How To Be A High School Superstar Part 13

Part 3.

Playbook.

OF THE three laws described in this book, the law of innovation may be the most difficult to put into practice. The rules of innovation were introduced to ease the difficulty, but the many small steps required to follow these rules still inspire some tricky questions: How do I find a closed community? How do I convince them to let me enter? How do I identify the right opportunities for innovation within these communities? And so on. This playbook provides answers.

The strategies presented below roughly match the order of the innovation process as laid out in the three rules. I start with advice for identifying and entering closed communities. Among other things, I argue that you should avoid organizations with a long track record of working with high school students, and look instead to create a new position from scratch. From there, I move on to practical ways to make sure you earn your keep once inside-laying the foundation that will enable you to take advantage of opportunities for innovation as they arise. You'll learn about a mysterious-sounding (but easy-to-implement) tactic known as the shadow job. I'll then review one of my favorite techniques, the innovation map, which will improve your ability to turn potential innovation into real results. I conclude with an advanced strategy, known as sloganizing, that will help you squeeze the most impact out of your projects once they're under way.

When you combine these practical lessons with the big ideas from the preceding chapters of Part 3, you'll be armed with everything you need to wield innovation as a crucial weapon in your transformation into a relaxed superstar.

Go Where No Student Has Gone Before.

"Students think they have to apply for already established positions," Kate explained to me when we were discussing her path to innovation.

"For example, I had many friends sign up to be candy stripers at the hospital. But at a huge hospital, they've had lots of students work there, they have them answer the phone, they know exactly what their job will be.... There are so many student volunteers there doing the same thing, you won't be noticed."

Kate's insight is sharp. A dangerous trap for a student looking to innovate is entering a community that already has clear roles for volunteers. It's nearly impossible to stand out when your workday is confined to a rigid structure. To elaborate on Kate's example, most hospitals have a large student volunteer program. This option might seem appealing because it's a well-trod path including a clear application process, but as Kate noted, the hospital isn't going to allow you a chance to innovate. The people in charge already have a useful place for students-answering phones and running errands for nurses-and see no need to change this.

This observation is so important that I'll crystallize it into its own rule: Don't enter a community that has an established program for working with high school students.

If you're not one of the first, then your flexibility will be severely limited. Instead, you need to identify organizations that don't have routines in place for dealing with students. This gives you room to innovate.

Returning to Kate's story, you'll notice that she followed her own advice.

"I thought it was less stressful and more stimulating to do something that hadn't been done," she explained, referring to her work with a charter school that did not have an established volunteer program. But how do you convince such a community to let you on board?

"Find something that they're missing, something they need help with, something that could really benefit them," Kate recommends. "Then offer to supply it."

That is just what Kate did when she used her experience as a teacher's aide to become a general-purpose helper at the school, tackling many of the small ch.o.r.es that can make teachers' lives harder.

To enter a closed community with no established volunteer program, follow Kate's example and point out a real need that you can meet. Don't ask if they would allow you to volunteer for your own benefit; the focus should be on making their lives better, not the other way around.

To improve your understanding of this strategy, I'll tell you the story of a student named Steve, who currently attends Columbia University. In high school, while attending a Model Congress conference, Steve met a young woman who was involved with an advocacy group called SustainUS. This organization focused on demonstrating that American youth were serious about environmental sustainability.

SustainUS matched the definition of a closed community. Furthermore, it was run by college students and had no formal system for including younger members. These two factors made it a perfect target for innovation, and Steve just had to figure out a way to get in. First he identified a need, and then he offered to fill it. The organization had just launched a large campaign to gather signatures of American youth in support of sustainability, with the plan of delivering them in person at an upcoming international climate conference in Johannesburg, South Africa. Steve noticed that the group needed press coverage.

"I like speaking with people, and I like writing, so media relations seemed like a natural thing for me to work on," Steve recalls. He told the people at SustainUS that he would be happy to spend afternoons on the phone, hara.s.sing journalists and trying to get their organization's name in the news. Not surprising, they were happy to have him join. Once on the inside, Steve paid his dues, diligently making calls and sending out press releases, eventually earning SustainUS a mention in Time magazine's Green Issue-a major coup. His success was rewarded by a slot on the Johannesburg trip, where he got to present the pet.i.tion and lobby the international delegates. By the time Steve applied to college, his application was a standout.

Steve's story is a perfect ill.u.s.tration of this chapter's advice. He found a closed community without an existing high school volunteer program. Instead of asking the people there if they would help him by letting him volunteer, he pointed out specific ways he would help them. This gained him access, at which point the other rules of innovation-paying dues, leveraging successes-came into play.

