What We Know Works:
A contemporary approach to leadership,
change management and enterprise in schools
August 2013
Context: About Dr Phil
Dr Philip SA Cummins
Focus: Cultures of Leadership and Learning
Teaching and working in and with schools since 1988: Presenter,
Thought Leader, Consultant, Author, Textbook Writer, Syllabus
Writer, PhD in Australian History
Managing Director: CIRCLE – The Centre for Innovation, Research,
Creativity and Leadership in Education – supporting over 1,200
schools and other organisations nationally and internationally
Adjunct Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, University of
Tasmania
phil@circle.org.au
www.circle.org.au
+61 410 439 130
Provocation 1:
Do we provide meaningful leadership?
• Do we do leadership well?
• What is the purpose of our leadership?
• What should be the content basis for our
leadership?
• What might be the relationship between change,
content, process, context, delivery, people,
environment and purpose in schooling? What
might make this relationship meaningful?
Cultural ambassadors?
As an observer of life in organizations, I think I can say with some
authority that people who are making an effort to embrace the
future are a happier lot than those who are clinging to the past.
That is not to say that learning how to become part of the twentyfirst century enterprise is easy. But people who are attempting to
grow, to become more comfortable with change, to develop
leadership skills – these men and women are typically driven by a
sense that they are doing what is right for themselves, their
families and their organizations. That sense of purpose spurs
them on and inspires them during rough periods.
And those people at the top of enterprises today, who encourage
others to leap into the future, who help them overcome natural
fears, and who thus expand the leadership capacity in their
organizations – these people provide a profoundly important
service for the entire human community.
We need more of these people. And we will get them.
Professor John P Kotter, Harvard Business School
Provocation 2:
Are we educating wise children?
Wisdom and values cannot be communicated like knowledge
or facts. Educational experience can point young people in
the desired direction but a free response is an essential part
of any authentic personal change.
M Crawford & G Rossiter, Reasons for living, education and
young people’s search for meaning, identity and spirituality,
2003
Wise leaders?
• We are all still learning about leadership
• Our intentions and execution most likely will both need to improve from
here onwards
• We will make mistakes along the way
• Our leadership must be focused on doing the hard things
• Our leadership must be focused on helping other people
• Our leadership must help people change to become the people they
need to be
• Our leadership must be sustainable and achievable
• Our leadership needs integrity – even though it’s hard and it makes us
vulnerable
• If we are not prepared to do this, we shouldn’t do the job
• We should be prepared to do this – because most likely we can
Challenges
• How do we stop perpetuating the status quo?
• How do we challenge our often unstated rationale of why
we do what we do?
• What changes will help us to do what works instead of
what we have always done?
• What change management processes can work in and
around this to support people in the process?
What cultures of leadership and change actually work?
Today: Building the school leader’s
confidence and expertise with change
To make human civilization work well [with 21C] technologies and exist at
peace with Gaia, we need another revolution, putting into place the
desirable management, laws, controls, protocols, methodologies and
means of governance. This is a complex and absolutely necessary
transition – the 21st Century Revolution…
Whether the revolution happens smoothly depends on the education that
is put in place and how widely it is acted upon.
James Martin, The meaning of the 21st century, 2006
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Values and leadership in schools
Who am I? A servant’s heart for leadership
Where do I fit in? Context and strategy in school leadership
How can I best serve others? Leadership and change in schools
Building the enterprise of your school
(Note the sequence – leadership first, change management follows)
Your take-aways
Five things:
• You know more about
• You feel more confident about
• You might use at your school tomorrow
• You might think about carefully for a long time before using
at your school
1. VALUES AND LEADERSHIP IN SCHOOLS
What We Stand Against
1. Lack of clear vision and plan
2. Over-emphasis on public examination/testing results
3. Hot-housing “the basics” at the expense of a broad
curriculum
4. Lack of alignment with school direction – pursuit of
selfish/self-centred aims
5. Entrenched resistance to engage with growth and new
direction (muppets)
6. Reactive instead of strategic leadership – emotional and
practical disruption
7. Resources used poorly/unwisely
8. Vision without strategy, art and people nous
Our shared educational mission
Students should:
• Become expert independent learners who set and achieve relevant,
progressive and attainable goals
• Work in relationships of interdependent collaboration with their peers,
teachers, families and communities
• Communicate effectively within and about their learning and leadership
• Participate in initiatives and programs that enable them to rehearse for
a life of meaningful contribution, learning and service to others
• Earn a reputation for being passionately engaged in challenging,
substantive and rewarding learning
Our shared educational mission
Staff should:
• Set and achieve goals as part of a professional growth plan
• Work through relationships in teams and in community as part of our
professional learning and development programs
• Promote a responsible communication CHARTER – constructive,
honest, accountable, responsible, transparent, engaging, relevant
• Contribute to deliberate, targeted and intentional initiatives that
enhance their career trajectories
• Earn a professional reputation for mastery of curriculum, competency
of pedagogy, professional growth, leadership of learning and
commitment to out culture
Our shared educational mission
Leaders should:
• Lead the achievement of good results through effective leadership in
action and a contextualised personal leadership style
• Promote good relationships through their management of team culture
and conflict resolution
• Demonstrate leadership vision and articulate this through superior
communication
• Plan for, implement and evaluate initiatives through change
management, problem-solving and decision-making capabilities
• Build good reputations that enhance our shared reputation through
team discipline
Let’s think about your challenges
with leadership for change …
It isn’t that top leaders are less skilled or less experienced than leaders of the
past. Nor are the teams they lead. The challenge is the change in roles of both
leader and team member, roles that have been reshaped in the cauldron of
intense competition and relentless change ...
Today ... it’s all about scope, speed and customer intimacy. Leadership teams
must consistently ensure that clients’ needs are met, and do it right now.
