Why
Cogitate and Percolate?
My leadership mentor, who had been my own manager, had a phrase that she would use to start web conference meetings: “Greetings and Salutations!” She was running a large and jokey team; that line was her cue for us to settle down.
When I became a leader of my own team, I knew I wanted a key phrase too. My key phrase, however, was not a greeting. This phrase started when my team was presented with some kind of initiative that they didn’t like and they were not ready to adopt. (We had many of those types of top-down directives.) I knew that doing the initiative was non-negotiable, so I planned my schedules so that my team had time to ramp up to the idea.
At the end of the team’s first discussion of a new project, I’d announce, “Let’s cogitate and percolate on this” noting that we’d revisit the topic in the future. Literally, it means “let’s think and drink coffee about it.” But it was also my private signal to myself that my team wasn’t ready. It often took time to separate the directive from their good intentions. If they could think longer about the problem, they often decided that they, indeed, did want to do the initiative but it needed to be more their idea. They needed time to process.
The phrase gave me my trademark hokey thing to say and also gave me a coping mechanism.
I selected it as the title for this blog because I realize that a great deal of my writing goes against the XR-for-all-educational-purposes industry. I appear to be ranting and railing against the system. I’m alt and that confuses people.
From my point of view however, I’m asking for consideration (cogitate) and slow reasoned adoption of XR into education (percolate) approach. I feel like I’m delivering news to folks that do not want to hear it. I feel that this news is specifically built upon real, solid research, on the rock and not on the sand, as the phrase goes.
Why is the tag line ‘words create reality’?
I’m winking towards my Christian faith that proposes that, as children of our Father in heaven whom we believe spoke reality into existence, we carry the powers of our Father. Our words create our reality.
Time and again, I have meet people who create their own prisons by the words they use.
- I can’t learn that way.
- That’s always been hard for me.
- If everyone would just agree with me, everything would be fine.
Embracing that power, I blog to illuminate on topics related to XR and education, instructional design, and remote team leadership. I have a few other random posts too.
Why is ‘words create reality’ in lowercase?
Cause I like it. It’s both relaxed and elevated.
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