An inversion of expertise

Just finished watching four-star general, Stanley McChrystal's TED Talk and discussing with some school board members from around the state.  We talked a bit about our stereotype of the military compared to what McChrystal talked about.

First, that the leader is not the expert. McChrystal talked about the inversion of expertise; that the pace of change, particularly regarding communication tools, means that the leader needs to learn to be comfortable with the fact that he or she may not have the market cornered on technical expertise.  That instead, the leader needs to listen; that developing personal relationships is some of the most important work the leader can do; that others will bring important expertise to the table.

That diversity needs to be embraced.  The troops he leads are diverse--age, gender, experience.  You need to create a climate that uses experiences and skill sets of a diverse group of people.

So much of what McChrystal talked about applies to public education.  Our leaders must adapt to a new context, one where leadership means building relationships, not making all of the decisions from on high.

We need to engage with diverse stakeholders--both internal staff and external community.  We need to develop personal relationships.  And most of all, as leaders, we need to be willing to learn and to trust.

Surprising that this is the message of a military man.  I think that is what makes it so powerful for me.

What makes a leader?

This newsletter from Alternative Resolutions h as a nice list of skills and dispositions found in today's successful leaders.

Even in baseball it's hard

So, those of you who know me, know that I love baseball.  And you probably also are aware of the way we talk about the tradition of baseball, it's long history.  Well, it can be hard to change those traditions.  Last night, I finally had a chance to see Moneyball.  The movie is about Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics and what he did to create a winning team in a game where the playing field may be level, but the system of acquiring players is not.  A game where big money teams like the Yankees have an advantage when it comes to putting a team together. To quote Harry Carey, "HOLY COW!"  I could not stop thinking about the connection to public education.

The story is not about baseball.  The story is about leadership and change. It's about having a vision and the commitment to stick with that vision.  It's about what it takes to stand in the face of resistance to what you are doing and doing it anyway.  It's about complex problems and the way they act; sometimes making things worse in the short run, and showing how if you stick with it, learning as you go and making adjustments, you can win big.

Imagine what we could do in public education if we could do that!  I am sure we'd hit a grand slam, and old Harry would stand up and say "Kids win!  Kids win! Kids win!(see note below)

(For those of you who are wondering who is Harry Carey:   (Baseball announcer for the St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago White Sox and Chicago Cubs.  When the Cubs would win, he was always say, "Cubs win! Cubs win! Cubs win!)

Accentuate the positive

You've got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mister In-Between
(Lyrics from a song made popular by Bing Crosby in the 1940s)

Positive? In today's competitive, supercharge environment, where there is no room for mistakes; no
time for do overs?

Well, it turns out that people are more productive when they focus on their strengths.  
Twenty-two percent of respondents indicated that they were likely to be disengaged when their 
manager primarily focused on their weaknesses. When their manager focused on their 
strengths, just one percent were like to be disengaged. (From Strengths Finders 2.0 by Tom
Rath).

If we expect our stakeholders to engage with us to solve the complex challenges we face, we need
to find ways to support, rather than criticize their efforts.

Understanding the changing context

Some of you may have heard me talk about how the world, Wisconsin, and the expectations of public education have changed.  Seth Godin's blog post does a good job of explaining some of the challenges of the changing context.

Leaders in public education need to understand these changes.  If we continue to improve the current system, we will have failed.  It is not reform, but reinvention, that we need to pursue.

This means that leaders need to have strong communication skills. Today, leadership is not about technical skill.  It is not about being good at issuing orders.  It is about creating contexts for groups to come together to solve problems.  Problems which do not have one clear answer.

In this more complex era, leaders need to be able to develop good relationships.  They need to create a context of trust.  The context is chaotic.  Leaders who learn how to create a context to let order emerge from the chaos, will succeed in leading the public education reinvention our students need.

Leadership and the New Sciences

Margaret Wheatley wrote a book that explained why the way we think about organizations (as mechanical structures) no longer works. And, that by looking to the new sciences, like quantum physics, we can create new organizations that are better suited to solve our current challenges.  This short video summarizes the book in an engaging way.



PFYT: Margaret Wheatley from FreedomLab on Vimeo.

If only we had more money....

I hear this all the time from school board members.  Yes, times are tight and I can honestly say I can never remember a time when times weren't tight in public education.