Ruth Wageman, Debra A Nunes,
James A Burruss & J Richard Hackman
Senior Leadership Teams
What are the three most significant challenges that face you in your role as a
school leader and change agent?
Our Top Change Leadership
Challenges
1. Cowardice: frightened to shake up a long-standing,
successful faculty to teach better, frightened to break
relationships, frightened to move away from established
practice
2. Relationship: negotiating the relationships with people
with whom we work – collegial, professional, supervisory,
team, personal – impact of challenge to presupposed
culture on relationship
3. Being truly present: making each interaction special for
the person in the moment – reactive vs proactive –
volume of critical moments
4. Alignment of culture and practice
Our educational
leadership challenge
Complex educational environments place difficult, challenging and
contradictory demands on leaders. Long-term educational leadership
success lies in clear purpose and direction, strong values and
organisational belief which enhance team flexibility and responsiveness.
Leaders in education must be adaptable and possess many skills to meet
challenges, including:
• Finding new and better ways of doing things
• Accepting greater levels of responsibility
• Understanding the implicit need for decision-making by making
judgements, managing risk and allowing freedom of action by team
members
Why do you want to lead?
• Is it someone you’ve seen?
– Modelling
• Is it the ability to have things done a particular
way?
– Power
• Is it to be able to make a difference?
– Influence
• Is it to be able to help others do what they do?
– Servant
Do you have a mandate to lead?
Leadership based on bureaucratic authority seeks compliance by relying
on hierarchical roles, rules, and systems expectations.
Leadership based on personal authority seeks compliance by applying
motivation theories that meet psychological needs, and by engaging in
other human relations practices.
By contrast, leadership based on moral authority relies on ideas, values,
and commitment. It seeks to develop a shared followership in the school
– a followership that compels parents and principals, teachers and
students to respond from within.
TJ Sergiovanni, Leadership for the schoolhouse, How is it different? Why
is it important?, 2004
Defining our leadership
Our leadership begins with who we are as a person, flows
into who we want to be and is demonstrated through our
actions.
Our leadership practice reflects our capacity …
to motivate, influence and direct people
to achieve willingly the team or organisational goal
5 Principles of
Values-based Leadership
1. Leadership begins with identifying and understanding our values then
placing them at the core of what it is that we do. They should be the
context for and the justification of all of our actions and relationships.
2. Our values should derive from, be driven by and nurture the
relationships within our community.
3. We construct our identities as individuals and as members of our
community by negotiating the relevance of our values in our daily
lives.
4. We need to develop and acknowledge shared values that all of our
team members can apply.
5. All team members need to adopt strong personal positive moral
values that align with our team’s desired values.
Your Values, Your Leadership
Leaders must clarify and understand their own belief systems
in order to transmit good organizational values to others.
RF Russell, The Role of Values in Servant Leadership
What are the values that matter the most in leadership of
schools?
Write a list of 10 values which are important for leaders.
Choose the three values that define or encapsulate your
leadership.
Discuss with the person next to you – why are these values
are so integral to you as a person and you as a leader?
What We Stand For
Your questions
Your take-aways
One thing:
• You know more about
• You feel more confident about
• You might use at your school tomorrow
• You might think about carefully for a long time before using
at your school
2. WHO AM I?
A SERVANT’S HEART
FOR LEADERSHIP
The Challenge of Service
Contemporary models of
leadership emphasise the
qualities of humility and will
power, as well as an
understanding of how to resolve
the apparent tension between
these two:
– What is my value system?
– How well do I value those around
me?
– How well connected am I to my
community and its needs?
– Am I the servant of my fellows?
Who am I?
Leadership begins with
identifying and
understanding your values
– your fundamental beliefs,
those principles, standards
and qualities which you
consider to be worthwhile
and desirable.
The hardest thing is to be yourself in a world that is trying its best, day and
night, to make you like everyone else.
ee cummings
Where do I fit in?
Leadership develops as we
consider the context we find
ourselves within.
It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or
where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in
the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly ...
who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy
cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the
worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with
those cold and timid souls who have never known neither victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt
How might I best serve others?
Leadership continues as
we recognise the people
and needs within our
context and how our skills
and values might aid those
around us.
I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore, that I can
do, or any kindness I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me
not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
E de Grellet
Let’s think about
your leadership model …
Not until we have considered our leadership model at the level of its
values, assumptions, and principles, can we discern to what extent we are
leading from a power or a servant base.
ST Rinehart, Upside down: The Paradox of Servant Leadership
What kind of leadership model are you currently operating within?
Write down three essential characteristics of your approach to leadership
and discuss with the person next to you.
A values framework
for contemporary school leadership
Leadership that motivates,
influences and directs
others to achieve the
team’s goals willingly:
• Authenticity:
acknowledging truth
Authenticity
Service
Excellence in
values,
relationships,
learning and
leadership at all
levels in your
school
– “For real”
Transformation
• Transformation:
enabling change
– “For change”
• Sustainability: nurturing
the team and protecting
resources
– “For life”
Sustainability
• Service: serving others
first
– “For others”
Authenticity: For real
Servant leaders are honest, authentic, transparent and
trustworthy. The earn the respect of their followers; they don’t
demand it.
Trust is unquestionably of greatest importance in establishing leader
credibility and is at the heart of fostering collaboration.
JM Kouzes and BZ Posner, The Leadership Challenge
Trust provides the foundation for people to follow their leaders with
confidence and enthusiasm. However, trust must be earned.
RF Russell, The Role of Values in Servant Leadership
Valuing authenticity
• Acknowledging truth: “For real”
• Concepts:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Values
Meaning
Knowledge
Construction
Identity
Culture
Philosophy
Assumptions
Authentic leadership is …
• Underpinned by a commitment to the truth.
• Ensuring that your actions have genuineness and integrity.
• Demanding honesty in your relationships with others and,
more importantly, the capacity to be true to yourself.
