Jeff Kress has been my colleague in the Leadership Institute for the past nine years. He has taught me and many others a great deal about Social and Emotional and Experiential Learning. For the past year I have been part of and SEL study group with him, Evie Rotstein and a small group of congregation-based educators. We have spent our time exploring different aspect of how focusing on these types of learning can be effective. Yesterday, Jeff published the article below on eJewishPhilanthropy.com. I am not going to add anything today except to say I think it is worth all of our time to read it, and that I have collected a small group of links to articles that relate to this topic at the end of the posting. Click here for the original posting on eJP and to read other comments.
A More Accurate Analogy? Thinking About Synagogues, not Schools, and Camps Posted on June 16, 2013 by Jeffrey S. Kress, PhD It seems that the idea of making supplemental schools more “camp-like” has gained even more momentum over the past year. In that time, I have engaged in many conversations with practitioners and researchers who shared my mix of hopefulness and skepticism about the idea. The hopefulness often springs from the freedom to think creatively about education while at the same time maintaining a developmental-growth framework to inform new initiatives. Skepticism, on the other hand, often emerges from pointing out the ways in which schools were not like camps (camps being seen as voluntary, having more contact hours, etc.).
Lynn Lancaster is Education Director at the Forest Hills Jewish Center. She is also one of the sharpest Jewish educators I have ever met. We became friends when we both were invited to be mentors in the Leadership Institute. And today she was faster than me. She found this excellent article on eJewish Philanthropy and sent it off to me before I even looked at my e-mail. Well played, Lynn! I agree with nearly everything Steve Kerbel says. And he makes a key point: the success or failure of any model of Jewish education rises and falls on the commitment of the parents. If we are successful in helping them to make Jewish learning and living as a part of a sacred community a priority, then everything will work and the opportunities for us to be spectacular increase. Many who want to blow things up seem to think that doing so will allow us to reach more adults and help them choose to prioritize things in this manner. Others suggest that doing so is giving up on getting most folks to prioritize Jewish living over suburban (or urban) life in general, and so we might as well make it as attractive as we can so we can get at least some of their attention. In either case, I think Kerbel is refocusing the conversation in a manner that makes sense. What do you think? Ira
Steve Kerbel
What if the model isn’t broken?
by Steve Kerbel I have spent my adult life, even when pursuing other career choices, involved in Jewish education. I spent twenty years on the informal side, staffing and writing study materials for youth groups and Jewish camps, teaching in religious schools, tutoring b’nai mitzvah, and eventually teaching in day schools and leading two congregational religious schools for the last 18 years. I am a product of two excellent day schools, USY and several fine Jewish summer camps. A few weeks ago, on a Shabbat morning, events converged in the sanctuary of the suburban Washington, DC congregation where I now work that lead me to believe that the congregational model of education might just work, if it’s used properly. Like any tool, you get different results if the tool is in the hands of an experienced craftsman versus a weekend warrior. Allow me to expand the thought. Two smachot occurred, an auf ruf of a couple who met in the 4th grade of our religious school, and a bat mitzvah of one of our students. This was not the ordinary student, by any definition. She is gifted with a beautiful voice, she is poised and mature. But she has also been in synagogue most shabbatot since she was two weeks old. Her family welcomes Shabbat every week, builds a Sukkah and invites guests to share in its use, her father blows shofar on the High Holidays. When this family’s younger son had a conflict between weekday religious school and his Tae Kwon Do class, it was the Tae Kwan Do that yielded to religious school, not the other way around. The children in this family attend a Jewish content summer camp for four weeks every summer. I contend that this is the right way to use the Congregational religious school model. You participate in services and activities, you take a role, you bring your Judaism into your home and you carry it out again, sharing it with others. This student led all of Kabbalat Shabbat on Friday evening, led the Torah service, read all 8 aliyot and led the congregation in Musaf. Not a typical suburban bat mitzvah. This was a religious school student, not a day school student. To me, it was a lesson in what can be, when we put a product to its best, intended use. There is a lot of discussion and dissent in the education and lay communities that the model is failed, its failing most families, its tired, I’ve even heard that it needs to be blown up. The model as designed has the potential for success; to create comfort, confidence and community. The model can create committed, literate, striving Jews who integrate Jewish rhythms into their daily lives. We can connect our people to our living texts, we can teach about the sanctity of people and the sanctity of time, we might even improve the quality of our families’ lives. The cost is family buy-in and involvement. If you commit to raising a serious Jew the same way you commit to a serious musician or athlete, it takes what all these people talk about: participation, cheering your kid on, modeling healthy behavior, and yes, as any concert musician or Olympian will tell you, sacrifice. All those athlete profiles we watched from London this summer moved our emotions about how the athlete’s families have to sacrifice for the success of their child. I think we have to create this same expectation for our families if they want to commit to raising successful Jews. The problem, however, is that the vast percentage of families involved in congregational education are the equivalent of those who take music lessons or participate in a sport and do not become, nor do they have any aspirations to become, concert musicians or Olympians. What models can we adapt or create to attract and retain these families as active, engaged and continuing participants in Jewish communal life? The ‘model is broken’ conversation comes from the growing acceptance that, although we know what could work, we have been unsuccessful in convincing our audience. We are constantly in the position of the salesman who ‘successfully’ sells the car except for one small problem – the customer doesn’t buy it. The search for alternatives to the current model is driven by a desire to find the formula that will somehow break through this conundrum. We are without a doubt in a period of searching, transition and change. It may be that the formula I describe will remain as a viable option for some families within a larger community-driven set of alternatives. But for now, the search for the right context and mix goes on. I’m not certain there is an exact formula that will work for everyone, and even the highest quality tool doesn’t produce the highest quality result every time. Perhaps the right investment by the consumers in the product, and quite frankly, better modeling and instruction by education professionals, can make a big difference in making something that may not be working for everyone work better for more people in an affordable, accessible way. Steve Kerbel is Director of Education at Congregation B’nai Tzedek, Potomac, Maryland, is the current chair of the Education Directors Council of Greater Washington and a national officer of the Jewish Educators Assembly.
"During our conversation this morning, we both challenged the relevance of "Jewish affiliation", which has been used in every Jewish demographic study as a measure of community success in modern America. The problem is, and has always been, that the operational definition of "affiliation" is often "pays dues to a synagogue". Even those who expand the definition someone, rarely get beyond handing money to an organization (JCC, Federation, Hillel) as the operational definition."
