making these human beings better.

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So maybe there's a noble, the position

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itself is noble and maybe there's a prerequisite to that rather than,

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I'm trying to kind of put it into a construct to say there are some jobs where

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inherently that feedback is enough, but then there are some that even if you get that feedback.

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What you're doing, if you're a drug dealer and your customer is giving you a

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feedback of like, man, that's a really good hit, there's got to be something else.

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Maybe it's a personal thing, too. It's like you think this is no pursuit.

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You're going to dedicate your life to this because this is what you believe.

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Then on top of that, you've got to make sure that I'm good at this,

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and that's where that feedback loop comes in. Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the impetus for that move or one of the

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one of the good results of the move I made from marketing into teaching is it

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taught me very early on not to allow other people to define success for me.

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So I think, you know, ultimately, I just read a book by Andy Clark called The

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Experience Machine, which I think is excellent and speaks about the brain as

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a predictive brain, right?

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What we try to do, our main operation, our main mental process is to predict

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the future and then move in a way that encourages success and mitigates failure.

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And so if we understand that, if what I'm doing is I'm just trying to look ahead

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and predict whether it's just like, all right, I want that pen in my hand.

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And then I'm trying to think about what's the action that's going to do that.

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You know, there are lots of different measures of what that success can be.

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And if you're in a job function where the success is defined in a way that you

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don't find inherently valuable or where there's a disconnect between how you're

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valuing success and how the job is or your supervisors or whoever or the marketplace,

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then I don't think you'll ever be happy.

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I mean, I think you have to find something where success for the company or

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success in the job function also registers to you as success.

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And that has to be clearly defined. As we move forward and as we try to achieve

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success, there are two kind of breakdowns in that or two things that can go wrong there.

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And one is if I don't have a good map of what that success is going to look

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like, if I can't predict it with any clarity, then I can't move towards it.

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And then that creates anxiety. And you see that with my students all the time. And that's why I give models

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so much and samples of what the end products, this is what a good essay is,

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or this is what I'm asking you to do. And let's walk through But if you just have some loose or muddy definition of

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what success is going to be, and you have no kind of endpoint that's clearly

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defined, then how do you move towards it? But you do have an education as an

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educator because you have grades. So like clearly based on, you know, your perception of my work as a student,

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like you're going to grade it. And business, I guess maybe we can say, you know, the KPIs, the metrics,

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the revenue, those are success drivers of those success indicators.

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But, yeah, I think that's kind of where it gets hard.

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I remember at my last company, a really bright gentleman kept throwing out this

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idea that, hey, if our employees don't know the score, how are they going to win the game?

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I think that's just kind of another way of saying what we're saying.

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Is really not for me. A grade is feedback to the student that gives them some

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sense of how they're doing. It's feedback to the parent. It's not great. It's a terrible tool for that kind of thing.

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Because obviously, as we all know, there's lots of different ways to get to a B plus.

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And that can be really strong student not working at all, or that can be a weak

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student working really hard. And I think it's the same thing sometimes with the environmental factors and

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profits, where sometimes the profits are going up, even though the company is

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making terrible decisions. And sometimes the profits are going down and the company might be making strong choices.

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So you have to have some other marker of success that is under your control,

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I think, other than just those, because there's too many variables.

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And then, again, you have to be thinking that you're making choices that are

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going to make sense to you and that are going to produce positive results for you.

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And you have to know. No, but think about like a public stock where,

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you know, dependent, we are, our revenue could be up, our earnings could be

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up, our turnover could be down, like everything could be positive,

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positive, positive, but the market doesn't like it.

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And so the market is going to take it out on the stock price.

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Does that mean that, that we're not performing or,

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you know, it's like, there's gotta be some kind of inherent sense of value that

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is disconnected from the external, the external look at that, at how I valued.

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And it's just, it's hard. I mean, I think that a lot of.

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Businessmen, once they leave business and they want to retire,

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a businessman, businesswoman, I think they haven't learned that lesson.

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And they don't value themselves as much.

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And they have a really hard time making that transition to retirement or to

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the next chapter in their life because they're not getting all of those accolades

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and all those things that they base their success on.

