Unstucking learning: through the eyes of... (change mgmt)

This is the last part in this series on 'unstucking learning' for now. What happened before:

• Learning got stuck in itself
• Unstucking: in search of new dominant designs
• Unstucking: the state of the model
• Unstucking technique 1: flipping
• Unstucking technique 2: change the vocabulary
• In this post : Unstucking technique 3: metaphors

Today's technique for coming up with new business models is by looking through the eyes of other professions. What would you say if you were a ..x....
The easy level of that is to imagine you are one of the current stakeholders in the business ecosystem, and you look at the business model canvas through those eyes. That's a good technique to make sure the model is sustainable for all stakeholders involved. But the harder and better level is to imagine you're someone making a living of a remotely connected profession, and see what they would bring to the table. For example, lately the entrepreneurs and venture capitalist have made a big inroad in the learning industry. They bring the business model canvas, innovation mindset and prototyping techniques.

Let's do one example to illustrate: I currently work in the field of leadership development. Arguably, leadership development is all about changing behavior. So, let's imagine we are a "behavioral change professional", what would we bring to the table? How would we look at leadership development? We wouldn't focus on knowledge as the main issue, because people (especially higher up in the hierarchy) generally KNOW what they want or need to change. But they don't. Change is hard, and often fails. Especially change that is inflicted upon us from the outside, because we do make major changes in our lives (such as marriage, having children, changing jobs) when we decide that for ourselves.
From Nick Petrie's post "why can't you change":

When cardiac patients are told that if they do not change their behaviors – eat less, exercise more – they will die, only 1 out of 7 people makes any changes. How is it possible that people would rather die than change their habits?

So we'd look at behavior change, and for example find inspiration in books like 'the power of habit' below.

We'd probably shift focus from content technology to persuasive technology and try out the methods such as 'micro habits' from prof BJ Fogg.




Further readings on taking the perspective of 'others':

• From George Siemens: "Educators are attempting to remake education according to their pedagogical vision. Politicians are driving their vision through policy. Corporations are driving their vision through profits." and "In a knowledge economy, we play with ideas constantly. We don’t really know which ones are bad or just suck. We play, experiment and debate."
• Will Thalheimer goes for the stakeholder angle and writes about influencing with stealth messages (it is a good read on influencing 101)
  

This (for now at least) concludes the article series on 'unstucking' learning. I hope the techniques such as flipping, looking through the eyes of others, metaphors or vocabulary have been useful to you in coming up with alternate business models for learning. Feel free to share them!