By: Chris Piehler
Three weeks into the new year, I sincerely hope you’re on track to achieve all the business goals you set in December, whether they were SMART goals or not. But if you’re like the hordes of people who show up to the gym in shiny new workout gear on January 2 and are nowhere to be seen by Valentine’s Day, some of the plans you made before Christmas might not be looking so realistic right now.
While you may not be able to turn your start-up into a Fortune 500 company this year, you still have 11+ months to recalibrate and achieve your goals. Since you’re in the world of edtech, why not start by taking a few lessons from how teachers plan their lessons and units?
- Offer scaffolding as needed: The Diary of Education reform defines scaffolding this way:
teachers provide successive levels of temporary support that help students reach higher levels of comprehension and skill acquisition that they would not be able to achieve without assistance. Like physical scaffolding, the supportive strategies are incrementally removed when they are no longer needed, and the teacher gradually shifts more responsibility over the learning process to the student.
What does this mean in the context of edtech marketing? Maybe you have an employee who has great potential but is new to the market or has otherwise shown that they need a bit of extra help to achieve the goals you’ve set for them. Rather than watching that potential superstar flounder, now is the time to offer some scaffolding in the form of PD, introductions, or good, old-fashioned chats. Then, if they start to succeed on their own, you can, like a good teacher, gradually shift responsibility to your newly minted superstar.
- Focus on building skills: Whether they’re teaching 21st-century skills or focusing on social-emotional learning, today’s teachers look beyond facts and figures to provide students with the abilities they need to manage their own work and interact constructively with their peers. In both schools and workplaces, though, not everyone has mastered these skills.
If you find yourself or a colleague already lagging behind the 2020 milestones you’ve set, it can be enlightening to consider what exactly is holding them back. As we all know, “book smarts” and social skills don’t always go hand-in-hand. The same is true of initiative and follow-through. Setting small, specific goals (such as following up a set number of times to show follow-through) will help you guide your team to add the skills they need to the ones they already have. Speaking of which:
- Refer to prior knowledge: The good news for teachers is that they don’t have to teach students everything they need to know. Lesson- and unit-planning depends on connecting new learning with prior knowledge. The same is true in setting and attaining edtech sales or marketing goals. You don’t need to start from scratch every year. A smart way to accelerate progress towards the success you’re aiming for is to ask, “How did we do this before?” If you’ve got a newish team member, quiz them on how they executed a similar project at their previous job. Sharing knowledge and looking to past victories will help you set goals and do what a good teacher does: engage and enrich everyone in the room.
Thanks for sharing!