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So I think if you could figure that out early in your career as a a business

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person, as a teacher, as whatever, as a person, and disconnect yourself from these things then.

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But then again, you've got the situation where, I'm sure you've had it,

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the student that comes in is like, I don't care about the grades.

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I'm just going to do what I do. And if I get good grades, great.

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If I don't get good grades, I don't care. Yeah. And that can be good or bad.

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Sometimes it's great because, yeah, a focus on grades, as you say,

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same thing with the focus is on price. Because the other problem with the grade or, or the stock price or whatever

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it is, is once once the grade drops, once the quarter ends, or once that then

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you're on to the next one, right?

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It's not lasting, because now you need the next day, and you need the next day,

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or once you hit a certain market evaluation, now you need to go up and you need to go up.

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And so the goalposts keep moving, and they're never going to stop, right there.

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It's always and so if you're just predicating your happiness,

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or your, you know, the value of your job in that kind of external marker,

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then you're kind of dedicating yourself to just chasing something that's always

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going to be receding in the distance. So there has to be something else.

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And obviously, if you completely sever, sometimes I have some students who are,

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who care a little bit about grades, care a little bit about what I'm trying

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to teach you to do, so that you can actually improve because,

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because these things do have value outside of this place, right?

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You know, colleges are keen on those things, those kinds of,

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those kinds of things. And so, you know, you can't be completely severed from

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the external, but there has to be something else.

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Yeah. I think in business, you have to remember the why and you have to have

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a strong why, you know, why am I doing this?

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And it's not, I mean, look, maybe it's to feed my family. That's a noble pursuit.

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But, you know, as a business owner, like InfoWork, you know,

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we want to make business easier for people.

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Like I want people to be able to start companies and run companies and grow

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companies and have, have this great tool that's with them every step of the way.

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If I can do that, that's success.

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We create a company that's worth billions of dollars, that's great.

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It's great for me, great for all of our employees, but the why is not that.

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The why is our mission of helping people create businesses.

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So I think it's just making sure we're connected to the why.

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But let's move on because we've got a ton of questions and we're halfway through

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and I want to get your thoughts on a lot of these different things.

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And the next thing is about mentors and growing up and kind of your leadership mentors.

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But I do want to say in thinking about it, I didn't even think about this before you came on.

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Like I'm thinking about two people who are probably two of my biggest mentors

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in my life. One passed away, Dr. Stephen Porter, who was my teacher starting in ninth grade and all the way through high school.

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And we ended up, you know, writing a script together.

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And he's just an amazing guy. And then Howard Fisher, my biology teacher in

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10th grade, who I go and, you know, still have Starbucks with him when I go

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back to my hometown. town. So, I mean, these are just people that such a huge impact in my life.

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And I think that as a teacher, you know, there's, you're so right.

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Like you said before to make an impact. And then, yeah, maybe it's not two or

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three years later in my case, here we are 25 years later, and I'm still talking

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and thinking about 30 years later, still talking and thinking about these guys.

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So back to you mentors, who were your mentors growing up? Or maybe just one

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that you can think Think about that sort of helped you see what you do now as a possible path.

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Well, I mean, I think obviously all teachers have those teachers that were really

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important to them that they can name.

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I had Professor Savage at William & Mary who was an English teacher. He taught Milton.

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So I took a Paradise Lost class from him. And he was one of those guys that just didn't need notes.

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I mean, just incredibly intelligent, just a huge forehead with a big brain inside

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of it. And, you know, I was blown away by his felicity with the text and the

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ways in which he just seemed to know everything. And whenever you just come in and have a conversation and anytime anyone brought

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up anything where they'd be like, oh, you know, I thought that that was an interesting thing with the rat.

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And he'd be like, oh, you mean, you know, page 42, line seven or something like

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that. And yet, yeah, he was always very easy to laugh.

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And he did it without an ego. go. So what was really inspiring to me,

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I think, was that he was both the smartest guy in the room and then also the

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humblest guy in the room, more than happy to lose an argument to just like a

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little freshman like me or something like that.

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And so it wasn't a winning and losing piece to him so much as just an exploration together.

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And he had that true confidence, not arrogance, but just the confidence in his

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own abilities that he was.

