Leadership and Management

This is a perennial point of discussion. Leadership and management get very confused.

So here is my offering:

Every group needs leadership, but that responsibility doesn't need to be allocated almost exclusively to one person - everyone has a responsibility to contribute to the success of the group (to be a leader) at times. It is simple, and it works!!

Occasionally a situation arises when someone has to make a decision now - that is a job for the manager.

Most of the time a group simply needs to find (often small) ways to make things easier and better - this is where leadership comes in. The leader is the person who can help the group move forward.

Leadership is a relationship with other members of the group - ideally flexible, dynamic, etc.

• Authority to lead is granted from below by the group.

Management is a role assigned to a person - largely fixed.

• Authority to manage is delegated from above by the organisation.

Are systems real?

Maybe not as real as we think. And certainly less real than our everyday conversations generally suggest. Naming something as a system does not make it a system. Nor does it validate the use of system thinking in the situation.

However for various purposes, and under certain conditions, we can proceed 'as if' we are dealing with a system, at least for the time being. The danger lies in assuming that some aspect of a situation can be treated as if it is a system. As Marshall McLuhan said, when we name something we stop thinking about it.

The central idea underpinning systems thinking is that, to a greater or lesser extent, we can rely on the existence of certain patterns of interaction between the elements involved.

In the physical world interactions are shaped by largely universal natural laws, hence the consistency of many interactions is usually very high. Drop a raw egg from a height of two metres onto concrete and the acceleration of the egg and the outcome can be readily predicted - the interactions between the egg and gravity and the subsequent interaction between the egg and concrete are highly consistent for eggs in this situation. Hence, we can address the situation with systems thinking.

Highly consistent patterns can also emerge in human interactions. Not so much because of natural laws but because of shared belief systems, shared goals and agreed practices, social regulations, corrective consequences... Shared beliefs, agreements, regulations, and consequences can act as 'attractors' around which consistent actions and interactions emerge.

Such situations can often be treated 'as if' they are systems, especially if
- the goals/expectations are known and agreed
- inputs are consistent
- processes are clear and practiced
- 'outcomes' are measured and reported against the goals/expectations

Systems thinking can then be applied so that changes and improvements are achieved
- increasing the consistency of the interactions
- changing the interactions to
-> use different (new, less...) inputs
-> reduce variation 'errors'
-> make interactions easier (so that the 'system' is more efficient)
-> improve outcomes (so that the 'system' is more effective)

That is, by continuously monitoring a situation and using informed judgement it may be valid to treat the situation as if it was a system.

Initial conversations

A good friend is moving to a substantially new role in the coming year. His background is mainly in PR (he is terrific with people) and he is about to become the CEO of a service organisation. His PR capabilities will be invaluable but how will he start to bring things together -  the organisation is in need of some updating and he will need to make sense of the situation asap.

 My recommendation is to start a conversation with staff  that will be ongoing. It could be based on a simple but valid job description: 

1. Know what is happening
2. Work with others to improve what is happening
3. Make it easier for the next person to do well

Using this framework, my friend will begin with information 1:1 conversations along the lines of

• How clear are you about what is happening? (And how can we improve that?)
• How do you work with others to improve what is happening? (Examples? And how can we extend that?)
• How do/could others make it easier for you to do really well?
• How do/could you make it easier for others to do really well?

Effective systems as well as individual and team performance rely on the 3 key elements of the job description (above). Improved systems can then emerge easily, naturally and quite quickly from such conversations because they are about real-life actions and solutions. Used continuously they also form a sound basis for integrating continuous improvement into the culture of the organisation.

The Social Contract

What is the glue that holds all our individual and collective actions especially given the uncertainty of the next person's possible responses in the present context?

Perhaps we proceed on the basis of a social contract to which we believe that we and those with whom we interact are both parties.

Restorative practices restore and strengthen the "social contracts" that underpin our interactions.
Problems arise and harm is done when these social contracts are broken intentionally or inadvertently.

However most social contracts are unconscious - they are just assumed and "understood".
The long term power of restorative practices in general, and circles in particular, is that they can strengthen our social contracts by making them more explicit.

This can also make the wider implications of our actions much clearer before we make our next serious mistakes."

Reviewing progress

The world has the idea that if we measure (and report) outcomes all else will follow. One of the flaws in this approach is that it ignores the everyday reality of those charged with achieving the said outcomes. But what is the alternative?

The following is based on a review process that we used almost universally at Riverside Primary School, albeit, at the end of last century. However this significantly post-dates much of the current thinking which tends to be a form of Management By Objectives (circa 1950).

