Should You Hold Your Next PLC Work Session at Starbucks?

This is the fourth in a series about collaboration and PLCs.

Ideas are fertile.  They need to interact in order to be fruitful and multiply.

Steven Johnson's remarkable TED talk (http://www.ted.com/playlists/20/where_do_ideas_come_from) highlights the importance of collaboration in the development of great ideas.  It has been said that artists are most creative when writing their autobiographies.  We love the story about the genius who experienced an Eureka moment.  We love the story about the muse whispering into our ear.

The problem is that it is very likely a myth.

The coffeehouse culture spawned much of Western civilization's greatest thinking during the Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical eras.  The combination of the stimulating beverage and the even-more-stimulating environment of the coffeehouse itself yielded a cross-pollination of ideas that propelled Western civilization forward.  This phenomenon was so powerful that Bach himself wrote a Coffee Cantata.  In order to maximize our creativity, our meeting places need to look less like this:

And more like this:

Richard DuFour writes about a loose/tight culture where administrators are tight about results but loose about how they are achieved.  Unleash the creativity of your PLC by shelving the time clock and looking for results - no matter how those results are achieved!