Books
by Stuart Zola
But Where Are The Butterflies?
“What if everything you were told… wasn’t true?”
In this heartwarming tale, a lonely butterfly questions the belief that only twelve butterflies exist in the world. It is a story designed to inspire confidence, curiosity, and the courage to seek one’s own truth.
Bring the Story to Life! The magic continues off the page. Using a small fan and 50 paper butterflies, children can create their own "butterfly celebration," watching them flutter just like in the story.
Works in Progress
Decision-Making is in the Cards
Coming soon, this book and workshop will provide a way for teachers to bring decision-making to life in K-12 classrooms by pairing a decision-making framework with powerful visual thinking tools (e.g., mind mapping). Using Professional Development time periods, teachers learn the skills to help students clarify decision questions, choice-options, and outcomes, all within a framework of what makes a good decision process.
The approach can be implemented across any content area and used as a framework for any K-12 subject area. Rather than adding “one more thing” to an already full day and curriculum, this approach engages teachers and in turn, their students, in real-life discussions and helps to optimize decision-making outcomes. The goal is to empower teachers and students with decision-making skills that make them ready to shape their future.
Sleight of Hand Interactive Workshop for Better Decisions: For leaders across corporations, education, healthcare, NGO and nonprofit sectors
This workshop will use close-up card magic as laboratory for decision-making science. Poor decisions often happen in the same way deceptive magic happens: Attention is guided, assumptions are accepted, meaning is framed, and the real method hides in plain sight. The goal is not to make participants suspicious of everything in the decision process. It’s quite the opposite - the goal is to help the decider notice the hidden “moves” inside the decision-making process before those moves control the outcome.
Leadership is in the Cards
Currently in development with Emory University juniors and seniors, this book and workshop will help leaders in education, healthcare and industry. In this book and workshop, we use a deck of ordinary playing cards to support rich metaphors and structural devices for leadership, coaching, startup design, healthcare, and scientific research. Each suit, rank, color , and Joker provide credible scaffolds for ideass, e.g., the leader as the ”dealer” and strategist of the deck, card values as ranks or levels and roles, colors and jokers as uncertainty and adaptability, and the idea that a leadership team plays with a full deck. The metaphor also reinforces the understanding of risk and role of luck in outcomes, and the importance of thinking inside the box.