• Best achieved when you are inspired by your values to
match them to your actions as best you can.
• Developing a deep knowledge of yourself.
• Made possible through a combination of self-discipline and
compassion.
Transformation: For change
Servant leaders help followers to see the possibility of
change; they encourage and give them the confidence to act
for change.
Appreciation of others by servant leaders reflects fundamental
personal values that esteem and honor people
RF Russell, The Role of Values in Servant Leadership
In addition to appreciating followers, servant leaders believe in and
encourage the people they lead.
CW Pollard, The leader who serves
Valuing transformation
• Enabling: “For change”
• Concepts:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Fluidity
Freedom
Possibility
Articulation
Explication
Permeation
Models
Outcomes
Transformational leadership is …
• Bringing about necessary change in people’s lives.
• Transforming the needs, values, preferences and aspirations of
followers so that the interests of the wider group replace the selfinterest of individuals within that group.
• Inspiring followers to not only perform as expected, but to exceed
expectations.
• Motivating followers to work for goals that go beyond immediate selfinterest, where what is right and good becomes important.
• Moving people from a position which enables them to meet their
current needs and those of their school’s culture to one where they can
adapt to the future needs and the changing context of their community.
• Combining a futures orientation with a respect for the honourable and
successful traditions of their past.
Sustainability: For life
Servant leaders share their responsibility and authority with others to meet a
greater need; they lead others to lead themselves through:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Depth: delivering leadership for the fundamental moral purpose of deep and broad
learning while caring for and among others.
Length: meeting the challenges of leadership succession, of leading across and beyond
individual leadership over time.
Breadth: distributed leadership that encompasses what leadership might deliberately
become.
Justice: socially just leadership that shares knowledge and resources with the
community.
Diversity: promoting cohesive diversity and networking among the community’s varied
components.
Resourcefulness: prudent and resourceful leadership that both recognises talent early
and wastes neither people nor money.
Conservation: steadfast preservation of long-standing purposes and honourable
traditions.
Andy Hargreaves and Dean Fink, Sustainable Leadership:
Valuing sustainability
• Nurturing the team and protecting resources: “For life”
• Concepts:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
People
Connection
Access
Portability
Alignment
Resources
Contextualisation
Environment
Aesthetic
Technology
Funding
Sustainable leadership is …
• Bringing about change that enables your team and team members to
continue to grow
• A shared responsibility that preserves resources wisely and cares for
the surrounding community and environment
• Actively engaging with the forces that affect it and building an
environment of diversity that promotes cross-fertilization of good ideas
and successful practices in communities of shared learning and
development.
• Ensuring principles, policies and processes that specifically aim to
pursue change at a rate and with a level of resources that your team
can manage.
Service: For others
Leadership must be focused on meeting the needs of others:
Servant leaders value human equality and seek to enhance the
personal development and professional contributions of all
organizational members.
Robert K Greenleaf, Servant Leadership
Values are the core elements of servant leadership; they are the
independent variables that actuate servant leader behaviour.
RF Russell, The Role of Values in Servant Leadership
Valuing service
• Serving others first: “For others”
• Concepts:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Personalisation
Plans
Accountability
Professionalism
Standards
Mission
Strategy
Permissions
Authority
Community
Consultation
Servant leadership is …
• Acknowledging the obligation to serve the needs of others
before your own needs.
• Connecting you to your team and the tasks which it must
achieve.
• Your means of expressing a genuine culture of
servanthood.
Discussion
A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way … The first
step to leadership is servanthood.
John Maxwell
In your school, what measures could be taken to either strengthen or change
leadership for real, for change, for life, for others?
Work in your table groups to discuss, before reporting back to the whole group.
For real, for change, for life, for others
Leadership in
action
Understanding
and managing
change
Resolving
conflict
Leadership
style
Leadership through
values & relationships,
authenticity,
transformation,
sustainability, service
Problemsolving and
decisionmaking
Team culture
Discipline
Communication
skills
Vision
The CIRCLE
Leadership
Capability
Framework
Leadership in Action
•
•
•
•
Demonstrates an effective understanding of key leadership tasks of setting
direction, building the team and managing the team and of the team’s
individual, group maintenance and task needs.
Employs a range of suitable and practical principles of leadership in action
to meet needs and achieve group tasks.
Demonstrates character and competence to lead by example.
Central characteristics of leadership in action are:
– Far-sighted vision and clarity of goals.
– Drive and a passion for responsibility.
– Effective team structure.
Leaders must focus more on outcomes and long-term sustainability of the
team rather than leadership style or details of tasks which can be delegated,
relying on the initiative of team members
How do I rate myself?
1= Below expectation 2 = Meets expectation 3 = Above expectation
Leadership Style
• Demonstrates a strong understanding of motivation, integrity, courage,
compassion and humility in applying a range of effective personal
approaches to leadership.
• Adopts an effective balance of participative and motivating behaviours
in making decisions and influencing the team to achieve the desired
results.
There is no ‘best’ style of leadership – leaders should develop a personal
style of leadership with practical day-to-day skills of administration and
working with people to resolve issues.
How do I rate myself?
1= Below expectation 2 = Meets expectation 3 = Above expectation
Team Culture
• Displays a mental attitude of confidence and self-belief both in individuals
and groups, provides support for all team members and contributes
effectively to high team morale through positive leadership.
• Places other before self in applying an ethos of service to the nation, the
team and its community, and team members and influencing a positive
team culture which responds appropriately to the environment.
• Leads the team through high ethical and physical standards of discipline,
respect and professionalism and influences the team to demonstrate
values of courage, initiative and teamwork.
How do I rate myself?
1= Below expectation 2 = Meets expectation 3 = Above expectation
Discipline
• In response to imposed discipline, the leader gains mastery over physical
and mental challenges and demonstrates satisfaction, a sense of
achievement and perseverance in the face of adversity
• Shows consistent self-discipline by accepting the standards taught and
applying them willingly and personally with mental control and restraint
• Influences and motivates team collective discipline through an
understanding of team members, maintaining high standards, personal
example, fair enforcement and effective communication
How do I rate myself?
