“I want to get out of the business of trying to save failing students before their lives are destroyed,” Canada said. “I’ve been in that business, and it’s a tough business and a good business, and I’m glad some people are in it—but I really think it’s the wrong place to focus.”
Paul Tough: — Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America

———————

Attention leaders, HR Directors, coaches – anyone interested in and involved in building people.  I’ve got two books for you to read…  pretty carefully.

They are both written by superb story-telling journalist Paul Tough.  Today, at the Urban Engagement Book Club (sponosored by CitySquare)I presented my synopsis of Whatever it Takes, the story of Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children’s Zone.  The other, which I presented at the First Friday Book Synopsis, is How Children Succeed.  Though they both sound like, and are, “education books,” they are actually “people-building books.”  And they are provocative, and terrific.

You can read my post with my takeaways from How Children Succeed here:  Here are My Takeaways, and one Brilliant Insight, from How Children Succeed by Paul Tough.  And here are my five takeaways from Whatever it Takes.

• Five takeaways:

1)  Disadvantages start very early – and linger throughout the entire education experience  (and, really, for a lifetime)
2)  It really does take a village – a neighborhood; an army – of unending, close-to-personal attention.
3)  Any one piece of the puzzle (pre-school; middle school; tutoring; nutrition) is not enough.  See #2.
4)  The idea of a neighborhood “tipping” – the “tipping point” for a whole group/community – seems to show great promise.
5)  And don’t forget – a leader, with vision, who can build and keep and train and motivate other leaders — to build a team, and their teams…  this is essential.

And, Mr. Canada’s key idea is the “Conveyer Belt,” reminding us that we pass folks along from teacher to leader to coach to teacher – from pre-pre-school, to pre-school, to kindergarten, to elementary school, to middle school, to… — all the way through the education years, and the work years, and all of life……

From the book:

“Skill begets skill; learning begets learning. Early disadvantage, if left untreated, leads to academic and social difficulties in later years. Advantages accumulate; so do disadvantages.”
What the conveyor-belt idea represented to Canada was the hope of a new alternative. “The question is, can you build a system where kids in middle school won’t need these kinds of interventions in order to be successful?” he said. “And my bet—I could be wrong, but this is my bet—is if we start with kids very early, and we provide them with the kind of intense and continuous academic rigor and support that they need, then when they get to the middle school and high school level, we’re not going to need those superhuman strategies at all.”

These two books together will help you understand that if you believe people can get “better “ (i.e., become more accomplished), and if you give them and their circle the right kind of almost-one-on-one coaching attention — over the long haul — the results can be more than worth it.

——————

You can purchase my synopsis of How Children Succeed, with my comprehensive handout + the audio of my presentation, from our companion site, 15minutebusinessbooks.com.