Introit

Teaching Reduced to a Formula

One word: Really?!

[Below: formula for "value added" by teacher in NYC public school system. 2011]

 

Caveat on Establishing Innovative Cultures

As I continue to engage in (and follow fervently) conversations regarding innovation in independent schools, I feel compelled to shine some light on something of tremendous importance, something about which schools haven't thought deeply enough, in my opinion.

That something is a formula: existing school culture + innovation =  ?

Culture is a big deal in schools. We might be talking a lot about innovation right now, but a question schools should be asking is this: "Is our culture ready for innovation?" There are consequences to innovation within your school's culture. Why? Schools have always thrived on rules, predictability, and systems (hierarchies would qualify as a 'system', for example). This triumvirate of "how we do school" makes it difficult to deal with change, generally speaking, let alone the kinds of change that go hand-in-hand with innovation.

Schools should not tread lightly into the territory of "innovation." This is not how we "do school" or "do business," if you like. As Luke Johnson wrote in his Financial Times column, "The Entrepreneur" the other day (May 9, 2012), "The essence [...] is a willingness to do what it takes to get things moving. That means foregoing the joys of clarity for the messy truth that comprises any new venture -- imperfect products, clients who don't pay, the wrong staff, insufficient capital and so on. Such projects prosper thanks to many incremental wins and plenty of errors, rather than a few clean victories."

Schools would do well to heed his cautionary note. Foregoing the joys of clarity? Good luck. Plenty of errors? Not something with which we've been comfortable We need to think about how to realign school culture in order to allow for messiness, to embrace it. Engineering culture is not easily accomplished. I commend to you Gideon Kunda's work in this regard.

Many entrepreneurs, as Johnson highlights, "hate to give a definite 'yes' or 'no' to difficult questions. They prefer to say 'perhaps', and delay to see if more information emerges or their bargaining position improves. Most of us are impatient to know the detailed price and exact terms of a transaction; but actually tolerating vagueness for a while can be the more profitable path in the long term."

Furthermore, "This approach does not reflect a lack of decisiveness. Rather, it demonstrates realism about the future: our ability to predict is weaker than most of us would like to admit."

Are we, as schools, prepared to "muddle through" in such circumstances? Are we prepared to realign cultures? Are we prepared for the time and effort it will take in order to make that happen?

We should be purposeful and intentional about innovation, not simply talking about it because "it's cool" or "the in-thing" to discuss.

In the end, it's all about culture. 

Strategy of Muddling Through

Luke Johnson has a fun piece in today's Financial Times -- "Muddling through is a strategy that works." As he points out, "our instinct is to look for the black and white solution to a problem. But that approach applies rather better in theory than in practice."

Johnson is a serial entrepreneur, and, given how much we're now talking about entrepreneurship (as a concept) in independent education, there is much to glean from his insights.

For instance, he writes that "one needs to be adaptable and opportunistic to make progress. Unfortunately, [...] schools [and other entities, consultancies, etc.] can't offer guides to 'muddling through' - so it is rarely promoted as a wise philosophy [...]."

Isn't that the very issue with which we are grappling right now in schools, as we transition from an industrial economy/culture to a creative economy/culture? We are struggling with how to transition our curricula and programs from discipline-specific approaches with a "this is how we do it, always" mentality into approaches that promote adaptability and resilience? As Johnson says, "entrepreneurs tend to be experts at muddling through. They can cope with significant uncertainties in their work, while retaining a sense of confidence and a feel for priorities."

He cites able founders of start-ups who have learned what he calls "the art of the pivot," meaning that they've been able to change their business model(s) completely because their initial concept didn't succeed. Resilience, n'est-ce pas? Or, to use another word, muddling.

Instead of the 'strategy' of muddling through, we ought to consider it the art of muddling through. An aspirational goal, perhaps?

 

Manage for Innovation

Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, co-authors of The Progress Principle (look under my book reviews, in the category list to the right), recently published a useful blog post on innovation and creativity for the Harvard Business Review blog.

I've been writing a bit about innovation recently--if not directly, then indirectly. Innovation in schools is challenging, there's no doubt about it. Everyone has to be involved, and impediments (i.e. too many parameters and rules) have to be removed, if it is to flourish.

Amabile and Kramer focus on the issue of innovation through the lens of management, which is a structure we usually identify as anathema to innovation--or, at the very least, some sort of impediment to it. As the authors say, however, "You really can manage for innovation, but it starts by knowing what drives creativity in people who generate and develop the new ideas that, when implemented, will become tomorrow's innovations." This phrase should garner the attention of school leaders.

