We can relieve raucous ambiguity and stressful indecision … How can we make complex decision easier? Often we have no “design” or structures in place to support decision making. We are like kids trying to land a quarter in a small hole without the right tool. In our effort to…

Nine steps to usher in a new normal. People need certainty. Even those who “thrive in uncertainty” have it. The entrepreneur who can “roll with the punches” and “build something from scratch” has a secret sense of certainty. She knows that her process will guide her to desired results. …

Delegation can be easier than you think. You just need the right method… I’ve delegated more than 10,000 tasks to people throughout my career. Most of my delegations were to hundreds of students at Make School, a Bachelor’s in Applied Computer Science Program that I helped build from scratch. …

3 tips for growth-based feedback — “How do you balance positive and constructive feedback?” A teammate posed this common management quandary at a recent off-site. It sparked a rigorous debate between my colleagues. Everybody began to spout justifications and formulas. But I saw a critical flaw in the question’s framing. There is no need to balance…

Our year at Make School begins with a retreat to Marin County, California. Our new cohort of students arrives at our San Francisco campus the day before, flying in from all around the world. We hop upon a bus and drive across the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. …

The mundane method of “lecture to all” doesn’t work. Lecturing is like filling cracks in a wall (gaps in student knowledge) with a hose of concrete. You spurt out sloppy rock-sand with hope to hit some gap in understanding. …

Colleges face a two sided challenge They are hemorrhaging students And have trouble recruiting them Most recruitment strategies used by admission teams are archaic — the top 200 institutions often rely mostly on brand and US News rankings. They can neglect marketing efforts. For example, a recruiting webinar for UNC’s…

Teachers radically underutilize the data available to them in class. Teachers can create combinations of activities that make education more responsive and adaptive than ever before — they just need a template. Educators missed something. Over the past 40 years, they codified the most effective teaching methods (active learning, formative…

The 2000s rom-com movie Accepted taught an important lesson. The film tells the story of a high schooler who, after getting rejected from all colleges, decides to create his own fake college dubbed the “South Harmon Institute of Technology” (SHIT). He situates his campus in a decrepit, abandoned high school…