He explores several problems with using affiliation as a metric, including leaving our serious Jews who are "not religious," those for whom membership is of little if any value, and that it does not include significant numbers of Jews who relate to their Jewishness independently, including growing numbers who use social media to express their Jewishness.
He (with a nod to Beth Finger) suggests changing the metric to "Jewish Connectedness." He would like Jewish sociologists to take into account the many ways of relating meaningfully to being Jewish. He wants to find a way to include serious Jewish paths that may not lead through a synagogue, federation or JCC. He includes summer camping and independent minyanim as well as those "who are doing Jewish in non-institutional spaces or in secular spaces,
Jews connecting online in meaningful ways
folks and who participate in Beth's Jewish Without Walls, in havurot and in other groupings that are not (yet) dues-based groups."
I think Arnie has the beginnings of an interesting framing of the conversation that we have all been having for a while. And while those who would overturn existing institutional frameworks might see this as invitation Occupy Organized Judaism, I see it as a refreshing way to begin talk about the apples and oranges in the same conversation. After all, Apple Jews and Orange Jews are still all Jews!
I would press the idea a bit further:
How can we in the synagogue world change the way we operate to increase the CI - Connectedness Index - for each member family and individual?
While we in this world often do a lot to attract affiliation, we don't always (or even often) do a good enough job of connecting them to other adults in our congregations. We get them when they feel they need us (religious school, nursery school, Bar/Bat Mitzvah) but we don't always connect the adults in the family. So when the kids are ready to move on, the adults do as well.
Using the CI as a way to measure and improve what we do is as important as using it to find a meaningful category for non-Congregational connecting.
I still like the word "affiliate" though. It makes me feel like we can use it to affirm that we obeying Hillel's dictum not to separate ourselves from the community.
Like Arnie, I am not the statistician to figure out how to count these things in the larger picture. I do know that in our synagogue and religious school, we have begun to focus on connecting parents. Our room parents now focus on getting parents together rather than doing the shopping or helping with the seder. (See article on page 6 Torah at the Center). I challenge you to share more ways of connecting the people who ARE affiliated! Because we need to raise the CI of all of our people!
This was posted on Jvillage Network, which builds and hosts websites for Jewish organizations, and helps them use technology to deepen connections between members and the institution and attract new members as well. I have recently started following their blog, after hearing about from eJewish Philanthropy (who else?). .I think Samets presents the challenge to our congregations in a well-focused manner. How do we respond? - Ira
Synagogues lagging behind cultural change is nothing new. In fact, there are those who would say synagogues should operate from a thoughtful, process-driven perspective and adopt change slowly. In essence I would agree with that. The challenge is all in the balance.
Synagogues must be able to respond to a rapidly changing culture, while keeping themselves grounded in their mission. Not an easy task, yet we have always found a way to enhance our religious experience through the current culture of our times.
As Jews we must keep our attention focused forward - through the windshield and the dramatic changing landscape ahead. Of course, we must also be alert to the view in the rear view mirror - what we are leaving behind and what is gaining ground.
This dual outlook is what should drive us as individual Jews, just as it drives the Googles, Facebooks, Intels (all with Jewish inside), and even the State of Israel.
Synagogues have the same opportunity of using technology to build a bridge between the synagogue experience and today’s culture. Technology needs to be an outward- looking tool for greater connectedness for the community.
While there are a number of creative synagogues doing remarkable outreach and engaging more members, too few synagogues have been able to emulate their example and create an operational model that will lead them and their communities to a stronger future.
Change happens when leaders intentionally and constructively work toward a better future. Our synagogues need a modern Abraham or Moses - intentional leaders with vision and the passion to lead a movement.
Technology is only a tool. And when used to its maximum benefit, it is a tool that enhances our purpose, our mission, and our movement.
What is your purpose? What is your synagogues' purpose? Where is our passion?
What holds us together as a people, as a religion, is thousands of years old. Abraham, Rebecca, Isaac, Sarah, Moses, Ramban, Golda Meir -- each has served as a powerful connector to our Jewish roots and our religious traditions. Our challenge is to use our rich history of purposeful leadership to regain the strength and focus for our individual communities and create meaningful purpose for our lives today.
American society is constantly changing and that change has impacted our Jewish culture; yet our Jewish foundation remains firm. While our families are spread around the world, less rooted in one cohesive community, we are challenged to create a wholly new Jewish community based on the realities of our world today.
We need to understand today’s 4 P’s for synagogue prosperity, in order to reclaim our Jewish movement in today’s American culture.
Purpose – the higher goal, the higher calling that resonates
Passion – in any movement it takes firebrands to influence
People – those we want to join with us
Projects – purposeful doing brings people together
This is the time of year when synagogues have an opportunity to start fresh. The first step out of the gate for thinking fresh is to form a strategic planning task force that, with a clear focus and effective leadership, can help the synagogue better understand the community's passions and create a movement in support of them.
Strategic planning work is more about the process than it is about the outcome. Working together as a community, learning, listening to understand what others want and value, and then ultimately arriving at a common goal is key to successful community building and successful movement creation.
Re-identify your purpose.
Support it with a passionate commitment.
Focus it outward toward the people most interested in being drawn toward the purpose.
Then create projects that will drive action, and more people toward you purpose.
The outcome - Synagogue well-being.
And through the process you will find out the power of the potential of connectedness in the community, in the synagogue and online.
Yoram Samets, the author is the Founder of Jvillage Network. He is also a frequent writer and blogger on using digital technology to grow membership and engage and build Jewish community.
Another fantastic piece brought to us by eJewish Philanthropy. I especially love it when someone brings a lesson from the world and figures out how to use it as a lens for what we do - without telling us just to be more like business. That would be overly simplistic and fit as well as I would in jeggings. Not a pretty picture! Enjoy.
I read with great interest this past Sunday, October 3, 2010, The New York Times article, “Buy My Stuff – and Theirs, Too” by Joshua Brustein, that we in the Jewish community need to consider. The gist of the article is how J. Crew, one of the most successful online and in-store space clothing retailers, has determined that “friending” other purveyors’ goods makes great business sense for them and their customers. This is befriending – no, it’s actually community-building – taken to the max. J. Crew determined that surrounding its products with those of other fashion-related businesses, would create a more potent marketing picture for its consumers to consider and ultimately purchase that if they simply went the traditional route of merchandising their own goods.