Scarce financial resources can provide opportunity for innovation.  Rather than grousing about the lack of money, look for the possibilities.  This article, The Number One Key to Innovation, from the Harvard Business Review, talks about scarcity, and the fact that among all of the innovation methodologies researchers have identified, scarcity is the only common denominator.

We in public education need to cultivate a culture that embraces scarcity and turns it on its head.  We are not going to get more money, therefore we have to innovate.

The Madison situation is not an either/or

I'd like to thank Ron Jetty for his facebook post on the Madison controversy.

In his article, Reinvent unions: don't gut them, Sam Chaltain suggests that we in Wisconsin have a giant opportunity sitting in our laps.

It is not productive to frame the issue as one of maintaining the status quo, or eliminating the unions.  The issue is more complex than that.  We can see that unions don't work in our current context.  AND, workers still need to have their rights protected.  Looking at the issue as a both/and rather than an either/or can set us up for more productive conversation.  There is the possibility of creating something new.

The playwright and former Czeh president, Vaclav Havel, in a speech he gave in Philadelphia in 1994 said, "I think there are good reasons for suggesting that the modern age has ended.  Today, many things indicate that we are going through a transitional period, when it seems that something is on the way out and something else is painfully being born.  It is as if something were crumbling, decaying, and exhausting itself--while something else, still indistinct, were rising from the rubble."

It is time for Wisconsin's leaders to come together, identify common ground, and create a union system that works for the 21st century.

Getting a handle on that Vision Thing

One of the most important responsibilities for school district leaders is to establish a clear vision for the future of the school district.  The challenge for many of us is that the world is changing very quickly and we may not be aware of or understand what all of this change means, particularly when we talk about technological changes.  This blog post, 8 Guiding Questions for Conversations about Becoming a School of the Future, can help.  Included is a list of questions to start some conversations in your district.

REFLECTION TIME

Is this your school board?

Leadership means you're supposed to lead

Solitude and Leadership

This lecture was delivered by essayist, William Deresiewicz, to a class of plebes at West Point in October 2009.

The ideas apply to all leaders. Knowing yourself is central to successful leadership.  Knowing yourself, not knowing information, not knowing process, not knowing a large network of people.  Knowing yourself.  What you believe in.  Your vision.  It's that simple and that complex.

What if school districts had to apply for superintendents?

An interesting idea.  Suggests the need for some self-reflection on the part of board members and the community.

What if school districts had to apply for superintendents?

What about adaptive leadership?

Okay, so the issue of technical leadership has been addressed.  According to the New York Times a deal has been struck.  Mayor Bloomberg will get a waiver to hire Cathleen P. Black as the next chancellor of the New York City Schools and Shael Polakow-Suransky will serve as Ms. Black's deputy.  Polakow-Suransky has the technical expertise Ms Black lacks.

Now, what about the adaptive leadership issue?  Can either Ms.Black or Mr. Polakow-Suransky lead the change effort required to transform New York's school system?  Technical expertise alone will not make it happen.

The challenge public education faces today, in New York and the rest of the country, is one that is not easily solved with technical expertise.  The problems are not simple and do not have easily identified answers. The challenges exist in chaos and uncertainty.  The public education system does not have the resources to tackle the problems on its own.  Solving the problems found in public education today requires leaders to use their communication skills to build relationships and create a context for others in the system to create solutions.

In fact, the public education system will not be successful on its own. Today's successful leaders understand that Collective Impact is needed, that collaboration across social systems is required for successful social change.

If the New York City school system is to experience that kind of social change, its top leaders need adaptive leadership skills. They must value building relationships, both within the school system and with other organizations that serve students and their families.

Our country has focused on the technical issues in public education for more than 40 years.  Little progress has been made.  It is time to start focusing on the adaptive aspects of the problems.

A debate over adaptive versus technical leadership

Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York City, recently appointed Cathleen Black as head of the New York City schools. Ms. Black is currently the chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, but has no experience leading a public education system.  This appointment has set off yet another debate over the issue of who is best suited to lead large, complex urban public education systems.  A number of experts weigh in on this debate in the New York Times Room for Debate: Who's qualified to run New York City schools?

What I find interesting is that most of the arguments against Ms. Black's appointment focus on her lack of technical expertise.  Only two of the debaters consider her adaptive leadership skills.