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In some ways, unthreatenable. He just didn't, he wore his knowledge really easily.

21:48

And I also think about, I was watching Peace Son, and I forget what it's called.

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I think it's called Playing Shakespeare. It was a BBC show. And Patrick Stewart and David Suchet were there, and they were talking about

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playing Shylock and Merchant of Venice at different times.

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And here are the two guys who could easily be rivals, right?

22:06

Operating at the same time, doing Royal Shakespeare Company stuff.

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Both actors who are kind of in that same, obviously different body types,

22:12

but very similar in that regard. And they were just so excited to talk about the different ways they approach the character.

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So excited to see how the other person had unlocked their character and what they'd done with it.

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And they had played two very different Shylocks.

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But just the excitement to just hear what the other person had done,

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I always remember that as just being like, okay, that's not only leadership,

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but then that's also confidence is, you know, the confidence to, to not feel threatened.

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Like your, your light doesn't dim my light.

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Right. Right. And I can't, I just can't wait to see it. Right.

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I'm just so excited to be just playing with somebody else who cares about the

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same things I care about. How about, and we talked about this the last time we saw each other and it really

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kind of got me thinking that, you know, maybe we'll get to that,

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but the questions about risk and how is risk.

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Played a role in your life and your choices? Well, I guess, well,

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one of the ways that I can say risk plays a role is, is, you know,

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I'm, I'm an independent school teacher, so I don't have, I don't have a curriculum built for me.

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I don't, you know, it's one of the reasons why I am an independent school teacher

23:20

is because I like to build my own classes. So I don't have the responsibility of the public school teacher has to all the

23:25

materials and they have to teach to a certain curriculum.

23:28

So, so what that means though, is that, that I have to design the class myself

23:33

And I have to think about what does the department need and then what do the

23:36

kids want and then build something. And so, you know, I did a class a couple of years back now that was a class about horror,

23:44

sci-fi and video gaming and where the students were studying some sci-fi texts

23:48

and some horror texts and then looking at relationships between,

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you know, emotion and intelligence and then looking at, you know,

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reader viewer kind of relationships and author.

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And at the end of it, they had to produce a video game. And I didn't know anything

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about coding at the time. And certainly no class like this has been offered in an English department that

24:08

I was aware of, at least in St. Louis. I mean, that's a weird class. The easiest thing for me to do is to teach a Shakespeare

24:13

class and then have essays in class and out of class as the primary grading tool.

24:18

And then just take points off for grammar or something like that,

24:21

because nobody pushes back against that. Everybody understands that Shakespeare is important.

24:25

Everybody understands that in-class close readings and then out-of-class essays

24:29

are my responsibility. and everybody realizes that if you mess up a comma,

24:34

then you're supposed to lose a point. So that's a really easy sell and nobody's gonna push back against anything like that.

24:39

Now, if I'm instead saying, all right, I'm gonna teach a semester long course.

24:44

Culminates in the coding of a video game. And I'm going to be able to assess

24:47

that thing and take a look at the intentions and the narrative within that video

24:51

game in order to see whether or not these students learn something about the

24:54

relationship between the author, the text, and the viewer,

24:58

and then drop a grade on that that has a percentage next to it, 87.

25:02

What's the difference between 87 or 92 and something like that?

25:05

I have to be really clear on defining that. And I'm opening myself up to attack in that way too, because that's the kind

25:11

of thing that a parent will struggle to understand. That was not a class that was ever offered to them in high school.

25:16

They have no conception about what's going on there and how that's functioning.

25:19

So I have to do a lot more groundwork in terms of selling that course,

25:24

selling the value of the course, making sure that the students know what they're

25:27

doing and why they're doing it so that they can go home and talk to their parents

25:31

about it in ways that everybody values. And so I think that's probably the biggest exposure I have around risk is when

25:37

I do things like that, that I think are important to the students.

25:40

Obviously, AI is a big deal right now and how I incorporate that into my classroom.

25:44

There's no real roadmap for that. It's really hard to predict.

25:47

People are going to be using AI and what skills I need to give my students in

25:51

terms of how to use that tool to be successful in business.