If J. Crew has determined that offering its customers a fashion statement built on their clothing as well as related items from other retailers (think J. Crew sweater, slacks, scarf with someone else’s umbrella, hat, sports gear, healthy transportation and flavored vitamin water), you can see the potential opportunity J. Crew is leveraging to connect with consumers in a much more holistic way.
If you are a JCC, a federation, a synagogue, think about how you position yourselves to be a friendly source to those you wish to engage. In this new world of social media, where word of mouth and relationships trump any outright marketing ploy, take a lesson from J. Crew and start linking your efforts to relevant community partners … a federation appeal linked to the needs of the local synagogue education program, or the home for the elderly, or how the interests of the local JCC align with those of young families who choose to purchase “green products”, participate in organic food coops, give to the needy at their local food bank …
Successful marketing today is more and more about building both a full picture of the consumer’s life as they envision it and creating a network of authentic advocates who, without prompting or artifice, will tweet or “friend” you and offer their friends a trusted reason to buy into it. What peers say to each other about the total life experience and any given commodity that supports it, be it day school education or synagogue membership, trumps any paid advertisement or direct mail pitch. If you want to be valued for your service or product to the Jewish community, you have to ask yourself, “What are you are doing to build and nurture that community and its belief in you and your product?”
Marketing is quickly moving from traditional advertising and promotion to the more personal and trusted world of the social media world where friends honestly recommend a lifestyle and the product or service that feeds it. It is a world where individual endorsement says as much about the endorser and their commitment to a specific community as it does about the product or service they recommend.
If you want to be viewed as a contributor to that community, you have to be part of its maintenance. As Sarah Hofstetter, senior vice president for emerging media and brand strategy at 360i, a digital advertising agency said in The New York Times article, “This is a conversation, not a one-night stand. If you are in this community, make sure you are contributing to the maintenance of that community.”
For those of us in the Jewish community, the J. Crew story should suggest it is time for greater collaboration; for looking at all our “product” offerings from the more holistic perspective of how our consumers experience Jewish life. It is not about “my organization versus yours”. Rather, it is about community … where we each fit and how we all fit together to create a more powerful Jewish experience for every consumer of Jewish life … a little synagogue, a little JCC, a little social activism, a little education … put them all together for a full Jewish experience and each of us may find more buyers than if we had sold our wares separately.
Gail Hyman is a marketing and communications professional who currently focuses her practice, Gail Hyman Consulting, on assisting Jewish nonprofit organizations increase their ranks of supporters and better leverage their communications in the Web 2.0 environment. Gail is a regular contributor to eJewish Philanthropy.
This is from the July issue of FastCompany. FastCompany is a business magazine, and ever since the first issue came my way fifteen years ago I have read it cover to cover. Each month I find articles that make me think about my work as a Jewish educator and as a human being. There are more ideas than I have had a chance to implement and the list grows longer each month. It has introduced me to Seth Godin, the importance of Design and more recently Chip and Dan Heath.
This article made me think about the process of recruiting, and more importantly growing and maintaining the relationships with a member family in our congregation. They come in through so many different doors: nursery school, family education, social justice, a desire to enroll children in religious school, a worship experience, spiritual searching - you name it. And then we get them to join.
Some time later - hopefully years - they resign. And we are shocked, I tell you. Simply shocked. (cue Sam on the piano - you must remember this...)
Why would they leave? Perhaps they have accomplished what they thought of as their purpose for joining. Maybe the kids have left the house so they see no reason to belong for themselves. Maybe the dues are too high. Maybe, maybe maybe.
This article made me wonder how many ways we drop the baton in our synagogues. With our students. With their parents. With the family as a whole. We should have been working to help them find multiple reasons for being connected to the temple, to develop relationships with other members and with the institution itself that go beyond the reason they joined. I began this line of thought on this blog in April. I am sure there is more to come. I invite your thoughts on this.
At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the American men's 4x100 relay team was a strong medal contender. During the four previous Games, the American men had medaled every time. The qualifying heats in 2008 -- the first step on the road to gold -- should have been a cakewalk.
On the third leg of the race, the U.S.A.'s Darvis Patton was running neck and neck with a runner from Trinidad and Tobago. Patton rounded the final turn, approaching anchorman Tyson Gay, who was picking up speed to match Patton. Patton extended the baton, Gay reached back, and the baton hit his palm.
Then, somehow, it fell. The team was disqualified. It was a humiliating early defeat. Stranger still, about a half-hour later, the U.S.A. women's team was disqualified too -- for a baton drop at the same point in the race. (Freaked out by the trend, the U.S.A.'s rhythmic gymnasts kept an extra-tight grip on their ribbons.)
Team U.S.A.'s track coach, Bubba Thornton, told the media his runners had practiced baton passes "a million times." But not with their Olympic teammates. Some reporters noted that Patton and Gay's practice together had been minimal.
Thornton's apparent overconfidence was understandable. If you have four world-class experienced runners on your team, shouldn't that be enough? Unfortunately, no, it isn't. The baton pass cannot be taken for granted -- not on the track and not in your organization.
We tend to underestimate the amount of effort needed to coordinate with other people. In one academic experiment, a team of students was asked to build a giant Lego man as quickly as possible. To save time, the team members split up their work. One person would craft an arm, another would build the torso, and so forth. (At least one person, of course, was charged with tweeting compulsively about what the others were doing.)
Often, the parts were carefully designed, yet they didn't quite fit together properly, like a Lego Heidi Montag. The problem was that nobody was paying attention to the integration. The researchers found that the teams were consistently better at specializing than they were at coordinating.
Organizations make this mistake constantly: We prize individual brilliance over the ability to work together as a team. And unfortunately, that can lead to dropped batons, as JetBlue infamously discovered back in February 2007.
You remember the fiasco. Snowstorms had paralyzed New York airports, and rather than cancel flights en masse, JetBlue loaded up its planes, hoping for a break in the weather. The break never came, and some passengers were trapped on planes for hours. If you've ever felt the temperature rise on a plane after an hour's delay on the tarmac, imagine what it was like after 10 hours. These planes were cauldrons of rage -- one stray act of flatulence away from bloodshed.
