Use foresight to avoid losing your way
  It’s too easy to swap your organization’s true mission for single-mindedness about preserving and defending the institution as an institution. The clear and broad view you get with foresight can help you avoid that.   Kevin Carey, policy director of Education Sector, an independent think tank in Washington, published an essay, “The ‘Veritas’ About Harvard”

Take a walk in their shoes
A key to success in communicating about change is to know as much as you can about what others are feeling and thinking. So take a walk in their shoes.   There’s probably a gap between your views and what’s on the minds of the people you are trying to reach. What matters to you may not matter to them, and how they think about things is probably not how you think about things. So you have to try to bridge that gap, and get through to people on their terms.   It takes a fight with your

Twitter, and environmental scanning
Twitter (www.twitter.com) is not for everyone. It involves your time and attention, regularly, though in very small portions. Your impression of Twitter may be that it’s a place where someone you care only a little about, or not at all, will update you on the fascinating minutia of his/her daily life: "Eating a bagel at Panera," or, "Wishing Friday Night Lights was back on." But you don’t have to use it that way. If you consider Twitter’s value for environmental scanning, you might find it worth a second look. For many people,

Turn it upside down and see what you see
“Sheriff without a gun” (Andy Taylor, Mayberry) “What if restaurants didn’t cook and serve you food?”   Merce Cunningham: the dance and the music don’t have to match up   What if cars didn’t need drivers?   These are ideas about a radical change in something familiar. We can use thinking like this to try out new ideas without being hindered by the established ways we do things. The ideas get us past the system as we know it, and l