Create a Shadow Job.

Once you land a position in a closed community, you're still a long way from head-turning innovation. You must first pay your dues to open up opportunities, and this can sometimes be more difficult than you expect. Imagine that you're Steve. Once he carved out his new position, he actually had to do the work. Because he invented the job, however, there were no set hours during which he had to show up at an office. It was entirely up to him to structure his efforts. If you create your own position, you'll likely find yourself in a similarly unstructured situation. For a high school student, this type of work is hard: no one is forcing you to do it, so it's easy to push it off to the side.

To achieve innovation, you must tackle this problem. You have two options here. First, create your own structure. Set up a regular work schedule that puts you in the office during the same hours every week and then tell the other members of the organization to expect you during those times. This is how Kate got started. She arranged to be at the charter school, helping for an hour and a half a day, five days a week, and told the staff to count on her being there during those fixed times-no excuses. This solved the problem of her putting off work.

Steve's situation, however, proved more tricky. SustainUS didn't have a physical office, so his work was remote-conducted from the computer in his bedroom. This situation is surprisingly common for closed communities without established volunteer programs. My suggestion here is to create what I call a shadow job. The idea is simple: Pick a location outside of your house-I suggest the local library or perhaps an empty desk at your parents' office (a.s.suming such a thing is possible). Create a schedule for your shadow job. During the hours you've designated for work, go to your quiet location and do work relating to your position in the closed community. In effect, you've created a pseudojob that shadows your position with your volunteer organization. The key is to make your shadow job a nonnegotiable habit-you work during your work hours, as in a real job, regardless of what else is going on. The easiest way to accomplish this is to announce your schedule to your parents, empowering them to guilt you back into line when you feel tempted to stray. I know, this goes against every teenage instinct-but it works. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a little for the health of your college application.

My final word of warning is to avoid becoming overly ambitious with this planning. You can always add extra time when it's needed, but if your nonnegotiable hours are too demanding, the chance that you'll violate your schedule increases. From my experience, five to ten hours of fixed work per week, without exception, is often more than enough to impress members of an organization with your diligence. And once they're impressed, opportunities for innovation will come your way.

Master the Art of Innovation Mapping.

Nora Ephron, the acclaimed film director and writer, once gave an unexpected piece of advice to aspiring screenwriters: "Become a journalist first." Her logic is simple: if you don't first learn about the world and how it works, you'll end up writing yet another dumb "screenplay about your experience at summer camp."

The same argument holds true for innovation. Without exposure to other innovators, it can be difficult to come up with your own sparkling idea. Joining a closed community and paying your dues will expose you to opportunities. But if you have only limited exposure to innovation, you might still have a hard time identifying the best opportunities-eventually defaulting to the extracurricular equivalent of writing a screenplay about summer camp.

Consider this e-mail I received in late December 2008. It was sent by a student named Larry, and it began: "I feel pushed to do something that will make me stand out." He had recently read my blog post on the Failed-Simulation Effect, and though he understood the concept, he had a hard time translating it into practice.

"Innovation is not easy," he said. "I'm having trouble starting a project. I feel like almost all ideas are out of reach."

As I questioned Larry, it turned out that he was well positioned for innovation. At the time, he was working on an application for a scholarship that funds high school students' ideas for helping the world. All he had to do was propose something innovative-the most interesting ideas would win the money. But Larry couldn't see beyond the proverbial screenplay about summer camp.

"The contest wants an amazing, original, ingenious idea. I can't think of any right now," he concluded morosely.

I don't blame Larry for his lack of an "amazing, original, ingenious idea" The problem is not a shortage of creativity; it's a shortage of experience with innovation. After an extended period of brainstorming, the best idea Larry could come up with was using the scholarship money to help raise even more money to give away to a good cause-hardly a daring concept. What he needed was more exposure to what innovative ideas look like and how they get started.

In this section, I'll help you gain the experience that Larry lacks. At the core of my method is the innovation map-a simple technique to bolster your innovation expertise. My goal is to prepare you to see the right opportunities when you arrive at a situation where it's up to you to figure out what to do next. I don't want you to end up blinded, like Larry, to the vast array of fascinating projects waiting out there to be discovered.

At a high level, the innovation map work as follows. You identify a young person who has done something unquestionably impressive. If possible, you focus on an accomplishment that overlaps a field that interests you. Then you deconstruct the young person's path from average kid to innovative superstar. This deconstruction is represented as a map with arrows connecting accomplishments in chronological order. Each accomplishment is labeled with two things: the precipitating event or action that made it possible and the work required to complete it. Such a map can provide a deep understanding of exactly how an accomplishment came to be. It's an exercise in demystification. If you become adept at this technique, you'll begin to see possibilities in your own life that you never would have imagined before Let's build an example map. Because Kate has served us so well throughout this playbook, I will once again turn to her story. Below is an innovation map that captures her rise to stardom. (For simplicity, I'll focus just on the research that changed the school's teaching methods. The starting of the Varsity Study Teams could be described in a similar map.) Precipitating Event Her dad suggested it to her.

