Introit

What's In Store for 2011 at Introit

2010 was a year of significant growth for Introit, as we have expanded our readership to six continents and over 40 countries. We re-designed the blog banner to better reflect the message of what we're trying to do, which is to praise schools for what they do well and to challenge them to always seek improvement. Be innovative, yet respectful of past accomplishments and traditions. We added Facebook and Twitter accounts this year, and these two social media tools have enhanced our normal blog subscriptions.

We hope that 2011 will be another strong year for this blog. Here are some things we hope to accomplish:

1. grow our readership by 15%
2. continue the success of the "Heads Speak for Themselves" series, which will run through 12/11
3. prototype a "real-time leadership focus" series by selecting a team to follow during the 2011 Tour de France, with an eye to team dynamics and team leadership. The race lasts almost one full month, so it should be an interesting study!
4. publish a six-part series on what "global education" means

If you would be interested in having Introit cover additional topics, please reply to the "Comments" section of this post and let us know -- and also let us know if you would be interested in being a guest blogger on any particular topic!

Best Wishes for a Happy and Healthy New Year!

Centenarians and Schools

My great-aunt passed away last week at the age of 100. Quite a remarkable woman. She gave up driving at 98, and she had all her faculties about her until the last month or two, when they began to slip, even though her long-term memory remained as sharp as a tack.

Driving home from the funeral service last evening, I couldn't help but marvel at her life span, and what that meant for organizations to which she was attached. For example, she was a member of the same church for 100 years. That meant that she remembered when the preaching changed from German to English, among myriad other changes and evolutions.

100 years with the same organization! Of course, that got me thinking about centenarians and schools. Those folks who are around 100 years old right now have been around longer than the majority of independent schools in the United States. Imagine being able to tap into someone who has 100 years (more or less) with your school...wouldn't that be (potentially) powerful? One wonders what stories they might share, what changes they agreed (and disagreed) with, how many heads of school they might have seen pass through the school, not to mention how many school sites they might have seen (starting out in one location, moving to another, then building a third, etc.). Their testimony to the life of a school would be noteworthy. One hopes that development offices and heads are making connections with these folks, helping to fill in the "story of the school."

In contemplating my great-aunt's life, I had to marvel at her capacity for patience and perspicacity, meaning that I admired how she was able to weather change beautifully, always considering the good that would come in the long-term. In that sense, she is a model for boards of trustees, whose focal point should be on the "school-that-is-becoming..." That sense of duty toward an institution is what separates successful schools from failing ones: patience and perspicacity help to steer the ship on a steady course.

Ones and Twos

In Jim Collins’ best selling management book Good to Great, he demonstrates through massive research and comprehensive analysis that when it comes to CEO succession, internal candidates dramatically outperform external candidates. The core reason is knowledge. As I discussed in Why We Prefer Founding CEOs, knowledge of technology, prior decisions, culture, personnel, et al tend to be far more difficult to acquire than the skills required to manage a larger organization. Collins does not, however, comprehensively explain why internal candidates fail. I will attempt to do so here.

via bhorowitz.com

From "Ben's Blog," authored by Ben Horowitz, co-founder and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm. Here, Ben elaborates on how CEO-types that he calls "Ones" and "Twos" act in their leadership roles, based on his experiences. Certainly applicable to independent schools and the Head of School position in particular. Additionally, it makes one think about senior leadership teams.

Stacked Platforms

Steven Johnson, in his recent publication, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, posits that "the most generative platforms come in stacks" (189). He goes on to provide examples, most notably the layered platform of the Web, yet also cultures and the creative arts. His point is that good ideas are built upon, layer by layer, and that, eventually, the "something" that transcends yet binds these layers ends up creating innovation and power, simultaneously. Of course, the catch is that there is some sort of organizing principle that makes it all work, and that the organizing principle itself may end up being redesigned by those using it. Very thought-provoking.

One parallel for schools is the platform stack that we call the faculty. Consider all the layers of faculty in your school; these layers are not simple, by any stretch of the imagination. What is the level of functionality of the faculty? In other words, can the faculty function as a whole and as separate parts, and at different times and for different reasons? Surely it happens already, but what is that organizing principle that makes it work? Is there an absence of such an organizing principle? Are faculty members more wedded to a division, or to the school as a whole? Where do they find inspiration and satisfaction of the soul? Are they generative, as a group? Where do they find time to be generative, and who organizes that?