1= Below expectation 2 = Meets expectation 3 = Above expectation
Vision
• Communicates to the team a clear vision which challenges, creates,
focus and commits the team.
• Successfully translates the vision into action through positive
leadership.
• Continually interprets, reviews and reinforces the team vision.
How do I rate myself?
1= Below expectation 2 = Meets expectation 3 = Above expectation
Communication Skills
• Employs effective verbal and non-verbal communication to inform,
motivate and control the team and express appropriate emotions.
• Provides responsible, accurate, brief and clear written communication
which promotes the team’s credibility and the viability of achieving the
team’s goals.
• Demonstrates effective listening and speaking skills with team
members.
How do I rate myself?
1= Below expectation 2 = Meets expectation 3 = Above expectation
Problem-Solving and
Decision-Making
• Employs a range of appropriate decision-making models which results
in timely personal decisions which meet the desired object.
• Employs team members appropriately in making decisions and avoids
groupthink in the process.
• Successfully manages the stress and risk associated with the decision.
How do I rate myself?
1= Below expectation 2 = Meets expectation 3 = Above expectation
Resolving Conflict
• Identifies potential and actual areas of functional and dysfunctional
conflict within the team
• Makes effective choices about methods of resolving conflict
appropriate to the situation
• Employs suitable conflict resolution techniques to brings
individuals/groups to short-term agreements and improve long-term
working relationships
How do I rate myself?
1= Below expectation 2 = Meets expectation 3 = Above expectation
Understanding and
Managing Change
• Employs effective change management processes and strategies to
overcome resistance and maintain team cohesiveness
• Introduces and manages desired changes in an intentional, goaloriented and purposeful way, leading to a successful change process
How do I rate myself?
1= Below expectation 2 = Meets expectation 3 = Above expectation
The CIRCLE Leadership
Capability Framework
How did I rate myself?
Leadership in
action
Understanding
and managing
change
Resolving
conflict
Leadership style
Leadership through
values & relationships,
authenticity,
transformation,
sustainability, service
Problem-solving
and decisionmaking
Team culture
Discipline
Communication
skills
Vision
Add up your scores.
Divide by 9.
Round up.
1= Below expectation
2 = Meets expectation
3 = Above expectation
Discussion
One thing I know; the only ones among you who will be really happy are those
who will have sought and found how to serve.
Albert Schweitzer
Which of these capabilities are the most important in strengthening the culture of
leadership in your school?
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Leadership in action
Leadership style
Team culture
Discipline
Vision
Communication skills
Problem solving and decision making
Resolving conflict
Understanding and managing change
Strengthening leadership
capability and culture
The school leader’s learning journey
A process of becoming better instructional leaders through
the right processes for development of our capacity, that is,
initial training, induction and continuing professional
development, including mentoring and cluster professional
development support structures.
Philip SA Cummins, Autonomous schools in Australia:
Not ‘if’ but ‘how’, CSE, February 2012
Professional Goal-Setting, Evaluation
and Growth Planning
Ongoing
Review and
Reflection
Initiation
Executive
Professional
Growth Plan
Survey &
Dashboard
Executive
Reflection
and
Evaluation
How do I serve others
and build my career?
1. Know where you stand with your values:
–
–
–
–
2.
What is my value system?
How well do I value those around me?
How well connected am I to my community and its needs?
Am I the servant of my fellows?
Put your family first: No matter how much you believe in your
school, it is not as important as your family. Make sure that you
spend your life raising your own family while doing the job of
serving the people of the school community.
How do I serve others
and build my career?
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Master the basics: Ensure that your own teaching and coaching are
superb. Other people should want to learn from you. Your classroom
should be the place you go to relax!
Focus on people: Acquiring technical skills are important but the most
successful school leaders master skills related to relationships and
strategy.
Participate in mentoring and coaching: Find mentors and coaches for
yourself; be a mentor or coach for others.
Serve professional associations: Join and serve professional
associations outside your own school.
Balance change, tradition and renewal: Learn how to balance these
competing tensions in school culture and provide solutions for them.
Initiate projects and action research: Become involved in projects that
promote action research and innovation.
5 Principles of Time Management
1. Time is a unique resource: everyone has the same amount, it cannot
be accumulated, you can’t turn it off, and it can’t be replaced.
2. Time management and prioritization like other resources benefits from
planning.
3. Time management is a very personal thing; it must fit your style and
circumstances.
4. In a sense, time management is a misnomer: we cannot actually
manage time, we can only manage ourselves in relation to time. We
can only control how we use time.
5. So in a real sense, time management is about self management and
prioritization of activities.
Long
Independent
Vehicles/ Tasks
Interactive
Vehicles /
Tasks
Time through the
system
Short
Number of vehicles/ Critical tasks
Overload
Techniques to Manage Overload
 Plan critical tasks at significantly below our peak
capacity – but do not reduce your workload.
 We can do 3 things:
1. Leave room in your plan so you have a reserve capacity to
accommodate unexpected events.
2. Use this reserve capacity wisely so that your capabilities do
not weaken.
3. Have a list of important tasks to do after the planned tasks are
accomplished. This will use your reserve capacity effectively.
Personal Management
Not Important
Important
Urgent
Not Urgent
1
Crises
Pressing Problems
Deadlines
2
3
Interruptions
Some phone calls
Some mail, some
reports
Some meetings
Proximate & Pressing
4
Prevention
Empowerment
Planning
Development
Maintenance
Communication
Trivia
Busy work
Some phone calls
Procrastination activities
“Escape” reading
“Chatting”
Time wasters
In which quadrant is most of my time spent?
What about the rest of my team?