25:54

But I have to jump in. I have a responsibility to the students in order to,

25:59

if there's a new tool, if the world has changed, then I have a responsibility

26:02

to teach them how to use that tool so that they're set up for success later

26:06

in life or at least in college. Content risk, really.

26:09

That's content risk so that not only can you continue to be relevant,

26:15

but engaging and kind of meeting the students halfway to where they are and

26:21

keeping it interesting, but also connecting it to the point you're trying to get across.

26:27

I mean, that's what the best teachers

26:29

do, right? When I think about the teachers that have stayed with me.

26:33

It's not the teachers that have gone and just sort of followed things by the

26:38

book and taught the same thing over and over again.

26:41

It's the teachers that, like you, took that risk, went out on a ledge,

26:44

did something different, creative. And, man, I give you a lot of credit for that.

26:49

Thank you. Yeah, but, yeah, thank you. But that is something where then you

26:54

have to make the learning discernible. There has to be some, you know, people have to understand the value in what

26:59

you're doing. And it's really hard sometimes in a class where maybe you don't,

27:03

you know, it's hard to see what's going on in that particular class and how

27:08

that's connecting to everything else. You have to do a little bit more legwork. Maybe one hack or one practice that

27:15

you've adopted or learn and love to hear the genesis of it that allows you to

27:20

kind of be as efficient as you have to be with all the different things that you have going on.

27:25

One thing that being a teacher is, is, you know, I spend a lot of time designing rubrics.

27:30

For the assessment. So you have the, you have the grid, you know,

27:32

one to four with four being exceeds expectations.

27:35

B is meets C is, you know, approaching expectations.

27:39

And then one is deficient. And then you have the different skills and then you

27:42

fill in that grid. And obviously I'm not just, you know, pulling things out at the ether.

27:47

You're taking a look at common core standards or whatever else,

27:50

whatever you're pulling in order to create that thing. But anyway, so when I assign something to a student and I give them a handout,

27:56

I say, this is what I want you to do. And then I also give them the rubric and they'll usually be you know four or

28:00

five skills on that because you can't give 30 skills that's just too much to focus on and then.

28:06

And then I'm sure you remember there was, you know, some time in middle school

28:10

or something like that, either you did it or a friend did it where you had to

28:12

make a poster and it was for science.

28:15

And some kid came in and they had a beautiful poster that spent hours with puffy

28:18

paint and made it look, but it didn't hit the requirements of the actual assignment.

28:23

And so it got a low grade. It maybe even got an incomplete, like a 50.

28:28

So this is all to say, I'm always thinking about what's actually on the rubric.

28:33

And I don't just mean about that when it comes time for me to roll out to my students.

28:36

But then when I'm asked to do something, either by my department chair or by

28:40

the head of school or whatever else, the question is, what's on that rubric? What is that?

28:45

How will my success be defined? What does that look like?

28:49

What are the skills that are actually going to be the things that matter,

28:52

right, that have been articulated by that person so that then I can marshal

28:56

my energies in the ways that make sense?

28:58

And I don't spend hours and hours using puffy paint when, okay,

29:02

that's nice, but that's not on the rubric. So let me kind of just dissect it a little bit. So trying to apply that to the business world.

29:10

So are you just saying that you have an instinctual ability or learned ability

29:16

to be able to look at a task, a project,

29:19

extract what the biggest return on investment areas are, and be able to focus

29:27

your time and attention towards those things?

29:30

Because you know those are the things that are most important.

29:33

And so it's really a prioritization that you're good at.

29:38

Part of that just comes from, you know, I've been teaching here for 17 years now.

29:42

So 17 years of making mistakes, I now have a much better sense of what this

29:46

particular organization cares about and what it doesn't, right?

29:49

I think that that's all just, again, you just, the first couple of years,

29:53

those years three to five at any new place, you know, you're still finding your

29:57

feet and you're still trying to figure out what is this organism that I'm a part of?

30:00

Of how does it feed and what does it produce?

30:06

So, yeah, hopefully I've gotten better at assessing those things more quickly

30:10

and I have a better sense now of what questions to ask and how about going to

30:14

get the information that I need. But but I know very much that it's been a focus of of my professional career

30:20

for a long time of just thinking in terms of what's necessary and what's nice.