JetBlue did its best to survive the wave of hatred -- its CEO apologized repeatedly and the company issued a Customer Bill of Rights, offering cash payments for delays and cancellations. But the executives realized that these efforts wouldn't eliminate the underlying problems, which were rather unyielding: The weather is unpredictable; New York airports are overcrowded; passengers expect on-time performance anyway. If JetBlue didn't fix its operations -- learning to respond to emergencies with more speed and agility -- another fiasco was likely.
JetBlue's executives knew that a top-down solution by a team of executives would fail. "The challenges are on the front line," says Bonny Simi, JetBlue's director of customer experience and analysis. In October 2008, Simi and her colleagues gathered a cross-section of players -- crew schedulers, system operators, dispatchers, reservation agents, and others -- to determine how the company handled "irregular operations," such as severe weather.
Individual members of the group knew the issues in their departments, and "if we brought enough of them together," Simi says, "we would have the whole puzzle there, and they could help us solve it."
Where do you start? If you ask individuals what's wrong with their jobs, you'll get pet peeves, but those gripes may not address the big integration issues. But if you ask people directly how to fix a big problem like irregular operations, it's like asking people how to fix federal bureaucracy. The topic is too complex and maddeningly interrelated; it fuzzes the brain.
Rather than talk abstractly, Simi decided to simulate an emergency. As the centerpiece of the first irregular operations retreat, Simi announced to the group: "Tomorrow, there's going to be a thunderstorm at JFK such that we're going to have to cancel 40 flights." The group then had to map out their response to the crisis.
As they rehearsed what they would do, step by step, they began to spot problems in their current process. For instance, in severe-weather situations, protocol dictates that the manager on duty, the Captain Kirk of JetBlue operations, should distribute to the staff what's known as a "precancel list," which identifies the flights that have been targeted for cancellation. There were five different people who rotated through the Kirk role, and they each sent out the precancel list in a different format. This variability created a small but real risk. It was similar to slight differences among five runners' extension of the baton.
In total, the group identified more than 1,000 process flaws, small and large. Over the next few weeks, the group successively filtered and prioritized the list down to a core set of 85 problems to address. Most of them were small individually, but together, they dramatically increased the risk of a dropped baton. JetBlue's irregular-operations strike force spent nine months in intense and sometimes emotional sessions, working together to stamp out the problems.
The effort paid off. In the summer of 2009, JetBlue had its best-ever on-time summer. Year over year, JetBlue's refunds decreased by $9 million. Best of all, the efforts dramatically improved JetBlue's "recovery time" from major events such as storms. (JetBlue considers itself recovered from an irregular-operations event when 98.5% of scheduled flights are a go.) The group shaved recovery time by 40% -- from two-and-a-half days to one-and-a-half days.
Ironically, JetBlue's can-do culture contributed to its original problem. "The can-do spirit meant we would power through irregular operations and 'get 'er done,' " says Jenny Dervin, the airline's corporate communications director, "but we didn't value processes as being heroic." The company's heroes had been individuals -- but now they share the medal stand with processes. (Here's hoping that the next American relay team, too, extends some glory from the runner to the handoff.)
The relay team with the fastest sprinters doesn't always win, and the business with the most talented employees doesn't either. Coordination is the unsung hero of successful teams, and it's time to start singing.
Dan Heath and Chip Heath are the authors of the No. 1 New York Times best seller Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, as well as Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.
At a CAJE conference long, long ago at a campus far, far away, I gave a session about using the principles of Seth Godin's Purple Cow and Unleashing the Ideavirusbooks to re-frame our work as educators and institutional leaders. It was well-received, but I think the time has come to continue the discussion. So what I offer is a video and transcript of Seth Godin teaching about what it means to have your product stand out. As I mentioned at that conference, it took Moses from among all the other shepherds of Midian to notice not that the bush was burning, but that the branches were not being consumed by the flames. Most of us and our constituents are NOT as observant as Moses. We only see a bush on fire. Nothing remarkable about that in the wilderness.
And I have some questions I hope you will attempt to answer in the comments section below:
Whose attention do we need to attract? Children? Their parents? Adult Learners? People who are not members of the congregation or institution? The Usual Suspects?
What are their needs, in terms of what will get their attention? What are the barriers that prevent them from noticing that the bush is burning unconsumed?
What can we do with the settings and structures we have to make Jewish learning remarkable?
What can we do that goes outside or beyond those settings and structures to make Jewish learning remarkable?
From TED February 2003
In a world of too many options and too little time, our obvious choice is to just ignore the ordinary stuff. Marketing guru Seth Godin spells out why, when it comes to getting our attention, bad or bizarre ideas are more successful than boring ones.
I'm going to give you four specific examples -- and I'm going to cover at the end -- about how a company called Silk tripled their sales by doing one thing. How an artist named Jeff Koons went from being a nobody to making a whole bunch of money and having a lot of impact, to how Frank Gehry redefined what it meant to be an architect. And one of my biggest failures as a marketer in the last few years, a record label I started that had a CD called "Sauce."
Before I can do that I've got to tell you about sliced bread, and a guy named Otto Rohwedder. Now, before sliced bread was invented in the 1910s I wonder what they said? Like the greatest invention since ... the telegraph or something. But this guy named Otto Rohwedder invented sliced bread, and he focused, like most inventors did, on the patent part and the making part. And the thing about the invention of sliced bread is this -- that for the first 15 years after sliced bread was available no one bought it, no one knew about it. It was a complete and total failure. And the reason is that until Wonder came along and figured out how to spread the idea of sliced bread, no one wanted it. That the success of sliced bread, like the success of almost everything we've been talking about at this conference, is not always about what the patent is like, or what the factory is like, it's about can you get your idea to spread, or not. And I think that the way that you're going to get what you want, or cause the change that you want to change, to happen, is that you've got to figure out a way to get your ideas to spread.
And it doesn't matter to me whether you're running a coffee shop or you're an intellectual, or you're in business, or you're flying hot air balloons. I think that all this stuff applies to everybody regardless of what we do. That what we are living in is a century of idea diffusion. That people who can spread ideas, regardless of what those ideas are, win. And when I talk about it I usually pick business because they make the best pictures that you can put in your presentation, and because it's the easiest sort of way to keep score. But I want you to forgive me when I use these examples because I'm talking about anything that you decide to spend your time to do.
