Blog
To a Healthy New Year
This is what we sent out on December 30th this year: "We hope 2020 will turn out to be a fantastic Year of the Rat for everybody; that you will all be scooting about hither and thither in prosperous endeavours." Instead, all our hopes were fantastically dashed. Has a...
Maximum ELT
A G D The change it had to come. Synchronous, asynchronous, blended, flipped, virtual, augmented. These terms have been around for a long time. People have learned online for a long time. For many years, before Covid, expensive schools told us face-to-face was better...
Illusory superiority
Lots of school owners say they run their schools to cater to the needs of their students. In a survey in 1981, 93% of U.S. drivers rated themselves as having above-average driving skills. This is obviously impossible. It demonstrates illusory superiority and shows how...
Drilling
In 1960 in the article "Marketing Myopia" published by the Harvard Business Review, Ted Levitt wrote, “No one buys a quarter-inch drill bit because they need a quarter-inch drill bit. What they need is a quarter-inch hole. That’s what you should sell them.” In 2018 in...
Destroying Education
In August I took part in MOOSE - massive open online sessions - facilitated by Online Teaching Japan. OTJ arose as teachers organised to help each other to transition online during the COVID-enforced lockdown. It’s a great group. This is the session I lead....
M, M, M, M, My Corona
Running a school in a time of crisis In my time in Japan as a school owner, we have seen several crises. The SARS epidemic, a massive drop in the market, the NOVA collapse, the Lehman shock, the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, Fukushima and the fallout and, of course,...
Running a School: What I learned about business from travelling the world, Part 8: Heading South
Leaving Cairns we headed a little further north and stayed at Port Douglas, then turned around and headed back down south, stopping off at beaches and flying kites, before arriving back in Sydney, and my old job at the CB Hotel. So much for the Never Again...
Running a School: What I learned about business from travelling the world, Part 7: Cairns
We put thoughts of anarchy and fears of violent intrusion behind us, got back on the bus and headed further up north. Stopping off at Bundaberg, the Whitsundays, Magnetic Island, and a series of islands, landmarks and beautiful spots where Captain Cook and his crew...
Running a School: What I learned about business from travelling the world, Part 6: Brisbane
The warmest summer I ever spent was a winter in West End, Brisbane. Or so I wrote, paraphrasing Mark Twain for pretentious literary effect, on postcards back home. At the beginning of July 1993, as the days drew short, the sun didn’t rise so far and fires had begun to...
Running a School: What I learned about business from travelling the world, Part 5: Sydney
November 1992 saw me arrive in Sydney. I’d crossed the equator for the first time. Once again I pounded the pavements. The results were much the same as in New York. I had no experience working in restaurants or cafés, and because I wasn’t an attractive, young female,...