30:26

You know, what are the things that are actually going to be graded and then

30:28

what are the things that make it look pretty, but that nobody really cares about?

30:32

And that doesn't mean I don't do the pretty things sometimes or I don't,

30:34

you know, I don't make it look good as well.

30:37

Right. I like what you said. I think that it's amazing to me thinking about

30:40

what you said is about asking questions.

30:43

You know, you know what questions to ask.

30:45

You kind of dive in with, you kind of, you get a sense, but you're asking these

30:48

questions to kind of confirm, like, are these the things you're looking for?

30:51

And it's surprising even in the business world and with people that I have working

30:58

for me, I think that I don't get those questions enough.

31:02

I'm not the best communicator. And sometimes I kind of just sort of state my

31:07

vision and I need those questions back at me so that I can help think through these things.

31:15

Like when we're developing InfoWork, the technology, and, you know,

31:20

we're trying to work on a feature and I'll say, I want it to do this, this, and this.

31:24

And then they start programming and it comes back and inevitably there's issues.

31:30

And yes, I did not communicate clearly what I wanted, but at the same time, I need help.

31:36

Like, I don't see it all clearly. I just sort of see the end point.

31:39

And those questions helped me define like more and more, okay,

31:43

I didn't think about that. Let's think, you know, and just sort of the idea is collaborative and it comes together.

31:48

So I think a lot of people don't ask those questions because I don't know,

31:53

they're scared or they don't have the courage to, but it's just so important.

31:57

I mean, and I think part of it is, are you willing to put in that initial small

32:01

effort in order to get out ahead of things?

32:03

Because a lot of times, you know, you just, you have a lot going on and you're

32:06

just waiting for clarity, but there are ways, there are things that you can

32:10

do to find that clarity. And a lot of it's just going and building the thing.

32:13

And I think part of it is also that being scared of being told that you're wrong

32:17

or bringing the thing to your supervisor and being like, this is what I'm thinking

32:21

you're saying. Is this right? And then they're going to be like, no, you're an idiot or something like that.

32:24

And maybe there are supervisors and bosses that do that.

32:29

But I find that, I mean, why would anybody, if the thing's not due for two weeks

32:34

and you come to them on day one of that process and be like,

32:38

I already mocked this up just to make sure that we're all on the same page here.

32:41

Even if you're wrong, that's still great feedback.

32:44

Then you're like, all right, I'm not going to devote all my time. Why would anybody have a problem with you going off and spending your time in

32:50

order to do that, in order to get a clearer sense of what's right and what's wrong?

32:53

And then also it's that, you know, it's the same thing with.

32:56

The, you know, the students will ask, is this going to be on the test?

32:59

And obviously I don't give tests, but I, you know, they, they've been asking

33:01

that for generations and they'll continue to ask that.

33:04

And I always tell them, you don't, you don't need to ask that question.

33:06

If the teacher mentions it once in one class, it's not going to be on the test

33:09

unless they're a terrible teacher. But if they bring it up three times across three separate classes,

33:14

that's going to be on the test. People devote time to the things that they care about. They,

33:18

they, you know, devote bandwidth to that.

33:21

And then it's the same thing on the assessment on the backend.

33:23

If you've got some supervisor that's giving you some performance report,

33:26

right? That is incredibly valuable information, not just how you scored on it,

33:29

but what are the categories? Like what are the things, what's number one, what's number two,

33:33

how is it ordered? What are the things that are on that sheet?

33:36

Because that's, they're telling you, these are the things that I care about.

33:39

These are the things that are going to directly impact my, my assessment of your performance.

33:44

But as a supervisor, you have to be so careful. I mean, let's compare this to a restaurant. on.

33:50

If you have a restaurant, you have to be 100%. If you have one bad meal,

33:54

then that person, that couple, they're not going to come back and they're going

33:56

to tell their friends they had a bad meal. It's the same thing as a supervisor. I mean, if that one person comes to you

34:02

on day one of a two-week project and you snap at them or you kind of give them

34:06

some gruff because they're asking a question, oh, she isn't an obvious or you're

34:10

taking your crap out on them, you're telling that person, don't come to me, don't ask questions.