At the heart of spreading ideas is TV and stuff like TV. TV and mass media made it really easy to spread ideas in a certain way. I call it the TV industrial complex. The way the TV industrial complex works, is you buy some ads -- interrupt some people -- that gets you distribution. You use the distribution you get to sell more products. You take the profit from that to buy more ads. And it goes around and around and around, the same way that military and industrial complex worked a long time ago. And that model of, and we heard it yesterday, if we could only get onto the homepage of Google, if we could only figure out how to get promoted there, if we could only figure out how to grab that person by the throat, and tell them about what we want to do. If we do that then everyone would pay attention, and we would win. Well, this TV industrial complex informed my entire childhood and probably yours. I mean, all of these products succeeded because someone figured out how to touch people in a way they weren't expecting, in a way they didn't necessarily want with an ad, over and over and over again until they bought it.
And the thing that's happened is, they canceled the TV industrial complex. That just over the last few years, what anybody who markets anything has discovered is that it's not working the way that it used to. This picture is really fuzzy, I apologize, I had a bad cold when I took it. But the product in the blue box in the center is my poster child. Right. I go to the deli, I'm sick, I need to buy some medicine. The brand manager for that blue product spent 100 million dollars trying to interrupt me in one year. 100 million dollars interrupting me with TV commercials and magazine ads and spam and coupons and shelving allowances and spiff -- all so I could ignore every single message. And I ignored every message because I don't have a pain reliever problem. I buy the stuff in the yellow box because I always have. And I'm not going to invest a minute of my time to solve her problem, because I don't care.
Here's a magazine called Hydrate. It's 180 pages about water.
(Laughter)
Right. Articles about water, ads about water. Imagine what the world was like 40 years ago when it was just the Saturday Evening Post and Time and Newsweek. Now there are magazines about water. New products from Coke Japan -- water salad.
(Laughter)
OK. Coke Japan comes out with a new product every three weeks. Because they have no idea what's going to work and what's not. I couldn't have written this better myself. It came out four days ago -- I circled the important parts so you can see them here. They've came out ... Arby's is going to spend 85 million dollars promoting an oven mitt with the voice of Tom Arnold, hoping that that will get people to go to Arby's and buy a roast beef sandwich.
(Laughter)
Now, I had tried to imagine what could possibly be in an animated TV commercial featuring Tom Arnold, that would get you to get in your car, drive across town and buy a roast beef sandwich.
(Laughter)
Now, this is Copernicus, and he was right, when he was talking to anyone who needs to hear your idea. The world revolves around me. Me, me, me, me, me. My favorite person -- me. I don't want to get email from anybody, I want to get "memail."
(Laughter)
So consumers, and I don't just mean people who buy stuff at the Safeway, I mean people at the Defense Department who might buy something, or people at, you know, the New Yorker who might print your article. Consumers don't care about you at all, they just don't care. Part of the reason is -- they've got way more choices than they used to, and way less time. And in a world where we have too many choices and too little time, the obvious thing to do is just ignore stuff. And my parable here is you're driving down the road and you see a cow, and you keep driving because you've seen cows before. Cows are invisible. Cows are boring. Who's going to stop and pull over and say -- oh, look, a cow. Nobody.
(Laughter)
But if the cow was purple -- isn't that a great special effect? I could do that again if you want it. If the cow was purple, you'd notice it for a while. I mean, if all cows were purple you'd get bored with those, too. The thing that's going to decide what gets talked about, what gets done, what gets changed, what gets purchased, what gets built, is -- is it remarkable? And remarkable's a really cool word because we think it just means neat, but it also means -- worth making a remark about. And that is the essence of where idea diffusion is going. That two of the hottest cars in the United States is a 55,000 dollar giant car, big enough to hold a mini in its trunk. People are paying full price for both, and the only thing they have in common is that they don't have anything in common.
(Laughter)
Every week the number one best selling DVD in America changes. It's never "The Godfather," it's never "Citizen Kane," It's always some third rate movie with some second rate star. But the reason it's number one is because that's the week it came out. Because it's new, because it's fresh. Because people saw it and said -- I didn't know that was there -- and they noticed it. Two of the big success stories of the last 20 years in retail -- one sells things that are super-expensive in a blue box, and one sells things that are as cheap as they can make them. The only thing they have in common is that they're different.
We're now in the fashion business, no matter what we do for a living, we're in the fashion business. And the thing is, people in the fashion business know what it's like to be in the fashion business, because they're used to it. The rest of us have to figure out how to think that way. How to understand that it's not about interrupting people with big full-page ads, or insisting on meetings with people. But it's a totally different sort of process that determines which ideas spread, and which ones don't. This chair -- they sold a billion dollars' worth of Aeron chairs by reinventing what it meant to sell a chair. They turned a chair from something the purchasing department bought, to something that was a status symbol about where you sat at work. This guy, Lionel Poilane, the most famous baker in the world -- he died two and a half months ago, and he was a hero of mine and a dear friend. He lived in Paris. Last year he sold 10 million dollars worth of French bread. Every loaf baked in a bakery he owned, by one baker at a time, in a wood-fired oven. And when Lionel started his bakery the French pooh-pooh-ed it. They didn't want to buy his bread. It didn't look like "French bread." It wasn't what they expected. It was neat, it was remarkable, and slowly it spread from one person to another person until finally, it became the official bread of three-star restaurants in Paris. Now he's in London, and he ships by FedEx all around the world.
What marketers used to do is make average products for average people. That's what mass marketing is. Smooth out the edges, go for the center, that's the big market. They would ignore the geeks, and God forbid, the laggards. It was all about going for the center. But in a world where the TV industrial complex is broken, I don't think that's a strategy we want to use any more. I think the strategy we want to use is to not market to these people because they're really good at ignoring you. But market to these people because they care. These are the people who are obsessed with something. And when you talk to them they'll listen because they like listening -- it's about them. And if you're lucky, they'll tell their friends on the rest of the curve, and it'll spread. It'll spread to the entire curve.
They have something I call otaku -- it's a great Japanese word. It describes the desire of someone who's obsessed to say, drive across Tokyo to try a new ramen noodle place, because that's what they do. They get obsessed with it. To make a product, to market an idea, to come up with any problem you want to solve that doesn't have a constituency with an otaku, is almost impossible. Instead, you have to find a group that really, desperately cares about what it is you have to say. Talk to them and make it easy for them to tell their friends. There's a hot sauce otaku, but there's no mustard otaku. That's why there's lots and lots and lots of kinds of hot sauces, and not so many kinds of mustard. Not because it's hard to make interesting mustard -- you can make interesting mustard -- But people don't because no one's obsessed with it, and thus no one tells their friends. Krispy Kreme has figured this whole thing out. Krispy Kreme has a strategy, and what they do is, they enter a city, they talk to the people with otaku, and then they spread through the city to the people who've just crossed the street.