The country has focused on education reform for over forty years, yet the achievement gap stubbornly remains a problem.  Much of the focus of reform has been to improve the technical aspects of education.  Yet, much of the problem lies in the social aspects of education.  There is more involved than simply ensuring that curriculum is aligned to standards and highly qualified teachers work with our students, although these are important.

Education is a social enterprise.  And much of what doesn't work in our public schools is rooted in social failings, which often exist outside of our schools.  If we really want our schools to work better, we need to connect them to their larger context and work to improve that context.  If we want to see success we need to consider the collective impact  of all of the organizations in a community that focus on the social well being of its citizens.

Many of the posts on this blog point to the promise technology holds to help transform our schools.  Yet technology alone won't do it.  We need standards and curricula that align to those standards.  We need highly qualified, highly effective teachers in our classrooms.

Even more importantly, we need leaders who can develop relationships across the various (and often conflicting) stakeholders in our communities.  Creating a context that enables those closest to the problem to act is critical to the success of any leader, no matter what the sector.  The effort needs to be high tech and high touch.

Yes, technical expertise is important.   AND, adaptive leadership skills--listening, empathy, the ability to hold the space so the messy work of transformation can occur--are more important than ever.  We need to get off of the either/or argument.  It is a both/and.

What's your metaphor?

A few weeks ago, I talked about taking drum lessons and how I see that experience working as a metaphor for leadership.  The other day, David Brooks wrote about metaphors in his column in the New York Times.  In History for Dollars he talks about how current economic conditions are exacerbating the decline of the liberal arts degree and the implications for our understanding the complex problems we face today.

He argues for the value of the liberal arts, including our ability to use metaphors to make comparisons and think deeply about the challenges facing our country today.

So, as I asked a few weeks ago, what is your metaphor for leadership?  How does this metaphor help you in your work.

What is Adaptive Change?

When I speak to school boards, I talk about leadership and explain that because the world, Wisconsin, and the expectations of public education have changed, we need to lead our school districts in a different way. Today, globalization and technology have combined to speed up the pace of change, changing the nature of our economy and connecting people in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago.  Demographic and economic changes bring new challenges to the state.  The focus in public education has shifted from inputs to outputs, and the notion of “all children can learn” has been codified in public policy. 

Put all of this together and we see that the challenges we face today are complex.  And complex problems require a different leadership strategy.  Solving a complex problem is a lot like raising a child.  Expertise plays a role, yet the relationship you have with your child matters more.  Like every child, the challenges of complex problems are unique, and what works in one situation does not assure success in a similar situation.  Finally, outcomes remain uncertain, in spite of our best efforts. Complex challenges require more than technical leadership; they require adaptive leadership.  Complex challenges require different leadership strategies, yet leaders tend to address the challenges we face today as if they were technical in nature, and draw on strategies that do not work in adaptive change situations. 

When dealing with technical change, expertise rules the day.  Problems may be complicated, and require collaboration across disciplines; yet the resolution of the problem is clearly identifiable. For the most part, when we face technical challenges, we focus on improving processes, providing training to improve skills, and doing the right things right.  In other words, we know the answer; it is more a matter of implementation.  Leaders who can take charge tend to be successful when the problem is technical in nature. 

Adaptive changes require more than simply sharpening our processes and skills.  Instead, adaptive change challenges our beliefs and ways of thinking; and requires that we do things differently then we have in the past.  When leaders fail to recognize adaptive challenges, they tend to interpret staff behavior as resistance, when it is more likely that staff members are experiencing loss.  Asking staff to learn new skills or break old habits is difficult, especially for people who have been successful using traditional practices. 

For example, many school districts restrict cell phone use in school.  Ninety-three percent of people under the age of 30 possess cell phones, meaning most students possess a tool that could be used to access the Internet to enhance their learning.  Changing cell phone policies requires the adults in the system to think differently about students and their cell phones.  Rather than controlling and limiting cell phone use, staff need to consider the benefits, and develop learning opportunities for students to develop responsible cell phone use—and, need to accept that they have to relinquish some control to students.