34:16

And then they're going to proceed to do that because that's the kind of supervisor

34:20

that you've presented yourself to be. So you have to be so patient and so willing to create a culture where those

34:27

people can ask you those questions. And I made that mistake so many times in my career, something I still have to

34:32

battle with because I get impatient or I've got a thousand things going on.

34:36

And sometimes, frankly, it is an obvious question, but it's obvious to me.

34:40

And I just have to be more empathetic when I'm answering that.

34:44

And look at those people asking those questions as they're doing the right thing. And I can't forget that.

34:49

Although, you know, there are good questions and bad questions,

34:52

obviously. And part of it is my... I thought there were no bad questions.

34:56

You can definitely see it. No, that's not true at all. They're terrible questions. Yeah,

35:01

there's so for as a leader, you can but you can teach your whoever how to ask

35:06

questions. And I certainly work with my students on that.

35:08

So, you know, when they're coming, when they're thinking about a thesis,

35:10

for instance, and they're working on their essay, which again,

35:13

it's a complex piece, there's a lot of moving parts. But the, the thing that takes the most time is when they come to office hours,

35:20

and they're just like, I don't understand. And that doesn't help me. I don't, I don't have anything to work with there.

35:25

Now it's going to be another 10 or 15 minutes before you even get to the root problem.

35:29

And part of what I say now these days is I don't let them come in with just that.

35:34

And what I tell them is I got to see you swing the bat so that I know what's

35:38

right and wrong with your stroke. So if you come in and you say, I don't know what you're asking for,

35:43

I don't understand, then I don't know what to do with that.

35:46

I don't know how to continue that conversation.

35:49

But if you come in with something, and I think it's twofold.

35:52

One is if you come in and you say, all right, this is what I think you want,

35:56

then it gives the other person an opportunity to very quickly and effectively be like, yes, yes, no.

36:01

And it also, though, it shows that you respect and value their time,

36:04

that you took the time to try to do the thing yourself.

36:07

And I think with teachers, certainly, the questions that are really frustrating

36:11

are the ones that the students don't value your time, where it's just like, you can Google that.

36:16

You don't need me to find out what the MLA citation structure is.

36:20

It's MLA, you know what what the addition is.

36:24

You put that into Google and there's 80 million sites that will tell you what

36:28

that works. I had to page is supposed to look like. You don't need me for that.

36:31

Yeah. It's the same in business. I think that I had a third party developer

36:34

that I created a scope for a new AI functionality we're working on and I sent

36:39

it to them and it was, you know, several slides.

36:41

And I said, well, can I, let's, let's have a session where schedule some time

36:46

for you to ask me questions or it'd be great to get them ahead of time.

36:49

And he sent me a question like, can you Can you explain it further?

36:53

And it's just like, well, explain what further? Like, I just sent you the whole

36:57

thing. Do you have specific questions? But I mean, I guess then you just don't work with that person.

37:01

But I agree. I know exactly what you're saying. Like, you haven't put in the initial effort that shows me that,

37:06

you know, you're not wasting my time.

37:09

You understand I'm not your only resource and that I'm a hired gun,

37:12

right? I'm not, you know, I'm here for a very specific reason.

37:16

So, and I think it just sets the tone for the meeting too. When a student comes

37:20

in and they've got like a notepad that's got, and I can see they've got writing

37:23

on it, they've got three or four questions they've already got,

37:25

and they're banging down a list, then, then I know, all right, they're, they, they're here, they're trying to

37:30

use this time effectively, and then I'm all in and what wouldn't I do for that student.

37:35

But if they're just there, and I get the sense that they don't even want to

37:38

be there, or their parent forced them to be there or something like that,

37:40

right, and they did nothing to prepare. And their whole goal is, I'm not going to work outside of class,

37:45

I'm going to go in and I'm going to see how much work of my work this man will

37:48

do for me, then at that point, that's a completely different dynamic.

37:52

And that shifts what my goals in that particular meeting are,

37:55

because now it's not a question of how do I help them write a better essay.