This yoyo right here cost 112 dollars, but it sleeps for 12 minutes. Not everybody wants it but they don't care. They want to talk to the people who do, and maybe it'll spread.
These guys make the loudest car stereo in the world.
(Laughter)
It's as loud as a 747 jet, you can't get in the car's got bullet proof glass on the windows because they'll blow out the windshield otherwise. But the fact remains that when someone wants to put a couple of speakers in their car, if they've got the otaku or they've heard from someone who does, they go ahead and they pick this.
It's really simple -- you sell to the people who are listening, and maybe, just maybe those people tell their friends. So when Steve Jobs talks to 50,000 people at his keynote, right, who are all tuned in from 130 countries watching his two-hour commercial -- that's the only thing keeping his company in business -- is that those 50,000 people care desperately enough to watch a two-hour commercial, and then tell their friends.
Pearl Jam, 96 albums released in the last two years. Every one made a profit. How? They only sell them on their website. Those people who buy them on the website have the otaku, and then they tell their friends, and it spreads and it spreads.
This hospital crib cost 10,000 dollars, 10 times the standard. But hospitals are buying it faster than any other model. Hard Candy nail polish, doesn't appeal to everybody, but to the people who love it, they talk about it like crazy.
This paint can right here saved the Dutch Boy paint company, making them a fortune. It costs 35 percent more than regular paint because Dutch Boy made a can that people talk about, because it's remarkable. They didn't just slap a new ad on the product, they changed what it meant to build a paint product.
AmIhotornot.com -- every day 250,000 people go to this site, run by two volunteers, and I can tell you they are hard graders, and
(Laughter)
they didn't get this way by advertising a lot. They got this way by being remarkable, sometimes a little TOO remarkable.
And this picture frame has a cord going out the back, and you plug it into the wall. My father has this on his desk, and he sees his grandchildren every day, changing constantly. And every single person who walks into his office hears the whole story of how this thing ended up on his desk. And one person at a time, the idea spreads.
These are not diamonds, not really. They're made from cremains. After you're cremated you can have yourself made into a gem.
(Laughter)
Oh, you like my ring? It's my grandmother.
(Laughter)
Fastest-growing business in the whole mortuary industry. But you don't have to be Ozzie Osborne -- you don't have to be super-outrageous to do this. What you have to do is figure out what people really want and give it to them.
A couple of quick rules to wrap up. The first one is: Design is free when you get to scale. And the people who come up with stuff that's remarkable more often than not figure out how to put design to work for them.
Number two: The riskiest thing you can do now is be safe. Proctor and Gamble knows this, right? The whole model of being Proctor and Gamble is always about average products for average people. That's risky. The safe thing to do now is to be at the fringes, be remarkable.
And being very good is one of the worst things you can possibly do. Very good is boring. Very good is average. It doesn't matter whether you're making a record album, or you're an architect, or you have a tract on sociology. If it's very good, it's not going to work, because no one's going to notice it.
So my three stories. Silk. Put a product that does not need to be in the refrigerated section next to the milk in the refrigerated section. Sales tripled. Why? Milk, milk, milk, milk, milk -- not milk. For the people who were there and looking at that section, it was remarkable. They didn't triple their sales with advertising, they tripled it by doing something remarkable.
That is a remarkable piece of art. You don't have to like it, but a 40-foot tall dog made out of bushes in the middle of New York City is remarkable.
Frank Gehry didn't just change a museum, he changed an entire city's economy by designing one building that people from all over the world went to see. Now, at countless meetings at, you know, the Portland City Council, or who knows where, they said, we need an architect -- can we get Frank Gehry? Because he did something that was at the fringes.
And my big failure? I came out with an entire
(Music)
record album and hopefully a whole bunch of record albums in SACD format -- this remarkable new format -- and I marketed it straight to people with 20,000 dollar stereos. People with 20,000 dollar stereos don't like new music.
(Laughter)
So what you need to do is figure out who does care. Who is going to raise their hand and say, "I want to hear what you're doing next," and sell something to them. The last example I want to give you. This is a map of Soap Lake, Washington. As you can see, if that's nowhere, it's in the middle of it.
(Laughter)
But they do have a lake. And people used to come from miles around to swim in the lake. They don't anymore. So the founding fathers said, "We've got some money to spend. What can we build here?" And like most committees, they were going to build something pretty safe. And then an artist came to them -- this is a true artist's rendering -- he wants to build a 55-foot tall lava lamp in the center of town. That's a purple cow, that's something worth noticing. I don't know about you but if they build it, that's where I'm going to go.
This past fall many Jewish educators encountered a newish phenomenon. Some families in our religious schools were “taking a year off” from Religious School and in some cases synagogue membership. If these were families whose youngest child recently became Bar or Bat Mitzvah, we might wring our hands and say “Ri-i-i-ight. Taking the year off. We’ll look for you next fall.”
But most of these families in my synagogue and in those of colleagues who have told me they have encountered the same conversations have children who are much younger. They tend to be in Gan (K) through Kitah Gimel (3rd). In fact, our enrollment from Kitah Chet (8th) through Kitah Yud Bet (12th) is at an all time high. If pushed, some parents will say it is a temporary economic decision. They indicated the economic realities of the fall of 2010 and a belief that their child’s Jewish identity will not be irreparably damaged by a break in their studies. And they absolutely did not want to discuss financial aid – either they were too uncomfortable with the topic or they didn’t feel things were that bad. They promised to come back. And in some of the conversations I am beginning to have with these hiatus families, they are telling me that they are absolutely coming back. From their mouths…
Linchpin: Are You Indispensible?
I am nearly finished with a book call Linchpin by Seth Godin.[1] I am a Godin Junkie. I first met Seth’s work in the pages of Fast Company, another of my addictions. Both are from the world of business, not Jewish education. Both have taught me so many things about how to make Jewish education happen. I cannot recommend them enough. I could write ten articles about this book, beginning with how it was marketed. I am reading it with a small moleskine notebook next to me so I can take notes. Yes, it is that engaging.