How can I change priorities to improve my time and our time?
How well am I managing my own
leadership and change?
Think/ Pair/Share:
1. Three things I am doing well are...
2. Three things I need to improve/ focus on are...
3. How am I going to go about addressing/improving these
three things?
Your questions
Your take-aways
One thing:
• You know more about
• You feel more confident about
• You might use at your school tomorrow
• You might think about carefully for a long time before using
at your school
3. WHERE DO I FIT IN?
CONTEXT AND STRATEGY IN
CONTEMPORARY
SCHOOL LEADERSHIP
Old school
Replication of the industrial factory model in a
public system
New school
Colour, space, light constructed through a
public/private alliance
Old classroom
The 19th Century classroom –
the architecture of control
New classroom
The contemporary learning
space – the architecture of
empowerment
Old expectations
The discipline of the 3 Rs –
preparing most 14 year olds for the work force …
Old expectations
… and an elite few to rule them.
New expectations
Unlocking potential and capability –
preparing most 18 year olds for
tertiary study or training
Old curriculum
Transmitting knowledge and skills
for compliance
in a rigid and structured industrial society
New curriculum
Building understanding
for exercising judgment
in a fluid and dynamic information society
Old leadership
The natural-born heroic individual:
autocratic, participative or laissez-faire?
Authentic leadership
Building authentic leadership in teams
through values and relationships:
transformation, sustainability and servanthood
The business of schools
• Context and culture of leadership and learning focusing on
needs of students – learning is our core business.
• Values and relationships influenced by parent/student
“customer” and filtered perceptions.
• Academic and other results influence perceptions.
• Resource limitations – “more for less”.
• Not for profit – financials are the means to the end.
• Value-added results measured part-way through students’
learning cycles.
• Bricks and mortar are peripheral but highly influential
• The students are the brand.
Effective drivers for school reform
Michael Fullan, Strong Performers and Successful Reformers
Lessons from PISA, July 2011 – international research establishes
what works in helping schools to change their practice effectively :
Wrong vs. right drivers
• Accountability vs. Capacity
Building.
• Individual vs. Teamwork.
• Technology vs. Pedagogy.
• Piecemeal vs. Systemic.
Essential conditions:
• Intrinsic motivation.
• Engage students and teachers
in continuous improvement.
• Inspire teamwork.
• Affect 100% of students and
teachers.
Sequence, alignment and cohesion are essential in synthesising and
implementing change. With respect to accountability, it means colleagues
working as peers in a transparent way to get results, supported and
monitored by the centre.
Discussion
Anchoring a set of practices in a culture is difficult enough
when those approaches are consistent with the core of the
culture. When they aren’t, the challenge can be much greater.
JP Kotter, Leading Change
Are we as a school ready for the challenges of school
leadership for change in contemporary schools?
Discuss.
Establishing
principles for
excellence in
learning
Focusing the
school on its
learning
culture
Building a
supportive
pastoral care
system
Conserving
traditional
values and
relevant
learning skills
Leadership through
values,
authenticity,
transformation,
sustainability,
service
Creating a
student culture
of service and
leadership
Emphasizing
contemporary
skill sets
Making
evaluative
thinking a
priority
Teaching for
student
excellence
Defining
standards of
excellence in
student
learning
Building a
culture of
learning
7 principles of evidence-based
leadership in schools
1. Mission alignment: Understand your purpose and concentrate your
activity on this goal; don’t spread your resources too widely.
2. Open inquiry: Ask good questions; don’t expect a particular outcome.
3. Dynamic explication and experimentation: Define your processes, test
and iterate; don’t lock things down too soon.
4. Wise measurement: Use grand school averages and value-added
models; avoid benchmarks where possible.
5. Contextualised interpretation: Analyse data by finding patterns that tell
the real story; don’t let data speak for itself.
6. Balanced judgment: Temper data with intuition.
7. Collaborative improvement: Use the findings to help engage all
members of the community to construct better outcomes for more
learners.
The school leader’s expertise
Leaders must be experts in the evaluation of data, and the
data that has been assembled across research worldwide
indicates that activators are more successful than facilitators.
John Hattie, Visible Learning, 2009
Moving from data to action
• Data alone is not enough: we need to move from
information to actionable knowledge, from
evidence to improvement.
• This occurs ‘when data users synthesise the
information, apply their judgment to prioritise it,
and weigh the relative merits of possible
solutions.’
Marsh et al 2006
Solutions architecture in practice:
Telling compelling stories within a framework
The study of effective practice ‘involves more than telling
tales or relaying stories about practice’; those studying
practice need an explicit framework to guide their data
collection and focus their analysis.
Spillain 2012
Achievement:
Leadership in
action, leadership
style
Relationships:
Team culture,
Conflict resolution
Reputation: Team
culture, Discipline
School
leadership:
For real, for
change, for life, for
others
Initiatives:
Understanding &
managing change,
Problem-solving &
decision-making
Communications:
Communication,
Vision
The
CIRCLE
School
Framework
School Framework Domains
Improved culture and practice should be reflected in tangible evidence of
change in:
• Achievement: How we will improve achievement across all areas of the
school community, especially for our students – learning, leadership,
service, sport and co-curricular.
• Relationships in our community: How we will build and nurture our
important relationships – students, staff, parents, Board, alumni,
broader community members.
• Communication: How we will communicate among our community
members and to others about what we are doing and how we are
going.
• School initiatives: How we will implement what we see as the most
important programs that will benefit our community.
• The school’s reputation: How we will care for and promote the school’s
identity within and external to our community.
School Framework Domain:
Achievement
•
•
•
Values: We believe that achievement in all areas of school life and especially
student achievement should be our core business and that we should all strive
to promote and enhance it.
Aim: Our focus should be on how we will improve achievement across all areas
of the school community, especially for our students – learning, leadership,
service, sport and co-curricular.