37:58

Now it's a question of how do I help them use their teachers more successfully.

38:01

And this is so important, not just for what you're doing, but the skill that

38:05

they have to develop and translate into the work world.

38:07

Because that is, you know, now it's kind of time and money. And I feel,

38:12

I mean, you're giving me hope that, you know, this generation of,

38:15

of our, our next generation is going to come up and, and,

38:19

and be able to execute at a higher level because I do feel like,

38:22

and I don't want to kind of paint all one generation bad, but I feel like the

38:25

overall level of execution is declining.

38:29

And it's, it's more of, can you explain this more? Let me look,

38:33

can you tell me what this citation is rather than kind of doing the legwork?

38:38

And, you know, getting 50% of the way there and then helping me,

38:41

having me help you get to the rest of the way. But look, we're running out of time. So I want to ask you two more quick questions,

38:47

maybe one quick one and one a little longer one.

38:49

The first one, thinking about the job of a teacher, all those things,

38:54

all those roles you play, but then also the take-home work and the grading.

38:59

And how do you, what is a practice that you've brought into your life that helps

39:04

you kind of delineate between work and life, that balance?

39:08

I guess there's two things that I'll say about how I balance work and life.

39:12

One is a very important thing happened to me when I was my first year teaching,

39:17

when my grandfather died, at the same time that I was moving out of the house

39:22

that I was in to a different house. So over the span of two weekends, I had to go up to Connecticut for a funeral.

39:28

And then I also had to move while I was also doing all of this teaching.

39:34

And when that happens, when you have extreme pressure around your time,

39:39

you figure out very, very quickly what is necessary and vital to the task and what is not.

39:44

And so that allowed me to really get a good sense of what do I need to do in

39:50

order to teach at the level that I consider to be acceptable?

39:53

And then what would be nice to do in order to get above that and to really have

39:57

some, you know, banger classes. So I think those pressure points, those times when your life just converges

40:03

and you're just, you've got 19 things going on, they're really illuminating

40:08

and elucidating in some ways. And I was lucky enough to have one early to where I could start thinking about,

40:13

all right, you know, what's necessary and what's not and get rid of,

40:17

you know, some of the bells and whistles in order to manage that more successfully.

40:22

And then the other pieces on the other end, you know, the grading is probably

40:26

the biggest time point, particularly for me as an 11th and 12th grade English

40:30

teacher, my kids are turning in 12, 13, 14, 15, 15 page essay.

40:33

So when I was first started teaching, I was giving my students,

40:37

you know, 15 different things to focus on.

40:40

And then the end result of that is that they pick the one that they under whichever

40:43

one they liked, or whichever one they understood best, and then they addressed it.

40:46

And I realized that less is more in that case that you cannot give somebody

40:51

that kind of a choice, because they can't focus on 15 things to fix.

40:54

So what they'll do is they'll pick one or two. And what you're really doing is giving them a menu.

40:57

And maybe they're going to pick the two wrong ones, Maybe they'll pick the two

41:00

that are just throwaway comments where you just make this change here,

41:04

but that's really not as important as some comment down at the bottom.

41:07

So I've really streamlined that now and really put a focus on when it comes

41:11

to the things that I do for my messaging back to the students. Is it actionable?

41:16

Am I giving them feedback that's actionable? And how am I helping them to identify

41:20

the actions that are necessary for their success in the future?

41:24

So that's made my feedback shorter and tighter and more condensed and more,

41:30

you know, again, moving from broadsword to scalpel where.

41:35

All right, I'm noticing that you're doing 10 things wrong, but I'm not going

41:37

to tell you about seven of them. We'll deal with those other seven.

41:39

Once you fix these three that I want you to fix, and then we'll hit the other seven.

41:43

And I think part of it is that long view of, you know, we don't need to fix

41:47

everything on this essay. You don't need to be great right now.

41:50

You need to be better than everybody else when you leave my room so that you

41:54

have a chance at having greater success in the next teacher's classroom. So I have all year.

41:59

And I think sometimes, you know, early in my career, I was trying to fix everything

42:03

with these students this writing right in week one.

42:06

And that's just, that's not using the time that's being given to me.

