Game Changer
Game Changer
A simple act…
An interesting project…
A problem to be solved…
A wish to be granted…
Something you did that started small. You followed your interests and desires, taking one step that turned in to two, four, twelve, fifty or one hundred steps. You didn’t realize the significance of that first act, nor that it was rooted in a deeper desire or passion. All of your steps prior to this time prepared you for this moment, even when the path was circuitous, hilly, and filled with signs that said “Stop”, “Yield”, or “Caution”. Yet it brought you to the point of influencing the lives of many others; changing the way people approach a problem, learn or behave; or freeing them to accomplish their goals. Like a rock tossed into the ocean can ripple into a wave on the other side of the ocean, your simple act flourished and thrived into a movement, a game changer. You changed the rules of operation, and disrupted the normal system with a positive impact.
The Khan Academy
Salman Khan is an 
example of this. Khan is the founder of The Khan Academy, a company with over 3,600 brief free instructional videos on topics including math, science, computer science, finance and economics, humanities and standardized test prep, designed to help students of all ages learn about these topics at their own pace. According to a recent article in Forbes, over the past two years Khan’s videos have had 200 million views. There are currently 6 million unique students per month who visit the site, and over 750 million problems have been solved over the past several years. As a non-profit organization, they’re supported by foundations and individuals such as The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, venture capitalist John and Ann Doerr, the O’Sullivan Foundation, Reed Hastings, Google, and the Windsong Trust. Khan has pledged that the company will not go public despite the urgings of several venture capitalists who see the potential for significant profit.
It all started out when Khan began posting YouTube videos to facilitate tutoring sessions with his cousins. Even though his video viewing audience grew to tens of thousands each day, he still looked at this as a hobby. He grew up poor in Louisiana raised by his mother and was mathematically gifted. He gained acceptance to MIT, completed an M.B.A. from Harvard and became a hedge fund analyst. During this time he supported his wife through her medical training while caring for his baby son. He quit his job when he realized the impact his videos had on helping students learn. Khan continued working on videos in a bedroom closet for ten months until Ann Doerr wrote him his first check for $100,000. The rest, as they say, is history.
Now with a $7 million budget, and a staff of 37 people headquartered in Silicon Valley, Khan is changing the education game. His ability to reach millions of students cheaply via the internet using inexpensive tablets (particularly important in developing nations), on a wide range of subjects is generating a growth spurt in online education. Khan Academy has proof of the efficacy of their teaching videos, and the global reach to provide high quality education for a small fraction of usual costs. Other universities and faculty members have similar results as courses at Harvard and Stanford offered online drew well over 100 thousand students each and provided a quality of learning equal to what they would have received in the classroom. According to the Forbes article, Khan has a vision for radically changing the education system of the future, and is referred to as “the most impactful educator in the world”. All this, even though he’s not a traditional educator by training.
What’s Your Game?
It doesn’t appear that Khan planned this business or career, but it grew out of his passion for teaching concepts in an easy to understand format. He recognized a problem around him, cared about how others were dealing with it, and decided to do something on a small scale without even thinking of the potential for growth. His passion was so great, and his impact so effective that he is playing a significant role in changing developing a new approach to education. He recognized the changes in how people communicate, learn, interact and apply that learning, leveraging the increasing electronic capabilities of the millennial generation. So Khan seized the moment and made the most of it. He took a leap of faith and leveraged his leadership abilities to help others learn more productively. He’s changing the game.
How are you changing the game around you? It typically begins with a paradigm shift, moving from acceptance that something in your environment must continue as it is, to challenging it to be different. This may be seen as disruptive to others, and such disruption normally causes a level of discomfort in those who are used to the status quo or have a vested interest in things remaining as-is. Disruption can be unconstructive, chaotic and threatening. But when you find a constructive approach to addressing a worthy cause, and with enough momentum and support, you can metaphorically move the car out of the rut and onto new higher ground.
So what are you passionate about, concerned about, interested in, desiring to be different? And what are you constructively doing about it? Do you have a vision for the future? Are you helping someone else accomplish their vision? Do you have faith in your ability to make a difference in the lives of others? Then you too can be a game changer.
Reference: One Man, One Computer, 10 Million Students: How Khan Academy Is Reinventing Education by Michael Noer. Forbes Magazine, November 2, 2012.