Leadership Knowledge and Understanding:
–
–
–
–
–
•
Do I know about how to implement the principle of leadership in action?
Do I understand how to develop and implement an effective leadership style?
Do I know how to be an effective manager of the process of leadership?
Do I understand how to evaluate my own leadership?
Do I understand how to evaluate the leadership of others?
Leadership in Action:
–
–
Do I achieve good results as a leader?
Does my team achieve good results?
School Framework Domain:
Relationships
•
•
•
Values: We believe that good relationships should be at the heart of a
community’s ethos and success. In leading for relationships, we draw on
content related to personal qualities – social and interpersonal skills,
developing self and others, team culture, and conflict resolution.
Aim: Our focus should be on how we will build and nurture our important
relationships – students, staff, parents, Board, alumni, broader community
members.
Leadership Knowledge and Understanding:
–
–
–
–
–
•
Do I have a sound understanding of the principles of human behaviour?
Do I understand the principles of motivation?
Do I understand how to lead groups well?
Do I understand how to manage stress effectively?
Do I understand how to resolve conflict effectively?
Leadership in Action:
–
–
Do I build good relationships in the school?
Is my team built on principles and practice of good relationships?
School Framework Domain:
Communication
•
•
•
Values: We believe that the primary purpose of a leader is to help a team to
define and implement its shared vision. We should, therefore, aim to be
accurate, supportive and appropriate in the way we communicate with each
other. In leading communication, we draw on content that is related to personal
qualities – social and interpersonal skills, engaging and working with the
community, communication and vision.
Aim: Our focus should be on how we will communicate among our community
members and to others about what we are doing and how we are going.
Leadership Knowledge and Understanding:
–
–
–
–
•
Do I know how to construct and communicate vision?
Do I understand the principles of strategic thinking and school planning?
Do I know how to use effective planning processes?
Do I understand how to communicate effectively?
Leadership in Action:
–
–
Do I communicate well?
Is my team built on principles and practice of good communication?
School Framework Domains:
Initiatives
•
•
•
Values: We believe that we should plan for, implement and achieve programs
and initiatives well. In leading initiatives, we draw on content that is related to
vision and values, leading improvement, innovation and change, understanding
and managing change, problem-solving and decision making.
Aim: Our focus should be on how we will implement what we see as the most
important programs that will benefit our community.
Leadership Knowledge and Understanding:
–
–
–
–
–
•
Do I know how to set goals and plan for their achievement?
Do I understand the principles of functional leadership – the team, the task, the individual?
Do I understand effective problem-solving and decision-making processes?
Do I recognise and understand change-management processes?
Do I know how to build a culture of enterprise within my team?
Leadership in Action:
–
–
Do I plan for, implement and achieve programs and initiatives well?
Does my team plan for, implement and achieve programs and initiatives well?
School Framework Domain:
Reputation
•
•
•
Values: We believe that we should recognise the importance of a school’s
reputation and act in ways that enhance it. In leading for reputation, we draw
on content that is related to personal qualities - social and interpersonal skills,
developing self and others, team culture, and discipline.
Aim: Our focus should be on how we will care for and promote the school’s
identity within and external to our community.
Leadership Knowledge and Understanding:
–
–
–
–
•
Do I know how to manage my team’s identity?
Do I understand the principles of teams and team relationships?
Do I understand how to manage team culture, environment and ethos?
Do I know how to build a culture of discipline within my team?
Leadership in Action:
–
–
Do I have a good reputation and enhance our good reputation?
Does my team have a good reputation and enhance our good reputation?
Evaluation Criteria
• Outcomes: Did we achieve what we set out to achieve with
our performance?
• Processes: Have we used the best teaching and learning,
research and development, information recording and
tracking, evaluation and decision-making, and resourcing
and other business processes in our operations?
• Community Engagement: Have we engaged with and
satisfied our community’s expectations?
• Ethos: Have we enhanced our school’s ethos and values?
• Strategic Intent: Are we aligned with and contributing to our
strategic intent?
Achievement:
Leadership in
action, leadership
style
Relationships:
Team culture,
Conflict resolution
Reputation: Team
culture, Discipline
School
leadership:
For others, for
change, for life, for
real
Initiatives:
Understanding &
managing change,
Problem-solving &
decision-making
Communications:
Communication,
Vision
The
CIRCLE
School
Framework
Discussion
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
Mahatma Gandhi
In which of these domains are you most comfortable working?
–
–
–
–
–
Achievement
Relationships
Communications
Initiatives
Reputation
Now think about your school – in which of these domains might your school
improve its performance? How might this happen?
Thinking about strategy
1. An essential part of your story that connects your past,
present and future
2. Your plan to go in the right direction to ensure your story
continues in the way that you want
3. Comprises critical directional ideas supported by detailed
planning
4. Structures, resources and finances are means to
achieving strategy, not strategy in themselves
5. Strategic goals are best when they are simply expressed
and few in number – the “business card test”
In your school …
Who is the leader?
Who is the strategic thinker?
The Principal and executive teachers?
The Board?
You?
If not you, then who else?
Strategic thinking
Seeing ahead
Seeing behind
Seeing above
Seeing below
Seeing beside
Seeing beyond
Seeing it through
H Mintzberg H (1995) ‘Strategic Thinking as Seeing’,
in B Garratt (ed) Developing Strategic Thought
Your role? Seeing where others do not
Strategic competency
The ability to articulate guiding values, develop and
communicate a shared vision, develop a strategy,
and motivate others to move forward in a common
direction.
P Hallinger and K Snidvongs (2008) ‘Educating Leaders: Is
There Anything to Learn from Business Management?’
Your role? Strategic agency
Strategic architecture
Strategic architecture is not a detailed plan. It
identifies the major capabilities to be built, but
doesn’t specify exactly how they are to be built. It
shows the relative position of the major load-bearing
structures, but not the placement of every electrical
outlet and doorknob.