They identify four factors that savvy managers can balance in order to motivate creativity and innovation:

1. Goals -- strategic direction toward a worthy purpose, neither too loose nor too constrained. "Intrinsic motivation and creativity wither when people are told exactly what to do and how to do it; they need the autonomy to apply their own specific skills and talents."
2. Evaluation -- the crucial balance here involves "a great deal of frequent, work-focused evaluation and feedback that is truly informative and constructive. Ideally, these evaluations involve peers (as well as supervisors) openly discussing the work. To perform at their creative peak, people need to know that every idea will be respected enough to merit thoughtful consideration." In other words, strong evaluation pressure doesn't work, and neither does loose evaluation. "The best managers [...] accepted [...] failures as a necessary part of doing creative work and helped employees search for lessons and opportunities in those failures."
3. Reward -- "Creativity flourishes when employees know that rewards and recognition will follow from good, creative efforts--without being told constantly about exactly which rewards will follow from which actions. [...] Some of the most positive rewards are not monetary." One person they interviewed stated that, "part of the reward is having your managers listen to what you have done. Having access to your supervisors increases internal motivation, so managers should be available on an informal basis."
4. Pressure -- "Having the positive pressure of an optimally challenging assignment--being given an important problem to solve that no one else has been able to crack--can supercharge intrinsic motivation and creativity." Conversely, being told to do a particular job "in a particular way, with no tolerance of failure, little expectation of recognition for success, and extreme, arbitrary time pressure, can kill anyone's creativity motivation."

Of course, this is all lovely, in theory. In practice, how does it work in the real world, boots-on-the-ground in schools? This approach would work well in a number of schools I'm familiar with, but I also know of schools where the management culture would never be open to this kind of management (and the teachers know it).

Another important question: for the Head of School to manage in this way, how would the relationship between Head and Board Chair (+ entire board) need to look? Is there spill-over into governance, inasmuch as this is an internal management issue? For a Board that is not accustomed to having a Head exercise this kind of management approach inside the school, how might the Head educate the Board on its worth?

News Flash: Online Learning is Mainstream

Can we please stop talking about online learning as if it's something new?

At this point (April 2012), online learning is not innovative, as a concept. There might be inventive ways of handling teaching and learning via the digital medium, but we've long since passed the stage where we could label it "innovative." The first online class for higher education was offered over twenty years ago (University of Phoenix), and public schools began using online coursework around fifteen years ago.

Online learning is decidedly mainstream. It is a viable option, there are quality providers (and those that lack quality), and there are different methods involved with the classes.

Independent schools are still trying to determine whether to award credit for online courses, whether to allow online courses when the same face-to-face courses exist already, whether the quality is as good as what an independent school would expect normally within its walls, and so forth.

But it's not innovative any longer. Rather, it's a question of to what degree a school will assimilate online coursework into its repertoire of course offerings.

Therefore, when we look at the "growth curve" for online learning, we need to understand that this curve shows the degree to which online options are offered and taken; it is not showing any degree of innovation. This is an adoption curve, not an innovation curve.

From this point on, any "growth" in the online learning market place is akin to "growth" in a mature industry. Consider Coca-Cola, IBM, 3M, and so forth: they are still trying to grow, but their growth is incremental because many of their products are already mature. To be sure, they put much time and money into their R&D departments in order to innovate, and these products do produce growth, but the "growth" of their core products tends to occur as a result of adoption in new markets.

Online learning--a core product of the world of teaching and learning--has a place in independent schools. That should be self-evident by this point, and we should stop saying "Wow! Look at the shine on that!" everytime we hear someone talk about it. We will spend (waste?) the next three to five years figuring this out, then realize that we've been smitten so much by online learning that we've forgotten to pay attention to other innovations. Schools won't have money to invest in creating/seeking innovative products that enhance teaching and learning because we will have been so busy implementing "innovative" online learning...that is now entering its third decade of existence.

Third decade?! That sounds as if we're behind the curve. Not in front of it; not riding the crest of the wave. Behind.

Likeliest Organizational Changes in Education in Next 3-5 years

One of the things I love to do is to read what industries other than education are doing to advance themselves, as industries. The November 2011 issue of McKinsey Quarterly features an article entitled, "How social technologies are extending the organization." In that article, the authors undertake a deep dive into their data, gathered by over 4,000 respondents; their findings are meant to correlate with the degree of social media usage within the industry.

One of the most interesting data pieces deals with "likeliest organizational changes in next 3-5 years, without constraints." This post is not about prognosticating what technological developments will occur; rather, it's meant to be more holistic, in the sense of looking at an entire organizational system.