Adaptive challenges require that people with the problem are part of the solution.  For example, in the cell phone scenario, a school board could change the cell phone policy and practices in the schools could remain unchanged.  Unless teachers and administrators understand how they could use cell phone technology to enhance learning, and believe that the change was worth the time and energy to change practices, things would stay the same.    In fact, it is likely that such a policy change would result in bigger problems.  Teachers may not feel the effort is worth it.  They may only imagine the problems that unrestricted student cell phone use would mean for them—ringing phones interrupting instruction; students accessing inappropriate sites or playing video games rather than working on school-related projects.  Students would believe (rightly) that they could use their cell phones in school, creating opportunities for conflict with staff that did not support or understand the policy change.

Understanding the importance of including the people with the problem would take the board in a different direction.   Rather than simply changing the policy, the board that understands the nature of adaptive change might provide opportunities for the staff to explore cell phone policy changes, include students and staff in the creation of guidelines for classroom use, provide professional development for staff so they could learn new techniques that would incorporate cell phone use.

For more than twenty years, education reform has focused on technical change—creating standards, aligning curriculum to the standards, creating accountability systems to monitor achievement.  Yet, in spite of these efforts, little progress has been made.  Many of the changes reflected in education reform challenge our beliefs and habits in addition to our technical skills.  Today’s leaders do not solve problems for people.  Instead, they provide opportunities for people to confront challenges and learn new methods; create a context where staff can safely confront uncertainty in spite of their discomfort, and adjust their values and perspectives to better develop solutions that address the complex challenges facing public education today.

Additional resources

Heifitz, Ronald A. and Linsky, Marty. (2002).  Leadership on the Line:  Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading.  Boston:  Harvard Business School Press.

Heiftiz, Ronald A. and Laurie, Donald L. (2001).  The Work of Leadership. Harvard Business Review.

Patton, Michael Quinn.  (2007).  Deepening Extension’s Knowledge Base.  National Extension Association of Family and Consumer Sciences.  September 19, 2007.

Smith, Rolf. (1997).  Seven Levels of Change: Create, Innovate and Motivate with the Secrets of the World’s Largest Corporations.  Arlington, Texas:  Summit Publishing Group.

Leading and Listening

It's been awhile since I've checked in.  Busy with work.   Also, in my personal life, learning how to play the drums.  I am obsessed.  I have always wanted to learn, and finally decided I was going to do it.

First off, it is way harder than it looks (maybe that is age-related.)  It is amazing to me how you can play one beat pattern, but change just one thing (a different beat on the base drum, move from high-hat cymbal to a tomb drum) and it is like a whole new experience.   What is really interesting to me, is that learning to play the drums is a metaphor for leadership.  Hang with me as I explain.

Right now, I am struggling with sixteenth notes (especially on the bass drum).  When I play the notes on the snare, no problem.  When I play the notes on the snare and the bass drum, no problem.  When I try to put it all together with the high-hat, problem.

There is something about the high-hat that makes my brain think the beat pattern is not balanced.  It has something to do with the sound.  It just doesn't sound right to me. I cannot allow myself to HEAR the correct pattern.

I was talking about this to someone and started to air drum the beat as if I was playing the snare drum.  Then, I moved my hands as if I was playing the snare and high-hat--suddenly my brain clicked in--IT WAS THE SAME THING! Taking away the sound made it easier for my brain to understand the mechanics of the whole thing.

I realized that this is what my friend, Hazel Simonette, means when she says "you have to lean into the listening."  In order for me to understand the beat pattern, I needed to take out the sound of the high-hat.  Then I could understand the pattern.  Once I could get my head around the pattern, I was able to play the beat pattern using the high-hat cymbal.  Why?  Because I was able to hear it.

How many times do we encounter this situation in our leadership work?  We need to figure out how to filter out the noise that makes it difficult for us for to listen.  In "Community:  The Structure of Belonging," Peter Block talks about the art of leadership.  Leaders create a context that nurtures an alternative future; initiate and convene conversations that shift people's experience; listen and pay attention.

The ability to listen is a key leadership skill.  What do we need to do to improve this skill?  The drum lesson works for me; helps me understand what I need to to do to "lean into the listening."  What's your metaphor?

Coherence making

How can school leaders effect culture change in these incredibly difficult times?  Budgets are stressed with a number of districts anticipating bankruptcy in a few years if the recent pattern of eroding state and local support continues.  Pressure to improve student achievement and to close the achievement gap continues to increase expectations in spite of the difficult financial times.

