Today I have had the most productive conversation with my wife (which is shame because I think she has a lot of good insights and look at things from different view points). It was inside the car, while we were driving to Lawrence Hall of Science, which is an awesome place all around.

I had to leave my most current job abruptly, and knowing the reasons behind it, she asked me what’s the most important element angel investors look before making an investment. It was an easy question to answer – the team, of course. And she wholeheartedly agreed. She said she experienced exactly the same at her Korean school, where she teaches grade school kids, and at Korean American Community Center, where she worked before working at the Korean school.

The Korean school she teaches at is part of a church (I am an atheist, but I welcome all religions), and thus their curriculum is not directed or regulated by school district. She said she and a few other teachers like to try new ways of teaching kids. Their attitudes were just like those of tech startup founders. Failure is okay, since you will learn more from failures and apply it to the next new idea. However, she said there were other teachers who are very resistant to trying new things even if they are not the ones implementing or preparing the experiment. Not only do they waste time, they also put out the passion brought on my good teachers. So, she understood how important the team is. Not everyone in the team needs to be super smart, but it’s important for the team to be open to experiments, not be afraid of failures and support each other.

She said she saw the same thing at the Korean American Community Service. She worked there as an office manager until our first child was born. The community center reached the peak while she was there, because she said everyone was open to trying new things – services or classes or whatever – to serve the community better. And most of all, they had the full support from the head of the community center. She also said amazing thing about leadership. Good leadership is not about leading, but creating an environment for team members to innovate. You shouldn’t try to make everyone follow your views, thoughts or directions, but instead give team members freedom to experiment, learn from successes/failures and move  forward. I was like DANG! That’s the most insightful thing I heard from my wife (again, I should have more conversations with her) . :)

I told her that’s the exact operating principal for tech startups these days. I couldn’t believe we were in such unison! And it got me thinking about our education system.  Many people are concerned about our failing education system, and WE HAD THE ANSWER ALL ALONG! Apply “Lean Startup” principal to our education. Encourage teachers to take 20% of their time to innovate. It’s not possible without school district’s support, but if there is, it’s totally doable. And have Lighting Talk or Lesson Learned sessions with other teachers so that they could learn from others’ successes or failures. And pivot if an idea didn’t work out. Or perhaps we need an national website for teachers to share their experiments and lessons learned from them. I truly believe this HACKING FOR EDUCATION will save us, and put our great nation again in leading position.