Accomplishment She became a teacher's aide.

Work Required She had to show up at set hours each week and be useful to the teacher.

Precipitating Event The teacher she was helping took a job at a charter school. The two came up with the independent study proposal as a way to allow Kate to continue to help the teacher.

Accomplishment Kate set up an independent study project to work at a nearby charter school.

Work Required She worked with the teacher to put together a proposal that would be approved by the school.

Precipitating Event Kate became "part of the family" at the new charter school by staying well past her scheduled 1.5 hours and making herself useful to the teachers. When it came time to start the research project required by her independent study proposal, the teachers were happy to suggest ideas and help set up interviews at the other schools in their network.

Accomplishment She did research on the reading programs at half-a-dozen schools.

Work Required She spent time each week reading about theories of education. She also spent a week traveling to the schools and conducting teacher interviews.

Precipitating Event During her research visits, Kate came across a school where a novel reading technique was producing remarkable results.

Accomplishment She changed the way her charter school taught reading.

Work Required She prepared a careful presentation of her findings that helped convince the school that this new technique had merit.

Now let's see how this map helps us better understand Kate's path to innovation. When I describe Kate to the parents of high school students, their typical response is a sigh, usually followed by some variation of the following quip: "My kid has to compete with that? He's only a teenager, how is he supposed to develop a pa.s.sion that strong?" The a.s.sumption is that Kate's accomplishment must have been the result of a focused effort fueled by a burning pa.s.sion. That is, she woke up one morning and cried: "I'm going to change the way they teach reading in this town!"

The innovation map above refutes this a.s.sumption. It shows that Kate was not driven by single-minded focus. She had no particular interest in changing a charter school's reading program until near the end of her circuitous path, when she happened into that cla.s.sroom that was using a novel technique. The idea that some long-term pa.s.sion drove her to this result is erroneous. Those parents should sigh in relief, not frustration, as Kate's map reveals that their teenage son or daughter doesn't need a cause-a preference for doing interesting things should suffice.

Another typical response goes as follows: "I want my kid to do well, but I also want her to have a normal social life, not spend all of her time on some grand project to save the world." The logic here is that big accomplishments require big investments of time. These parents imagine Kate, late at night in the library, working feverishly on her brilliant plan for overhauling reading instruction.

Again, the innovation map comes to the rescue. When you isolate the elements from the "work required" field, you end up with the following: She had to show up in the cla.s.sroom at set hours each week and do what the teacher asked.

She had to work with the teacher to put together an independent study proposal that would be approved by the school.

Throughout the semester, she was required to do weekly background reading that brought her up to speed on the theories. She also had to spend a week interviewing teachers.

After the interviews, she had to spend a couple weeks putting together a careful presentation of the information she had gathered.

Keep in mind that these actions occurred one after the other, not all at the same time. When you read this list, nothing strikes you as particularly onerous. It instead comes across like a regular commitment-perhaps more time-consuming than the French club, but less time-consuming than a varsity sport. The magic of the innovation map is that it clearly identifies the exact work required, helping you avoid your instinct to sensationalize the path to sensational accomplishment.

The final reaction I get from parents goes something like this: "My kid is talented, but he's not the type of genius that can think up ideas that will change the way major organizations operate." When they hear about Kate, they imagine her sitting among a collection of stumped experts, furrowing her brow, and then suddenly yelling, "Eureka!" before sharing her genius vision with the world. The innovation map once again brings us back to reality. If you isolate the precipitating events fields, you discover that the path to Kate's final insight required no leaps of brilliance. In fact, when seen by themselves, they seem almost mundane: She volunteered as a teacher's aide on her dad's suggestion.

She proved her worth to the teacher, and this led to an independent study project so she could continue to help at the teacher's new school.

She become "part of the family" at the charter school by staying well past her scheduled 1.5 hours in the afternoon, getting to know the teachers, and being helpful. When it came time to start work on her required research project, they helped set up interesting interviews.

During her research visits she came across a school where a novel cla.s.sroom technique was working well.

Notice that outside of making the initial decision to volunteer in the cla.s.sroom, Kate didn't instigate the other opportunities on her path-she simply took advantage of them when they became available. Nowhere in the above list does Kate arrive at a particularly original or brilliant insight. Instead, a more boring pattern becomes apparent. Each time she was given an opportunity, Kate worked hard, and each bout of hard work brought about new opportunities.