At the heart of the book is a redefining of the American Dream: “Be remarkable. Be generous. Create Art. Make Judgment Calls. Connect people and ideas. And we will have no choice but to reward you.” He challenges the reader, regardless of your field, to be an artist, which he defines as “someone who changes everything, who makes dreams come true…someone who can see the reality of today and describe a better tomorrow…a linchpin.”
A linchpin. The pshat or plain meaning is the piece of metal that slides through the axle that keeps the wheel from falling off the wagon, or through the arm and the hitch to keep the trailer attached. It is a simple device yet it keeps things together and makes their proper function possible. Godin suggests that in our work, each of us needs to be a linchpin, someone who is indispensible to their company. Not a line-worker or a rule-follower, but an artist – someone who stretches possibilities to allow growth and change. He gives great examples.
Al Tifrosh Min Hatzibur - Do Not Separate Yourself From the Community
So why am I bringing this up while talking about the interrupted life of our students? I believe we need to do a better job of making the school and the synagogue (and the Jewish educator) linchpins in the lives of our families. I think that twenty years ago, no one would have considered “taking a year off.” That generation might have considered the financial ramifications when joining a synagogue. Once in, though, I am convinced that like their predecessors, they would not consider leaving – at least not before the youngest child’s Bar/Bat Mitzvah. I think that we have witnessed evidence of a paradigm shift in the mind of some of our parents. And because the synagogue is no longer a linchpin for some, they are making choices we have not seen before.
Much has been written about what needs to happen to make the synagogue and formal Jewish education more relevant. And some of it may be right on target. But before we go exploding all of our existing institutions, I have a thought. We need to be linchpins. By “we” I mean the synagogue, the school, the clergy, the directors of education/lifelong learning/early childhood/family education/programming/fill-in-the-blank, the teachers and the lay leadership.
In 1989 United Airlines ran a television commercial showing a conference room. “A manager announces they have just lost a major long-time client, one too many. It's time for a "face-to-face" policy, in other words, not just call the customer, but also meet him. He starts handing out plane tickets to the other employees...” [2]
They had the idea exactly right. We need to focus our energy on each adult, one family at a time. It’s not an easy task, given the size of some of our congregations. It is not a one-person job. I intend to become an evangelist, recruiting those who already feel that being a part of a congregation – learning, praying and coming together for ma’asim tovim (good works) and for fun – is not something to be weighed against other household expenses and youth activities. We need to get them join us in reaching out, one family at a time, and helping those families come to the same conclusion. We have to lose the model whereby the educator focuses on the children and that leads to families becoming more connected.
Put Your Own Mask On First…
Finally, I want to share the teaching of Harlene Winnick Appelman, the director of the Covenant Foundation. Harlene was one of the first winners of the Covenant Award, and was one of the first people to take the idea of family education and develop it into something more comprehensive than a special program on a Sunday morning. Her sessions at CAJE conferences were a must-attend for those who wanted to be on the cutting edge.
She reminded us of the safety speech that flight attendants used to give before takeoff (now it is usually on a video). They would say that in case of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, oxygen masks would drop from the ceiling. After instructing us how to put it on and start the flow of oxygen, they would tell us that passengers travelling with young children should put their own mask on first and then help their children. Harlene taught us what should have been (and should still be) obvious: If you put the child’s mask on first, we might not be able to breathe well enough to take care of ourselves. And what if our children need us after getting the mask on?
We need to get the parents to put on their Jewish learning and living masks. Otherwise we will have a generation of adults with the Jewish identity and connection of at best a thirteen year old. We need to get them to understand that they need to belong to a synagogue and send their children to religious school (or day school) because that is something that is vitally important to them. And we can only do that through personal relationships. We need to be artists.
A day or three of tweeting while working! My friend Robin Faintich tweeted in response to my last blog posting about an article in the New York Jewish Week on tutoring. More friends joined in: Josh Barkin, Peter Eckstein, Ellen Dietrick and Ruth Abusch-Magder. I am amazed, but not surprised, by the level of dialogue that can occur in 140-character chunks. The conversation began Monday morning. As I write this it is almost noon on Wednesday and Jonathan Woocher just jumped into the pool. As my wife’s accounting professor at the University of Michigan, Chip Klemstein, once said, “It’s not the miracle of birth, but it is pretty cool!
I am posting the conversation to date below in order to continue it with you. I am also posting it as a comment to David Bryfman’s blog about the potential value of twitter in Jewish education. David has some very interesting things to say (and he mentions me-check it out mom!). Please continue the conversation with us here on twitter!
(The left hand column is the speaker, the name in the right hand column is the person to whom they are responding or directing their words.)