Questions for your school: does your faculty "platform stack" work well? What organizing principle transcends the stack itself? Do traditional models of faculty organization provide the kind of applications and (sometimes) innovations in curriculum and instruction that you'd like to see (think: department, division, discipline, grade level)? Those units may be functional and utilitarian, but do they provide full faculty alignment with school mission, or is it really a hit-or-miss approach?

And here's one last thought: do those units provide or promote leadership within the faculty? If not, where is leadership promoted? From where / from whom?

Is your faculty "generative"?

Built to Last, Not to Lose

The Q1.2011 issue of Briefings on Talent and Leadership has an excellent article on private equity. The article focuses on firms of various sizes that were "originally formed as disposable entities to pursue ambitious, one-off investment opportunities."

The one-off opportunities, however, grew into multiple opportunities, meaning that the original intent behind many of these companies was altered; they became firms that have sought value and permanence. That's a game-changer.

The parallel for independent schools is this: just as many folks in the business world are looking for private equity firms that are "built to last," so too are parents and donors looking at independent schools that are built to last. With philanthropic dollars given out more sparingly these days, as a school, you have to be on top of your game, or you won't get those dollars. No one likes to give to a loser. Those are harsh words, but they ring true in this economic environment. This economy has been a game-changer for us.

If you want to accomplish grand plans as a school, make sure you get your ducks in a row first. The board needs to be doing the right things at the right time and for the right reasons; so do the Head of School and his/her administrative team, right through the faculty and staff. Alignment had better be good!

Schools need to be built to last, not to lose.

Deal...Or No Deal?

No matter how you feel about him personally, Mark Zuckerberg is getting a lot of press lately, the most recent being Time magazine's naming of him as Person of the Year (2010).

The Financial Times ran a lengthy article on him last weekend (Dec 4-5, 2010), detailing his evolution into 'serious' chief executive, one who is out to change how business is done all across the globe. The article's author focused on a new feature at Facebook, called Facebook Deal, whereby the user "checks in" to his/her favorite haunt (local shop), and that shop provides a discount to the Facebook user, in the hope that the discount will entice the person to buy more. For example, The Gap gave away 10,000 pairs of jeans to the first 10,000 Facebook users who "checked in" at Gap stores. Think of the possibilities: stores now have direct access to the customer while the customer is actually IN the store! Coupons, promotions, individualized attention, etc. As one consultant said to the FT author, "He just changed how local commerce works." And that was before lunch!

I have to wonder how and when Facebook will truly impact education. To be sure, our students use Facebook with ever-increasing regularity, and there can be instances of cyber-bullying and the like. What I'm talking about, though, is the delivery of educational content, educational choice, and the like. What if Zuckerberg were to take Facebook Deal to the level of impacting education? Same concept: "check in" as part of an admission tour at an independent school you might consider attending. By checking in, the school can "give" the student some promotional material, and determine what kinds of courses the student might be interested in, etc. I'm sure that admission departments could find myriad uses for a Facebook Deal.

Schools and Organizational Design

In terms of their organizational design, schools look pretty much the same today as they have for hundreds of years. On the one hand, that can be viewed as good news, since it means that there is something inherently right with the model. On the other hand, should we be examining the organizational design, asking whether it continues to make sense? For certain schools and communities, traditional design may make sense; for others, however, it may be that a new organizational design is needed.

How does one transform the design of an organization? It doesn't happen overnight, that's for sure. Can a school leader run the machine "lean and mean" while altering the design, or does that leader have to allow the school to "put on some weight", a method that encouarges the school to take its time to transform into something new?

What might a new organizational design look like for your school? Is a re-design taking place currently?

Parallels: Cloud Computing and Change in Schools

Philip Delves Broughton had an insightful article, "Clouds are no longer blue-sky thinking" in today's edition of the Financial Times (Dec 7, 2010).

Broughton highlights the veritable explosion in cloud computing and the concomitant generational disagreements regarding its utility and safety. Generational disagreement plays a significant role; as he says, "One way you can be sure a revolution is under way is when generations fundamentally disagree. [...] For managers trying to weigh up whether this is a fad or here to stay, where you stand may just be a function of your age." To further flesh out what he means by "a function of your age," he provides the following: "For digital natives, the cloud is as natural to computing as the keyboard. The cloud is Facebook, Zynga, and Gmail. To an older generation, the cloud is WikiLeaks and data breaches."

