Full article here. Excerpts below.
Let me tell you something no one wants to admit: content is boring.
There. I said it.
It’s not that the ideas themselves aren’t important—it’s that we’ve turned teaching into a conveyor belt of information. Slide decks. Learning objectives. Case summaries. I did it for years, starting every session with the clean, structured logic of “what we’re going to cover today.” And every time, I could feel it: the emotional temperature of the room dropping by a degree with each bullet point.
Then one day, I threw it all out. I walked into my classroom and started with a question I didn’t know the answer to.
“Why do organizations love change, but hate their changemakers?”
The room blinked back at me. One student tilted their head. Another smiled. Someone raised an eyebrow. Then: silence.
And in that silence?
Engagement.
The Paradox Effect
That one question—unresolved, unanswerable, alive—did more to wake up my students than any HBR case ever had.
It turns out, paradoxes are rocket fuel for learning. They don’t just activate the intellect—they ignite curiosity. They create a space where both students and teachers can explore, not just explain. In The Art of Change, I call this the Paradoxical Mindset Cycle—an approach that doesn’t resolve contradiction, but uses it as an engine for insight.
Since then, I’ve started every class not with content, but with creative tension.
... Try This in Your Class Tomorrow
If you want to test this out without overhauling your syllabus, here’s a quick plug-and-play format:
End with a return question: “What’s still unresolved?”
Choose a paradox related to your next topic. Make it messy.
Write it on the board as the only thing visible when students walk in.
Have students pair up and discuss both sides for five minutes.
Map responses publicly—no editing.
Introduce the content as a way to explore the tension, not solve it.