@rabbigurevitz
Tutoring vs.Religious School redux - Al tifrosh? http://bit.ly/5hWxwM #jed21
@rfaintich
@IraJWise Tutoring vs.Religious School ... isn't it our job to figure out how to integrate them? #jed21
@barkinj
@rfaintich It’s our job, but Ira's right: we need to be wary of something that is educationally and ideologically problematic. #jed21
@rfaintich
@barkinj one challenge is that I am not sure that @IraJWise would agree that RS is educationally problematic-if that's what you mean #jed21
@IraJWise
@rfaintich Absolutely. It is also our job to bring them in at the beginning, which means offering something compelling & meaningful. #jed21
@redmenace56
@rfaintich RS as it exists might B problematic, but not necessarily. methinks tutoring CAN be integrated w/out leaving community #jed21
@IraJWise
@rfaintich I don;t think it is. It can be. We don;t always get right. But we do more than we get get credit for. #jed21
@rfaintich
I am the product of the tutor/RS integration,i KNOW it is possible. Know of a great model in OC-Mindy Davids special. #jed21
@rfaintich
@IraJWise i agree that some, incl. you, do more than you get credit for... and in a paradigm that i believe is systemically broken. #jed21
@barkinj
@rfaintich No. I meant that Jewish education through tutoring is educationally problematic. #jed21
@rfaintich
@barkinj why? #jed21
@barkinj
@rfaintich Tutoring is fine for cognitive learning. Good Jewish education should also be affective, emotional, spiritual, communal. #jed21
@rfaintich
@barkinj you falsely assume tutoring can't also be affective, emotional & spiritual and then integrated into communal #jed21
@redmenace56
@rfaintich yeah makes sense but challenge is finding resources & institutional will 2 create programs that R NOT 1 size fits all #jed21
@redmenace56
@rfaintich like prev post re: teens, creating mix of tutoring & communal learning needs resources that many of us don't have (more) #jed21
@redmenace56
@rfaintich we want change & know it's doable, but when lay leaders won't provide resources we r stuck with taking very small steps #jed21
@redmenace56
@rfaintich & small steps R not always enough 2 hold funders, parents & kids attention, even though we try. need something big.#jed21
@redmenace56
@rfaintich big change perceived as dangerous-small may not b enough. risk not always positive thing in many funders/parents eyes. #jed21
@barkinj
@rfaintich An observation, not an assumption. I've never seen tutoring do those things. #jed21
@redmenace56
@rfaintich we need mechanism to filter the innovations and drive 4 change down from big centers to the periphery. #jed21
@barkinj
@rfaintich Tutoring is generally used for "training", which by definition is not affective, emotional, spiritual, community-oriented. #jed21
@IraJWise
@rfaintich Not that tutoring can't be those things, but a communal setting can make them richer and deeper! No student is an island. #jed21
@barkinj
@IraJWise @rfaintich Yeah, Ira said it better. #jed21
@rfaintich
@barkinj @IraJWise perhaps the problem is word/implication of "tutor" & not mentor, facilitator, role model, personal educator, etc #jed21
@ellen987
@rfaintich@barkinj @IraJWise On tutor discussion, I love the idea of Jewish life coaches instead of religious school teachers. #jed21
@rfaintich
@IraJWise my "tutor" is the one who brought me into Jewish camping & gave me a new community. I was in RS for judaics-she enhanced it #jed21
@IraJWise
AHA! So it was not JUST the tutor. Sounds like the kind of person we need doing lots of things. Not a Zero-sum game! #jed21
@lookstein
@rfaintich @irajwise @barkinj Abe Unger weighs in on the benefits of tutoring in the Jewish community in op-ed http://bit.ly/5M4csQ #jed21
@barkinj
@ellen987 Not sure what you mean by "life coach" in this context. #jed21
@barkinj
@ellen987 I call them "teachers", you call them "coaches." Good teachers know Jewish education is not about imparting info. #jed21
@ellen987
@barkinj I think there is a real difference between coach and teacher. Especially when you are inviting them into your home. #jed21
@ellen987
@barkinj By Jewish life coach I mean someone to help you figure out how to reach your family's goals for Jewish living and learning. #jed21
@barkinj
@ellen987 What if your family's goal is to have a bar mitzvah and then disengage from Jewish life? #jed21
@rabbiruth
What if the option is a tutor or nothing? that is quite common #jed21
@ellen987
@barkinj If your goal is to disengage aren't you going to do that even if your kid goes to RS? I'm talking people who want to engage. #jed21
@darimonline
@barkinj is it ever someone's REAL goal to disengage? Or an assumed path b/c lack of something compelling, inviting, worth change? #JED21
@rfaintich
@RabbiRuth I would say it is then the role of the "tutor" to try and bring the entire family into other entry points. #jed21
@barkinj
@DarimOnline You're right. Lots disengage because we don't offer anything engaging. But some disengage because that's what they want. #jed21
@barkinj
@ellen987 Religious schools need the disengagers (and their tuition/dues) to pay salaries, keep the lights on, etc. #jed21
@barkinj
@RabbiRuth Why? The vast majority could send their kids to relig. school. The people who choose tutoring usually do so as a choice. #jed21
@rfaintich
@barkinj @DarimOnline i think those who have chosen to disengage before they even see the product are those who are "in" out of guilt #jed21
@ellen987
@barkinj A coach working with entire family provides more avenues for engagement. Goal for enrolling kids in RS is not fundraising. #jed21
@redmenace56
@ellen987 ellen - i'd like 2 talk 2 U more abt this - i'm starting a lifecycle coach program @ my synagogue. how do we touch base? #jed21
@darimonline
@rfaintich @barkinj Can we re-cast the guilt paradigm? It's so not-compelling and will ultimately fail (is presently failing). #jed21
@barkinj
@ellen987 I totally agree. But too many congregations use BM as bait to get people in the door. #jed21
@IraJWise
@barkinj A bit cynical. For those only seeking BM, we meet a need. If we are good, we use their time here to help make more connects #jed21
@jwoocher
Need 2 real conversations w families: when they join, when BBM approaches. What will make this m'ningful 4 u? What must we do & u do? #Jed21
@barkinj
@IraJWise Yes. Playing the "cynic's advocate" here. But what would happen if all those BM-only folks left your school? #jed21
@IraJWise
@barkinj We would have to become a completely different kind of institution to afford serving those who want us the way we are. #jed21
@IraJWise
@barkinj And we still wouldn't reach those who left. #jed21
Conversation continues! Join in at #jed21.
If you don't understand how to follow a twitter hashtag (#jed21 is a hashtag!) go to Mashable's guide.
Here is the rest of the conversation:
@rfaintich@IraJWise what would you project would happen to your school if b/m were universally moved to 18 (or h.s. grad)? #jed21
@IraJWise@rfaintich Not sure. But you can't move it. People won't follow. That's how we got Confirmation in Reform. #jed21
@IraJWiseOur conversation on tutors and schools through Josh's last post on line http://bit.ly/5RamqV #jed21 This is cool stuff!
@rfaintich@IraJWise if everyone agreed to move it (not like that will happen) then ppl choice - follow or nothing? #jed21 just hypothesizing
Jeff Kress has been my colleague in the Leadership Institute for the past nine years. He has taught me and many others a great deal about Social and Emotional and Experiential Learning. For the past year I have been part of and SEL study group with him, Evie Rotstein and a small group of congregation-based educators. We have spent our time exploring different aspect of how focusing on these types of learning can be effective. Yesterday, Jeff published the article below on eJewishPhilanthropy.com.
and 
books to re-frame our work as educators and institutional leaders. It was well-received, but I think the time has come to continue the discussion. So what I offer is a video and transcript of Seth Godin teaching about what it means to have your product stand out. As I mentioned at that conference, it took Moses from among all the other shepherds of Midian to notice not that the bush was burning, but that the branches were not being consumed by the flames. Most of us and our constituents are NOT as observant as Moses. We only see a bush on fire. Nothing remarkable about that in the wilderness. 