The same sort of generational discomfort is evident in independent schools. Technology is causing great shifts to occur, and those shifts can happen outside the locus of control of the faculty or administration. Yet, technology aside, as one generation begins to hand off leadership to a younger generation, the same kind of seismic shift occurs: a new administrator, a new program, a new way of looking at daily operations in a division. Just as cloud computing is forcing companies (and schools, for that matter) to no longer "own" their data by means of possessing a server within school walls, handing over leadership responsibility is tremendously difficult for many in schools.

Leaders will need to pick and choose which leadership positions it makes sense to fill now, and which ones can be filled soon, just as schools and businesses will need to determine which data can live "in the cloud" now and which can be migrated later.

Lastly, just as cloud computing allows smaller companies (and schools) to mine their data more effectively in ways known heretofore to large corporations only, so too will leadership changes benefit schools in more ways that most can see currently. There are silver linings here, after all!

Introverted Leadership

A paper dealing with introverts and extroverts in leadership roles was published recently in the Academy of Management Journal. Authors Adam Grant, Francesca Gino, and David Hoffman, business professors all, argue in "Reversing the Extroverted Leadership Advantage: The Role of Employee Proactivity" that the degree to which a leader's reports (employees) are proactive is a central variable when studying character types of leaders.

Most of us assume, I think, that extroverts are "natural" leaders because they like to be the center of attention and feel at ease when it comes to talking in social situations; they tend to be very good at motivating folks and leading change. As this paper points out, however, those things happen when a leader's people tend to be largely passive. As such, an extrovert can provide a very clear lead for his/her employees.

What is fascinating (to me, at least) is what happens when the employees are proactive, not passive, in their habits. In this situation, the introvert is a better leader because s/he takes the time to listen to employees, frequently utilizing their advice when it comes to making decisions. Introvert leaders can absorb a great deal of input, which helps them to discover leading practices and/or the best business models possible for their given business(es).

The article also points to the traditional difficulty of an introvert finding his/her way into leadership roles, which tend to be awarded most often to extroverts. The advice is fairly simple: an introvert has to find a subtle way of showing that s/he can lead; once in a leadership position, however, the introvert will quickly show his/her strengths, no longer needing to be concerned about becoming "more extroverted" in order to "win" people.

That "subtle way" of showing leadership can be difficult in independent schools. Nothing can replace a good mentor who is willing to match an employee's talents with a task that needs to be done. And that goes for introverts as well as extroverts.

Changing How School Works

The business education section of the Nov. 29 (2010) Financial Times carried an interesting story by Della Bradshaw on the new head of the Kellogg School (business school) at Northwestern University. Sally Blount is that new head, and she is on a mission to make Kellogg a global player.

As I read the article, I wondered if there wasn't a correlation to the next stage of growth for independent schools.

What Blount finds fascinating is that the traditional two-year MBA program is finding its greatest competition...from within Kellogg, specifically from the school's intensive, one-year MBA program, which runs June to June. The two-year program enrolls 500 students, while the one-year program enrolls 100, 56% of whom are from outside the United States. Blount says, "Over time, we will be shrinking the two-year and expanding the one-year program." Part of her early strategy is to take the Kellogg one-year program outside the US and teach it in overseas locations. She acknowledges that funding this vision will be a challenge, yet she maintains that it is absolutely necessary if Kellogg is to identify and maintain an advantage in a saturated, competitive market. She says that some of the expansion overseas "will involve bricks and mortar, while elsewhere it will involve partnerships."

She is quick to point out the obvious, however: changing a culture is hard work. The cultural shift she sees at Kellogg involves faculty, students, and particularly administration, but she is willing to accept the challenge of changing the culture over a number of years.

In discussing costs associated with education, Blount points out that "retaining and appointing faculty stars is one reason why academic costs have risen in higher education in general, as is the high-intensity teaching method." She goes on to say that "Face-to-face learning is expensive." Kellogg is looking to put more basic lecture materials online in an effort to curb those escalating costs. "Basic courses will go electronic and face-to-face will be more nuanced."

Though Blount is admittedly a go-getter, can schools take any lessons from what she is looking to do at Kellogg?