High School Curriculum Based on Requisite Organization Concepts

Proposed additional semester course curriculum for high school - for junior or senior years.

Workplace Skills: Quality Processes & Requisite Systems & Teams

Purpose: This course is intended to provide the students with workplace skills and understandings. These are different from the STEM skills that they will need both in further schooling and throughout their careers. These are skills which they will use on day-one on the job. These also include skills they will need to do their job, to understand their contribution, to function as a team-member, to be accountable for the results they can control, to improve their own performance, to understand the organization they are a part of, and to understand their own capability and future growth.

Precedents: Variations of this course are presently taught in several local school districts in the U.S. to several hundred students. In Japan, where the curriculum is nation-wide, it is taught to millions of students in high school and has been for decades. (A system of charter schools nation-wide in the U.S. is now being planned.)

Demand: U.S. Businesses have responded in surveys that prospective U.S. employees lack skills. But international surveys reveal no lack of skills in Americans compared to other nations. There is no 'skills gap.' Hard STEM skills are not what Americans lack. Americans graduate high school with little awareness of the workplace or their role in it.

Structure: The first part of the course covers the horizontal system of the workplace. The legitimate demands the incoming employee should expect. How to recognize when illegitimate demands are being made. How to recognize whether the workplace is competitive or not. Is it connected to the future customer? Does it have a future?

The second part covers the career progression of the individual. The role of education and training. The role of work experience. The role of innate mental growth. The structure of the firm. Does it have a future? The third part is the scientific approach to solving problems, joining a team, teamwork, and group work expectations.

Readings: Textbooks – (excerpts)

Deming, Out of the Crisis, 1986,

Deming, The New Economics, 2^nd edn., 1994,

Macdonald, Burke, & Stewart, Systems Leadership. (CUNY on-line.) 2006,

Jaques, Requisite Organization (3^rd edn), 1998,

Scholtes, Team Handbook, 1998,

Articles –

Gartner & Naughton (book rev.), 1988,

Red Beads. (Kolesar) c. 1995,

Career Crossroads (Drotter & Charan in Ivey). 2001,

Fairfield, Levels of Excellence, (parts). 2002.

Evaluation:

Four in-class hour-exams, no final. 26 classes. [30 sessions]

Quality: Concept & Tools

Class 1: From Static to Dynamic: IQ and the vertical Bell curve. A standard deviation: a sigma. Adding time adds tomorrow. The Bell curve shift from vertical to horizontal. Statistical 'control.' Work and study.

Class 2: Six sigma. Stability. Common cause versus special cause. How to calculate this. (Home assignment.)

Class 3: The Red Beads: how to calculate this. The bead-paddle. The beads. (OoC p. 110-111.) How to measure own work.

Class 4: The Red Bead Session. Willing workers. Selection of beads by each worker. Dismissal and replacement of 'bad' workers. (What is going on?) (In-class exercise)

Class 5: What did we see in the Red Beads Session? Pay for performance? Who is to blame? What about tomorrow? If we blame, how do we learn?

Class 6: Deming's Chain Reaction. (OoC, p. 3, Ch. 1.) Juran's Quality Cliff. Brand names as quality.

Class 7: Deming's System. (OoC, p. 4, Ch.1) Who is the downstream 'customer' in a system? Who is an upstream ‘supplier’? Whole systems: retail, manufacturing, etc.

EXAM ON THIS MATERIAL.

Class 8: Deming's 14 Points. (OoC, ch. 2). (Go over each of the 14, with overhds.)

Class 9: Deming's 5 Diseases. (overhds)

Class 10: Quality Circles. How should they work? Continual Improvement. Exercise: The QC team membership.

Class 11: Learning: time. Individual and group learning. Life-long. Quality as learning.

Class 12: Quality as meeting the customer's needs. Juran. The customer moves and their needs move. Time. The costs go down. Learning new technology. (The Oil Crises; the IT change-over to electronics from paper.) The 2^nd S-curve upward to the future. Economic/managerial ideas - quality is free vs quality is costly.

Class 13: The organization: quality review committees. Silos. Structure: time. Is the firm connected to the future customer? Is the system taken apart? (by competition and by economics.)

Class 14: PDSA cycle. Does the firm have a future? School grading – (NE, p. 146-153.)

EXAM ON THIS MATERIAL.

Requisite:

Class 15: From Static to Dynamic: IQ and the vertical Bell curve. Types of personal growth: height, musculature, mental. Limits to human growth. Curves and sports. Curves and education. Pacing education to growth across the life-span. Speed of recall – liquid intelligence. Crystal is judgment – responsibility – a different kind of intelligence.

Class 16: Today's model: education first, then work. Still valid? Growth along life. The long 'S' curve of life-time growth. What strata have the students passed through so far? When? Only 4 species on this planet have hierarchies: humans, chimpanzees, dogs/wolves, and dolphins/orcas/whales.

Class 17: Modes and growth bands. How can they each tell the band that they are in? (Jaques' curved growth band graphs. Japanese high-flats.) Most are in 0.8 now. Organizational - Crowding. Gaps. Match. Between levels. Teacher – student.

Class 18: What kind of work in Level 1. Declarative. (1^st job.) Examples & Job Descriptions. (Other siblings.) Other levels. (Count from the bottom.) Matching capability to challenge – in flow? What should a Level II Supervisor provide? Context on Level I work. Can this person do that?

Class 19: Career Crossroads (article). Training each 10 years needed for personal growth. Inclination training across many areas, then the offsite switchback for managerial growth. Does firm have a training program? Levels shift as an organizational strategy. (Has it happened already?)

Class 20: The Manager Once Removed (MOR) promotes. When are openings – and where? Cross-over points. What is an MOR unit? Responsibilities of a Mgr, of an MOR?

Class 21: Citizenship duties: vote is a selection tool. How evaluate upwards. President, Governor, Mayor. Legislative. (The RO levels?) Crystal intelligence. Depth and length.

Class 22: How well-structured is the firm? Can it see the future? Future employees, customers, technology? Will there be a future for it in 5 years? Japanese companies expanded to keep their rising managers busy. Do you want a job in a contracting firm? An expanding one? Equitable pay – hierarchy - RO pay is 2x at each level, but not ‘dear’: 4x productivity. Minimum wage vs efficiency wage.

EXAM ON THIS MATERIAL.

Teams:

Class 23: Tools of the Scientific Approach (Scholtes). The first 5 of the10 tools for diagnosis. (Scholtes, 2-17 thru 2-36).

Class 24: The second 5 of the 10 tools. ‘The Funnel’ as an application of scientific method.

Class 25: The stages of Team Growth –4 - forming, storming, norming, performing. (Scholtes, 6-4 thru 6-7) The 50-50 rule. Fix the obvious problems!

Class 26: 10 Common Group Problems. (Scholtes 6-36 thru 6-45). What your boss can't tell you - Company, job, goals, and performance. How did you get hired? CYA versus ability?

EXAM ON THIS MATERIAL.

NO FINAL EXAM.

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Ken Craddock, MA, MPA

[email protected]

212-628-2986.