These traits-jumping at opportunities and doing well-are admirable, and not every student possesses them. But they have nothing to do with being a genius capable of producing extraordinary ideas. The innovation map isolates this reality and therefore provides an accurate picture of how remarkable activities actually unfold.

If you're serious about innovation, then you should become serious about innovation maps. By describing Kate's accomplishment with this tool, I was able to construct her path and highlight the practical steps behind her progress. Imagine how good you could become at the art of innovation if you applied the same technique to a variety of standout students.

A good place to start is at your own high school. Identify a senior or a recent graduate who did something that strikes you as innovative. Send her an e-mail explaining that you attend the same school, are impressed by her accomplishment, and are hoping to find out more. Suggest a phone call. As someone who does these interviews for a living, I can a.s.sure you that 99 percent of students are flattered by such attention and will be happy to chat. When you get her on the phone, ask for a step-by-step recollection of her accomplishment. If you keep the innovation map format in mind while conducting this interview, it will guide you to the right types of questions. (For example: "How did you get that position? Where did you hear about it? What was required to apply?") After the conversation, use your notes to build a map like the one I constructed for Kate. This forces you to identify what was required to achieve the ultimate accomplishment.

You can also move beyond your own school in search of innovative students. Whenever you encounter a young person who seems impressive-perhaps you read about his winning a scholarship in your local paper, or you saw his picture in a magazine-you can perform a debriefing. Just follow the strategy of sending an e-mail, expressing admiration, and asking if the person is willing to chat.

If you're able to build just three or four innovation maps, your perspective on accomplishment will be transformed. Whereas before you were baffled and intimidated, you'll now find a new sense of confidence and the world will suddenly seem full of possibility.

Seek Sloganable Projects.

In 2008, Chris Guillebeau enjoyed a stunning rise to online prominence. In the spring of that year, he launched a blog t.i.tled The Art of Non-Conformity (chrisguillebeau.com/35/). It featured the tagline "Unconventional Strategies for Life, Work, and Travel." Although other blogs tackled similar topics, Chris's audience grew at an outstanding rate. By the spring of 2009, his blog was a hit. Chris was featured twice in the New York Times, was hired to write a column for the Oregonian newspaper, and became a regular contributor to the megasite The Huffington Post. In under a year, he was able to abandon the technology consulting business he used to pay the bills and instead support himself full-time with his growing online empire.

In a vivid ill.u.s.tration of Chris's newfound clout, a few weeks before I started writing this chapter, he sent me a note to cancel a planned phone conversation.

"You won't believe this," he apologized. "Air New Zealand is sending me down to the Cook Islands next week."

Later, I read his article about the experience. After I heard about the tropical lagoons, the white sand beaches, the "free c.o.c.ktails and bottles of wine that kept appearing at the dinner table," and the sputtering buses on Rarotonga Island's perimeter road, it hit me how much Chris's life had transformed in a very short time. (I first met Chris right after his initial blog launch, so I've been able to observe, with excitement, his saga unfolding.) Chris isn't a high school student, but his story still proves important to our quest to crack innovation. The principle at the core of his rapid success is relevant to anyone looking to get the most impact out of an unconventional project. To understand this principle, it helps to first review a sampling of Chris's recent media coverage.

In May 2009, the New York Times published an article about Chris that was t.i.tled "A Plan to See Every Country on Earth by the Age of 35." That same month, Chris contributed an article to Anderson Cooper's CNN blog; the post was t.i.tled "My Journey to Every Country on the Planet." Earlier that year, when Chris was quoted in the Washington Times, he was described as "an experienced jet-setter who has been to 103 countries," and his contributor biography on The Huffington Post reads: "Chris Guillebeau is a writer, entrepreneur, and world traveler with the goal of visiting every country in the world."

Sense a pattern?

This media coverage all centers on the same remarkable fact: Chris has a goal of visiting every country in the world, and has already been to 103.* When you first meet Chris, this is the single fact that you'll definitely remember. When a reporter pitches a profile of Chris to an editor, I imagine that this is the lead the reporter proposes. When you visit Chris's blog, and you read his stories of sleeping in an abandoned monastery in the Dominican Republic (what he was up to the last time I spoke with him) or talking his way into Pakistan without a visa, you think, "This is a blog I want to keep reading."

Chris's project to visit every country is innovative. Without more details about round-the-world tickets, frequent-flier miles, the reality of hostels, sleeping on airport floors, and all the other tricks he uses to make his globe-trotting feasible, the plan to visit every country triggers the Failed-Simulation Effect. You are impressed, and because of this you stick around to hear what this impressive guy has to say.