42:10

That's a great point about just, just personnel development too,

42:13

is just, you know, understanding that, you know, you're making a commitment

42:17

for this person's career, at least as long as they choose to be with your company.

42:22

And, you know, it's, you can fix things over time. It doesn't have to be everything, all feedback.

42:29

You're right. It's like, what was the famous phrase? Like, Like,

42:31

if you have more than three priorities, you don't have any. And it's the same thing.

42:36

You're right. People are only capable of a couple things.

42:40

Last question here. We got to wrap this up.

42:43

And I want to kind of, as you kind of think about this next sort of stage of

42:49

your life, when you look out, what is most exciting or what is most daunting to you?

42:56

It's the same thing. And it's the obvious answer. It's AI, right?

42:59

How is AI going to be used? How is it going to change the world?

43:02

And, and what are the, what is that tool useful for?

43:06

Right? And obviously we know we, you know, I think people immediately think

43:09

about students as using it in order to write their essays or using it in malevolent

43:13

ways or ways that, that don't align with educational practices.

43:17

But, but yeah, it's changing. I mean, and the world needs to change,

43:21

right? You look around at the world, it's not perfect. This is the next evolution.

43:24

This is, this is going to be something that's going to change the ways in which everything functions.

43:30

And as with the internet before it, or, you know, or whatever else,

43:34

or the smartphone, or, you know, going over fire, it's whoever can use that thing effectively.

43:39

And you have that, you know, obviously, there's a lot of aphorisms around this,

43:43

when, when all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,

43:45

all that kind of stuff, right? And all of it is about the fact that as human beings, we're tool using animals.

43:50

And this is now again, AI is not an an obstacle to overcome.

43:54

It is a constraint of the system. The genie's out of the bottle. It's here.

43:57

It's going to be used. Successful people are going to use it successfully.

44:00

Unsuccessful people are either not going to use it or they're going to use it unsuccessfully.

44:03

So when I'm thinking about, again, what my job is, what my function is,

44:10

it's to give the students the skills that they need in order to be able to compete

44:14

and succeed later in life. And AI is that thing.

44:18

And I'm not an AI native, right? It just showed up.

44:22

I've got to figure out how to use it. I've got to think about how I would use it.

44:25

And now I've got to think about how students are going to use it 10, 15 years in the future.

44:30

And there's no real roadmap for that. You know, that that's really anxiety creating

44:34

for teachers just because, you know, again, there's no way to predict that.

44:39

But at the same time, it is really exciting in order to think about the ways

44:43

in which this could really eliminate some drudgery because there's nothing that

44:47

says that the 10 to 12-page analytical essay is the best way for students to

44:51

grow their skills and abilities in humanities.

44:55

When I think about what English is and what English is teaching,

44:58

it's universal in a sense of I'm reading something, I'm consuming some product,

45:03

whether it's a book or whether it's a business report, and then I've got to

45:06

find the patterns within. What you're doing is pattern creation and what you're trying to do or the skill

45:11

that's really significant and important to that, I think more and more.

45:14

And I don't think I'm in synergy with a lot of teachers on this one.

45:17

But when it comes to that question of, you know, do we want effective consumption or effective creation?

45:24

Curation is the thing that I think matters the most. You have all this data coming in.

45:28

You have all of these different tools. How are you figuring out what is important

45:31

and how are you putting that and synthesizing that into some sort of digestible

45:36

package to where you have an archive or repository of your thoughts and what's

45:42

happening and what the market trends are, whatever the case may be.

45:45

My wife is a former Navy doctor.

45:49

And when people find out, they always say, thank you for your service.

45:53

But I don't know if you hear that a lot. I don't know if a lot of teachers hear

45:56

that. But thank you for everything you do and your peers.

46:01

My daughter went to your school. She's friends with your daughter.

46:04

And up until you said the 15-page papers at 11th grade, I was like,

46:10

God, I wish I had this guy as a teacher. And I'm sure a lot of your students think that. But thanks for joining me.

46:15

Thanks for sharing these thoughts. And you know, let's do a happy hour together soon. Just like this.

46:22

All right. Well, thanks for having me. All right, buddy. Take care.

46:27

Music.