Here are top five (i.e., most likely), in descending order of likelihood:

1. The boundaries between employees, vendors, and customers will blur
2. Teams will self-organize
3. Decisions will be based primarily on data rather than opinion/experience
4. The organization's formal hierarchy will become much flatter or disappear altogether
5. Data used for decision-making will mostly be collected through experiments

Here are the bottom five (i.e., least likely), in descending order of likehlihood:

1. Individual performance will be evaluated by peers rather than by managers
2. Employees will have much more discretion in choosing which tasks to work on
3. Employees will play a much greater role in selecting leaders
4. Large companies and/or business units will disaggregate
5. Compensation decisions will be made by peers rather than by managers

Do these likelihoods have any corollation in schools? I think the answer is "partially." Following are some thoughts:

1. Teams will self-organize, if teachers and administrators become more savvy with social media
2. Decisions will be made on the examination of data, if we learn which data to collect and how to analyze them
3. The formal hierarchy of schools will become much flatter...highly unlikely. Perhaps they will become more complex first, then flex to a flatter model.
4. Data used for decision-making will mostly be collected through experiments...only if "bold schools" (as Will Richardson calls them) are willing to be intentionally experimental.
5. Individual performance will be evaluated by peers rather than managers...no, managers will continue to have a place, but more peers may be incorporated by those "bold schools".
6. Large business units (think: divisions) will disaggregate...highly unlikely, although there may be a "bold school" that is willing to experiment with boundary-less divisions. 

What do readers think about these data points from McKinsey? Please post a comment with your thoughts.

Who's In Charge of Innovation?

Who is in charge of innovation at your school?

This is a question I've been mulling over for some time now. Should it be one person, someone who "conducts" the innovation happening in the school? Who is your chief articulator of innovation? Who spells out what is going on, who is doing it, and what the benefits to teaching and learning are?

Arguably, it's the Head of School. Yet, the Head is busy doing plenty of tasks. Should the Head, then, delegate the responsibility of fostering innovation to someone? If so, to whom?

Are the traditional "line positions" [division head, directors, etc.] malleable enough so as to incorporate this responsibility? If we look to the business world, we see that they have carved out some new roles. The two principal roles are Chief Learning Officer and/or Chief Innovation Officer. When you dive into these job descriptions, you note something interesting: some of the more traditional line position responsibilities have come into these new roles, as "innovation" or "learning" touches multiple "traditional" areas of operations.

As schools, we talk often about innovation; we desire to be known as "innovative." Yet, will we consider re-thinking our structures in order to better align with the spirit of an innovative culture?

I submit this post as a general query to the readership. I would welcome your thoughts!

Saying Goodbye to the Old Way

An article in today's Financial Times, "Chief needs to say goodbye to old BlackBerry way," got me thinking about schools, in the face of all the developments we've seen in technology these past four or five years. Not just the developments, but the attitudes of a surprising number of schools who are just "going to wait and see" what becomes of it all.

The decline of the BlackBerry seems a little too akin to the enrollment declines faced by many independent schools. "BlackBerry sales were likely to continue to decline ahead of the launch of its next-generation of smartphones built around a new operating system and new silicon chips [...]" (19).

"That collapse [of share price] underscores senior management and boardroom missteps over the past five years, although arguably the seeds of RIM's decline were sown years ago, and go to the root of its corporate culture and business model."

"RIM [...] had firmly established itself as the premier smartphone maker. [...] But the mobile world was about to change and RIM, like others including Nokia and Motorola, was caught offguard."

"In 2007, Apple launched the iPhone and 18 months later came the first Google Android smartphone. With the online application stores that these companies launched, the new touch-screen based handsets altered the dynamics of the smartphone market."

"RIM's senior management underestimated the impact of the iPhone. 'They [...] dismissed it,' said Ron Adner, professor of strategy at Tuck School of Business and an expert on innovation. Adner believes "that many of RIM's problems stem from this error."

What error is that, again? Dismissal of an idea as a non-winner. As something silly. As something fleeting.

Whether it's online learning or some other idea that's being tried out, it would be dangerous for schools to dismiss these things entirely. Innovation is difficult for schools, as we're not accustomed to it. For so many years, it was easy to "do school" because the formula was known and it was tangible. No longer.

The BlackBerry story rings true, on a number of levels. Can you think of other ways in which it rings true in schools?

For me, the biggest take-away from this article is the following: if an invention proves to be a ubiquitous preference, will schools bury their heads in the sand and ignore it, thinking to themselves that they'll re-ensconce themselves in that which has always worked, and that, somehow, by re-ensconcing themselves, they'll come out ahead? 