But there's something more going on here. In addition to triggering the Failed-Simulation Effect, Chris's project has the extra bonus that it's easy to explain. In one short phrase-"I'm visiting every country in the world"-its impressiveness. .h.i.ts you full force, no further explanation necessary. Of equal importance, the idea is simple to pa.s.s on. If a friend were to interrupt you at this exact moment and ask what you're reading about, you'd have no problem describing Chris, and your friend would immediately understand why he was interesting and impressive.

I call projects such as Chris's sloganable because they're crisp and easy to convey-like a good slogan. Described in more detail, a sloganable project is one that can be summarized in a pithy sentence that immediately triggers the full Failed-Simulation Effect.

Not all innovative projects are sloganable. Some require more explanation to trigger the desired effect. To highlight the difference, consider the following students and their projects.

A student started the community service board at his high school and created an alliance with the local hospital to help supply the hospital with student volunteers from his school.

A student wrote a bestselling book.

A student worked in the research lab at her local college. She was involved in a project that looked at the role of a certain enzyme in a process related to cancer growth. She was included as a coauthor of the paper published on the subject.

A student started a business that she sold for over a million dollars.

All four of these projects qualify as innovative. Most people can't simulate how a teenager could accomplish any of them. Only the second and fourth items, however, are also sloganable. Their pithy descriptions capture everything necessary to convey their impressiveness. The other two require some more explanation: the feeling of impressiveness doesn't immediately hit you full force; instead, it arises only after you've given the matter some thought.

Sloganable activities also provide two extra boosts in the admissions process. First, they transform your admissions file from a generic collection of accomplishments into something more personal. Consider Maneesh from earlier in Part 3, who actually did write a bestselling book. As his file moved through the admissions process at Stanford, the officers there likely took to thinking of him as "the kid who wrote the book." Such an a.s.sociation provides a huge advantage. It's hard for the officers to give up on "the kid who wrote the book" when just mentioning him triggers the full Failed-Simulation Effect. The same can't be said, however, for our young scientist example. The short description of this student might be "the kid with impressive involvement in science." Notice the difference. This phrase is a pointer to a more complicated description; it cannot, by itself, trigger the Failed-Simulation Effect. These variations are subtle, but in a compet.i.tive process that's rife with subjective evaluations, they matter. If the very mention of your file catches people's attention, you're going to do much better in the admissions process.

The second advantage of sloganable innovation plays out before your application ever arrives at an admissions office. For the same amount of effort invested, a sloganable project will grow in impressiveness faster than a nonsloganable project. Chris received lots of media attention because his project had an interesting hook. If he had spent the same amount of time on something equally innovative but harder to describe, it's unlikely that the New York Times would have shown up at the party. The Times is not going to publish something about the student working to revamp the relationship between a local hospital and his high school. But the idea of a guy trying to visit every country in the world has a nice ring to it. For another example, let's return to Maneesh. His sloganable project of writing a bestselling book quickly earned him a spot on a TV show. (This required no extra effort on his part; it came along as a reward for his book's success.) If he had devoted the same amount of time he spent writing the book to a nonsloganable but still innovative activity, he would have been unlikely to stumble into such an impressive bonus accomplishment.

These observations point to a single idea: All things being equal, when you're choosing an innovative project, the more sloganable the one you choose, the better. There's no magic procedure for making a project sloganable, but I can offer a few pieces of advice that may help transform an innovative idea into something even better: Strip the idea to its core. When students seek innovative projects, they often settle on complicated a.s.semblages of several related ideas. The mind-set, I guess, is that more is better than less. It's not! Strip off the superfluous initiatives and actions and get down to a core outcome. If you can't explain it in one sentence, you need to simplify.

Inflate your ambition. Once you've identified your core project, perform a simple thought experiment: What would it mean to double the ambition of this project? For example, if you were planning to set up a program with a local school, you might consider inflating your ambition to a program for the local school district, or perhaps for every school in the state. Next, ask whether this inflated version of the core project is still feasible. Often it turns out that getting a project started is harder than growing it once it's going. And the bigger the scope, the more sloganable the project becomes.

Apply the Jaded-Brother Test. Finally, it's time to see if your efforts have pa.s.sed into sloganable territory. Imagine that you have a jaded twin brother who is loath to give any sign that he's impressed with you. If you were to successfully complete your streamlined and ambitious project, how would he react? If even the jaded brother would have to grudgingly admit some pride, then you're in a good place. If not, consider starting with a new idea and going through these steps again.