G Hamel and CK Prahalad (1994)
Competing for the Future
Your role? Doing the right planning
Strategic foundation
How groups and organizations engage in strategic
conversations and the quality of those conversations
is the foundation of strategic thinking.
B Davies (2003) `Rethinking Strategy and Strategic
Leadership in Schools', Educational Management
Administration & Leadership 31 (3)
Your role? Promoting conversations
Strategic focus
Why? 90%
How? 10%
Your role? Getting the
right balance
Strategic imperatives for our schools
1. Being strategically envisioned and structured
2. Being mission-aligned
3. Being contextually driven and future-oriented
Acting
strategically
Being strategically
envisioned and
structured
Extending
boundaries
Strategically
envisioned
and structured
Defining
aspirations
Building
culture
1. What works?
What might be
retained and
nurtured?
2. What doesn’t
work? What might
be done
differently?
Being mission-aligned
Heart
Head
Shoulders
1. What works? What might be
retained and nurtured?
2. What doesn’t work? What might
be done differently?
Hands
Heart
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Culture
People
Commitment
Networks
Communications
Growth
Professional development
Head
•
•
•
•
•
•
Rationale
Mission alignment
Vision
Values
Brand
Philosophy
Shoulders
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Expectations
Systems
Structure
Plans
Policies
Processes
Protocols
Hands
• Research and development
• Programs and initiatives
• Accountability and review
Being contextually-driven and
future-oriented
The
past
1. What works? What might be
retained and nurtured?
2. What doesn’t work? What
might be done differently?
Guiding
philosophy
The
future
The
present
Your questions
Your take-aways
One thing:
• You know more about
• You feel more confident about
• You might use at your school tomorrow
• You might think about carefully for a long time before using
at your school
4. HOW CAN I BEST SERVE OTHERS?
LEADERSHIP AND CHANGE IN SCHOOLS
Are we preparing our students for change?
Best practice schooling creates opportunities for individuals based on their
natural strengths and aptitudes. It has a culture that accepts and works with
young people so that their skills are acknowledged and they have the
disposition and skill to deal with the world as it is ...
Change needs to be central to all that young people experience in school
because through it young people will develop resiliency, adaptability and
personal flexibility to become not only people who can cope with change but
also agents of it ...
Schools need to deliberately create a culture of change where young people
can feel not only part of it, but also contribute to it.
D Warner, Schooling for the knowledge era, 2006
Are we ready for change?
Without an appropriate vision, a transformation effort can easily dissolve into
a list of confusing, incompatible, and time-consuming projects that go in the
wrong direction or nowhere at all ...
Accepting a vision of the future can be a challenging intellectual and
emotional task ...
In an organisation with 100 employees, at least two dozen must go far
beyond the normal call of duty to produce significant change ...
Anchoring a set of practices in a culture is difficult enough when those
approaches are consistent with the core of the culture. When they aren’t,
the challenge can be much greater ...
JP Kotter, Leading Change, 1996
Let’s think about
your approach to making things
happen…
Why do so much education and training, management consulting, and
business research and so many books and articles produce so little
change in what managers and organizations actually do?
Jeffrey Pfeffer & Robert I Sutton,
The Knowing-Doing Gap
How good are you at effecting genuine change in your job?
What is one initiative you really want to make happen this year?
Coordinating change
Conservatism and routine of habit-forming behaviours require
change management approaches based on:
• Inspiration.
• Creativity.
• External provocation, support and validation.
• Data gathering, analysis, reflection and synthesis.
• Strategy and appropriate risk-taking.
Deliberate, intentional and
targeted change
• All focused on building cultures of:
–
–
–
–
–
–
Excellence
Leadership
Learning
Improvement
Evaluation
Enterprise
• Some do it, some talk about doing it, some don’t do it.
How do we do about making
change happen?
Like this?
Or this?
Or this?
Like this guy?
Or this guy?
What are the ways in which we
can manage change?
Linear and hierarchical
model of change
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Strengths
Easy to write
Hierarchical
Authoritative
Neat
Simple
Conceptually easy to grasp
Looks good on paper
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Weaknesses
Artificial
Top-down
Reductionist
Inflexible
Ineffective
Divorced from reality
Impossible to implement
(People don’t want
to hear this!)
Linear and hierarchical
model of change
Surface effect:
• Little cultural penetration.
• Most activity occurs at an official, executive and
developmental level over a short period of time.
• Limited cycle of political significance.
• Never really progresses beyond pilot or early
implementation stage.
• Hits road blocks, takes a detour or lacks sufficient
institutional will.
Linear and hierarchical
model of change
Doesn’t reflect genuine change or grounded relationship
patterns:
• Lacking in authenticity in real time.
• Usually functions in retrospect as an exercise in historical
revisionism that maps, tracks and seeks to justify an
imagined and intended narrative of control.
• Founded less on genuine process and more on protecting
an illusion that justifies a perceived structure of power.
• Precision is elusive as perceptions of empirical
methodology and data are flawed.
• Poor selection and partiality compromises authenticity.
Organic, dynamic,
cultural model of change
Intuitive, adaptive, data-driven and unique approach:
• Influences of chaos, uncertainty, complexity and game
theory
• Potential recreational, transactional and transformative
outcomes
• Values, respects and honours the contribution of all
throughout the process
Organic, dynamic,
cultural model of change
Focuses on practicalities – what works:
• Ideas driven by practice and intuition.
• Moderated, informed and contextualised by data analysis.
• Aligned and synthesised solutions.
• Community engagement.
• Not the product of wishful thinking, pure theory or a
combination of the two.
Organic, dynamic,
cultural model of change
Strategy of “evolve and capture”:
• Experimental, playful, confident focus on working our a few
essential rules about parameters.
• Frustrates attempts to control, but does encourage one to
shepherd.
• Messy and hard to see at times.