Three simple questions
The proposed alternative it is a form of action learning based around three simple but insightful questions:

• What's working? 
• What's not? 
• What else (might be possible, desirable, feasible, worth a try...)?

Not only is it quick, simple and meaningful, it leads to positive action. It is more likely to lead improvements than counter measures. It is naturally solution focused, rather than problem focused.

And it builds up the social contract around core purposes - the social contract is strengthened when people are consulted, heard, and responded to, and their contributions recognised.

This approach can be used individually and in groups (especially circles) for virtually any purpose.

And (used consistently) it results in continuous improvement (plan-do-study-act) and not simply episodic attempt to fix things. When it becomes part of the culture ("how we do things around here") people continually monitor how things are going gaining insights from their everyday experience./

Rethinking education - some common traps

This morning I came across this

• Why School? TED ebook author rethinks education when information is everywhere.

Three essential questions

In discussing our response to new possibilities it can be really helpful to think about what questions we are answering. Clearly Will Richardson and many of the commentators have been answering the question
Q1. What is possible?
But in responding to what is possible we need to be able to answer two more questions:

Q2. What is desirable? And to whom?
Q3. What is feasible? And for whom, given their current constraints such as time, energy, existing policies, practices, expectations...?

So what is possible for some stakeholders (e.g., teachers) may or may not be perceived as desirable and/or feasible by other stakeholders (administrators, government, families...)

Common Traps

Clearly there are some potentially hidden difficulties here including

• Answering any of the above questions in isolation from the other two questions
• Being unrealistic - "There is a simple answer to every question and it is usually wrong"
• being unfair - "Nothing is impossible to those who don't have to do it"
• Underestimating the disruption involved in taking advantage of what has become possible by focusing exclusively on the future and not how to get there. As Deming would ask "By what method?"
• ...

Being 'scientific' about schooling

Wouldn't it be great if we could be 'scientific' about schooling?!!

If only we could find the right thing to do, all would be well. We could treat all cases (students, teachers, schools, sessions...) as if they were all the same. This is a natural (but futile) ambition for anyone wanting certainty, predictability and the capacity to guarantee the outcomes of schooling.

It is obvious that every family, community, school, student, teacher.... is different. Also, cause and effect in teaching and learning are not consistent over person, place and time. Amazingly, this everyday experience flies in the face of so much of the current discourse around school improvement. We need to remember the Emperor's New Clothes!!

But does this mean we should give up trying to achieve improvements? Of course not, we all need to do better and better.

But firstly we do need to give up imposing flawed school improvement strategies including

• confusing student achievement with school/teacher performance - students in the same class, with the same teacher and lessons, do not all achieve the same results
• treating all schools, students, teachers... as if they were the same - they are simply not!!
• identifying and transferring 'best practice' by policy - practices cannot be transferred, they have to be continually constructed and reconstructed
• being 'scientific' - using evidence-based ('proven') methods - see above
• firing 'silver bullets' - 'There ain't no one best way (Law of Tanobway)
• any method based on 'hope for instant pudding' (Deming) - there is a simple solution to every problem and it is usually wrong!!

As well as not really working, such approaches can be disruptive and damaging to current arrangements, practices and relationships. They often result in serious unfairness. When an approach 'succeeds' certain people are rewarded for things they didn't achieve - the 'success' of the approach is substantially coincidental, a matter of luck and/or the result ongoing unofficial corrective efforts of those doing the work. When such approaches 'fail', the blame usually shifts to those doing the work (teachers and/or students). Sadly this often justifies the marginalisation or exclusion of those students not well served by the imposed arrangements (curriculum, pedagogies, sequencing...)

At the same time, under certain conditions and for certain purposes, it can be useful to treat many cases (Pareto's 80%?) 'as if' they were 'basically the same'. Well thought out and delivered programs, courses and timelines can be helpful to a significant proportion of students, but this does not justify imposing them on all students, everywhere and all the time. A significant number of cases (20%?) need to be treated differently and increasingly differently.

There are alternatives to being 'scientific' in this sense. The phenomena involved in schooling are not just complicated, they are complex. Therefore we need to consider improvement strategies derived from complexity theory, for example Nurturing emergence and Solutions Focus.

All schools need the requisite variety of responses in order to meet the needs of those they serve. It is worth noting that there are already mature school systems, such as BigPicture, that have moved beyond the dominant discourse of schooling as a linear activity that can be managed 'scientifically'. These schools have a coherent framework that enables them to make a wide range responses in the best current and future interests of their students.