What is a school leader to do?  Michael Fullan talks about coherence making in "Leading in a Culture of Change."  According to Fullan, the complexity found in the challenges facing public education also provide opportunity for creativity.  However, if chaos is too severe, staff can become overwhelmed.  Balancing chaos and coherence is a key characteristic of successful leaders.

Successful leaders recognize that they do not have the control leaders may have had in the past.  Instead, today's leaders are successful when they create conditions so staff take the vision of the organization as their own.  When staff collaborate to work through the ambiguities and challenges of difficult-to-solve problems, they are best able to meet the challenges facing public schools today.

The Value of Relationship

This week at the Wisconsin Association of School Boards Annual Convention, relationship cropped up in so many places. While school districts continue to feel the pressures of accountability, many convention speakers focused on trust and relationships as the way to best achieve success. The importance of trust and relationships were mentioned in general sessions, idea exchanges, and special events.

Jerry Kember, Wisconsin Superintendent of the Year, talked about the importance of trust and the value of relationships and team to the success of the La Crosse school district.

Boards from school districts and the technical college system met for dinner one evening. There was a recognition of the importance of these two groups coming together.

Meg Wheatley, keynote general session speaker, talked about relationships, that if you want to create more health, create more relationships.  Wheatley talked about the power of relationships, that while we may lack financial resources, we have what we need to face our challenges. Wheatley says, "everything is a bundle of potential that manifests itself only in relationships."

Wheatley gave the audience the following ideas to use in their work to build relationships and community:

• People support what they create.
• People act responsibility when they care.
• Conversation is the way humans have always thought together.
• To change the conversation change who is in the conversation.
• Expect leadership to come from anywhere.
• Focus on what's possible.
• The wisdom resides within us.
• Everything is a failure in the middle.
• Learning is the only way we become smarter about what we do.
• Meaningful work is the most powerful motivator.
• Humans can handle anything as long as we are together.
• Generosity Forgiveness Love.
  

You can listen to Meg talk about this ideas on this youtube video.

Over the last twenty years, education reform has focused on the technical aspects of improving student achievement.  Yet, if we expect to successfully close the achievement gap, we need to consider the important role of relationship.

Creativity in Education

A couple of weeks ago I posted a short YouTube video that indicated that fun could be good for us.  Today I’d like to return to the right brain and talk about creativity.  We can think of creativity in a couple of ways.  How we nurture it in our children; how we nurture it in our leadership.

I’d like to start with a story.  When my son Adam was in kindergarten, the students were coloring pictures on a worksheet.  One of the pictures was an elephant.  Because he didn’t have a gray crayon, Adam used a pencil to color the elephant.  His teacher looked over his shoulder and said that he needed to use his crayons to color the elephant.  Now Adam didn’t have a gray crayon so he determined that a pencil was a good substitute.  However, his teacher did not appreciate Adam thinking outside of the crayon box.  Unfortunately, this experience was not the only time Adam’s creativity took a hit as he worked his way through school.

In this TED Talk, Sir Ken Robinson argues that, as exemplified by Adam’s experience, we educate creativity out of children in our public school systems.  He goes on to make a case for nurturing creativity in education; that creativity is as important as literacy and that we should treat it with the same urgency.  Take 15 minutes to watch this thought-provoking video.

In A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink makes a similar case, talking about the rise of right-brainers. Left-brain logic has long been admired and even thought of as the part of the brain that made us human.  The right brain was considered something less, that it somehow impeded the good work of the left brain.  However, today we understand how the two halves of the brain complement each other.  Pink writes,

“Both sides work together—but they have different specialties.  The left hemisphere handles logic, sequence, literalness and analysis.   The right takes care of synthesis, emotional expression, context, and the big picture. ”

Today, it is not enough to develop the rational left side of the brain.  Today’s challenges require that we develop what Pink calls R-Directed Thinking.   We still need L-directed aptitudes, but they are no longer sufficient for succeeding in today’s complex world. 

One final thought about creativity.  While we need to foster creativity in our children, as leaders facing complex challenges that require us to retool our public education system to meet 21^st century challenges, we need to reconnect with our own creativity.  In this TED video, Dave Eggers describes how he and a number of his writer friends developed a creative after school program, what he describes as “school, but not school.” 

How is your district encouraging children’s creativity?  How is the leadership in your community working together to develop new and exciting programs that provide opportunities for students to develop their creativity and reach their full potential?