Accountability and Small Teams

When there is special work (projects, etc.) to be undertaken in schools, we turn our minds immediately to the question of who ought to sit on the committee charged with that work. Schools are, at their core, human/social enterprises, so it is only natural that we should consider first the "who" when embarking on special work. Or should we?

I propose that, first and foremost, instead of "who" should be involved, we would benefit from considering "how many." In other words, we ought to focus on establishing a constraint of team size, so as to ensure accountability, enable nimble decision-making, and increase the probability of reaching a solution/working model in a shorter period of time. The notion of imposing a constraint is not to tie our hands; rather, as design-thinking methodology underscores, it forces creativity and innovation to emerge. It forces us to make choices that correspond to the constraint, and keeps everyone focused on attaining the desired outcome.

Consider, for example, Amazon.com, where Jeff Bezos restricts team size, not necessarily by a strict number, but by how many people two pizzas will feed. As Andrew Hill writes in today's edition of the Financial Times, "This focus improves accountability and clarity--in a small group, no one can avoid pulling their weight and no one can claim they don't know what the goal is." An additional benefit to the deployment of small teams is that any advance toward the team's goal resonates and ripples positively throughout the team, thereby energizing the team.

Of course, for that to occur, teams must be given great autonomy, so that they feel a sense of ownership of their work. The notion of ownership will make the work more rewarding, and the sense of rewarding work will drive motivation. Voila, a (small) virtuous cycle.

We don't need to assemble such teams for "grands projets" alone; even the more mundane or pedestrian projects would benefit from this structure. In other words, we need not assemble a small team to "change the world," when what we need the most often is a desire to solve a specific problem.

Informed Skeptics

The current issue of Harvard Business Review contains an article by Shvetank Shah, Andrew Horne, and Jaime Capella, entitled, "Good Data Won't Guarantee Good Decisions" (23-25). The authors argue that the era of Big Data is leading to a false sense of confidence in decision-making. "Investments in analytics can be useless, even harmful, unless employees can incorporate that data into complex decision making. Our research offers a succinct warning to managers. At this very moment, there's an odds-on chance that someone in your organization is making a poor decision on the basis of information that was enormously expensive to collect" (23).

So, who is making decisions in a given organization, and what is their ability "to find and analyze relevant information"? The authors evaluted 5,000 employees at 22 global companies and sorted them into three groups:

• unquestioning empiricists -- those who trust analysis over judgment
• visceral decision makers -- those who go with their gut, exclusively
• informed skeptics -- those who balance judgment and analysis, possess strong analytic skills, and listen to others' opinions but are willing to dissent

As they point out, the informed skeptics are the folks that companies (schools??!!) should be cultivating. However, as they discovered in their evaluation, only 38% of employees and 50% of senior managers fall into this group.

Interesting (to me, at any rate) also are the four problems they identify that "prevent organizations from realizing better returns on their investment in Big Data":

1. Analytic skills are concentrated in too few employees -- in other words, "too many companies [schools??!!] are stuck in the 'expert phase'; they have a handful of highly skilled analtyics professionals but have not begun to train everyone else to make use [of analytics].
2. IT needs to spend more time on the "I" and less time on the "T" -- so many departments have "diverse data demands or may need to use data in ways they can't clearly articulate. Meeting these challenges requires anthropological skills and behavioral understanding--traits that are often in short supply in IT departments."
3. Reliable information exists, but it's hard to locate. The analogy: a library with no card catalog (print or digital), or perhaps with books that lack covers. What is more, "the rise in social media [...] has made it even harder to manage analytic content. Fewer than 44% of employees say they know where to find the information they need for their day-to-day work."
4. Business executives don't manage information as well as they manage talent, capital, and brand. In short, they "consider themselves too inexpert to get deeply involved in how data is shared across the organization. Managers need to wake up to the fact that their data investments are providing limited returns because their organization is under-invested in understanding the information."

The obvious solution, of course, is to develop more informed skeptics. How might one do that, especially in independent schools? First, though, I would ask this: what data are we using? What data ought we to be using? Then we can deal with the question of how to develop informed skeptics. Regardless of the answer(s), though, we can move forward with one certainty: we do need to train our faculties and administrators to increase their data literacy, with school leadership showing the way. That data then needs to be brought into decision making, so that folks can see how data can inform decisions.

We all need to understand the factors and calculations behind the numbers, and we must learn to think critically about their accuracy, sample sizes, biases, and, of course, quality. (Statistics, anyone??) Coaching could play an important role here, as could project-based learning; we say that we want to see our students do these things, but why shouldn't we model it for them?