Montessori School of Libertyville 1972
““Discovery concerns something which, though already in existence, for one reason or another has remained hidden from human consciousness. In this case it was the discovery of the deeper nature of the child, for when the right conditions were established, the result was the spontaneous appearance of characteristics which revealed not a portion but the whole personality. I must affirm once again that they were not the consequence of a determined or a pre-established plan of education. ””
It all started In 1972…
My first teacher was my mother (pictured here on the right in a sari), she was my Montessori teacher. Maria Montessori wrote the landmark book, To Educate The Human Potential based on her experiences working with orphaned children in Italy, post World War II. She demonstrated that all children are capable of learning, once they are allowed to explore their world and teachers become facilitators and approach these young minds with patience and empathy. In 2021, the Montessori method is sought after, but for our purpose we will pivot to how this model works in business.
A Culture of Learning
DeFonseka approaches all our engagements by identifying the goals and suggesting a path to get there. This will involve new and improved workflows and this may result in the changing of some roles or the elimination of a position. However, by developing a culture of learning we set the expectation that every role changes and team members have to remain agile and leadership has to provide professional development. Professional Agility was on display in 2020. During the early days of the pandemic, work from home devastated some companies, while others survived and some even thrived. The common denominator when analyzing the companies who failed or those who succeeded, was their ability to be agile and adapt to the new working landscape.
2020 taught us the importance of adaptation and to be wary of phrases like “don’t fix what is not broken”. This passive approach is neither good for innovation or team development. When thinking about developing a team DeFonseka will focus on individual strengths and blending in technology. Certain tasks require deep domain knowledge and this means certain roles may grow beyond an individual’s original training or abilities. In these situations, we explore the efficiency of outsourcing an under performed task and we will recommend that we work to re-deploy that team member.