Organic, dynamic,
cultural model of change
Sociological rather than scientific in approach:
• Aspires for validity rather than correctness.
• Authentic, credible cultural currency.
• Directional more than prescriptive.
• Intentional more than the result of certainty.
• Aspires for validity rather than correctness.
• Authentic, credible cultural currency.
• Directional more than prescriptive.
• Intentional more than the result of certainty.
Organic, dynamic,
cultural model of change
Game theory approach:
• Interactional and interactive through lost of different
‘nibbles’.
• Viral, infectious, swarming and horde-like behaviour.
• Requires focus on encouraging, guiding and enabling.
• Actioned through provision of strategic intent, cultural
alignment of key personnel then process of delegation,
supervision and feedback.
Organic, dynamic,
cultural model of change
Embedding culture through real impact:
• Real changes in what people do.
• Contractual nature: offer and acceptance, haggling and
bargaining.
• Consistent overarching aesthetic throughout design and
spaces.
Organic, dynamic,
cultural model of change
Focused on the needs of the organisation:
• Describes the energy that all need to do their work.
• Leadership that matters.
• Distributed service.
Building cultures of …
Learning
Leadership
Improvement
Excellence
Change
Evaluation
Establishing
principles for
excellence in
learning
Conserving
traditional
values and
relevant
learning skills
Focusing the
school on its
learning
culture
Building a
supportive
pastoral care
system
Leadership
through values,
authenticity,
transformation,
sustainability,
service
Creating a
student
culture of
service and
leadership
Emphasizing
contemporary
skill sets
Making
evaluative
thinking a
priority
Teaching for
student
excellence
Defining
standards of
excellence in
student
learning
Building a
culture of
learning
Leadership in
action
Understanding
and managing
change
Resolving
conflict
Leadership
style
Leadership through
values & relationships,
authenticity,
transformation,
sustainability, service
Problem-solving
and decisionmaking
Team culture
Discipline
Communication
skills
Vision
Building a
culture of
leadership
Building a culture of improvement
1. Values and Relationships: school improvement
flows from values and is achieved through the
relationships of people in community.
2. Culture-building: schools can achieve best
possible outcomes for students by developing
cultures of leadership and learning that are
principled, authentic, transformational,
sustainable and service-oriented.
Building a culture of improvement
3. Principles of change: change should be overseen
according to principles that move from ethos to
excellence to embedding to example to
enterprise.
4. School improvement outcomes: the success of a
school is best evaluated through examining its
student achievement, communications, school
initiatives, school reputation and, most
importantly, the health of relationships within and
external to its community.
Defining excellence
• Excellence in anything starts with a vision and a passion
and a will.
• Something that is excellent is of the highest quality. It
achieves the highest level of performance; it is exemplary.
In doing so it exceeds normal expectations of performance
and meets the highest expectations of what can be
achieved.
• Ultimately, a school with a strong culture of excellence is
not merely good, it sets the standard to be followed, and it
is something of great virtue and worth – it is excellent.
Building a culture of excellence
Building change through excellence means the way in which
your school community increases its willingness to strive to
be the best at what it does:
• Understanding the context: Responding to historical
perspectives of and contemporary provocations for
excellence
• Defining the culture: Constructing a vision, frameworks,
standards and goals for excellence
• Cultivating the passion: Building commitment to excellence
and collaborating in practice
Ethos:
Articulating your
culture – your
values, your
philosophy, your
strategies, your
goals
Enterprise:
Fostering a spirit
of excitement,
adventure and
initiative in your
community
Example: Building
team
performance and
discipline through
attention to the
details of your
culture
Leadership
through values &
relationships,
authenticity,
transformation,
sustainability,
service
Excellence:
Cultivating a
shared passion to
achieve your
goals to the
highest standard
Embedding:
Creating a
“leadership spine”
– the shared
culture of
leadership
practice at all
levels in your
community
Building a
culture of
change
Are we there yet?
• How will we know when we are achieving
our goals?
• What will it feel like when we are successful
in accomplishing our mission?
• How can monitor progress along the way?
• How do our benchmarks relate to our
vision?
Building a culture of evaluation
Improved culture and practice should be reflected in tangible evidence of
change in:
• Student achievement: How a school will improve student achievement
across all areas of the school community – learning, leadership,
service, sport and co-curricular
• Relationships in our community: How a school will build and nurture its
important relationships – students, staff, parents, Board, alumni,
partners and sponsors, broader community members
• Communication: How a school will communicate among its community
members and to others about who it is, what it is doing and how well it
is doing it
• School initiatives: How a school will implement what it sees as the
most important educational programs that will benefit its community
• The school’s reputation: How a school will care for and promote its
identity within and external to its community
So how does this work?
A Cultural Process:
Change in Schools
•
•
•
•
Authenticity
Transformation
Sustainability
Service
Values and
relationships
Change stages
•
•
•
•
•
Ethos
Excellence
Embedding
Example
Enterprise
• Student achievement
• Relationships in your
community
• Communication
• School initiatives
• Your school's reputation
School framework
domains
Ethos:
Articulating your
culture – your
values, your
philosophy, your
strategies, your
goals
Enterprise:
Fostering a spirit
of excitement,
adventure and
initiative in your
community
Example: Building
team
performance and
discipline through
attention to the
details of your
culture
Leadership
through values &
relationships,
authenticity,
transformation,
sustainability,
service
Excellence:
Cultivating a
shared passion to
achieve your
goals to the
highest standard
Case Study:
The Ethos Stage
Embedding:
Creating a
“leadership spine”
– the shared
culture of
leadership
practice at all
levels in your
community
The Ethos Stage
• Building change through ethos means helping a
school to research, identify and articulate what it
stands for, what it is and what it does. Ethos refers
to the identity of an organisation or groups. A
school’s ethos shapes the beliefs, ideals and
standards that characterise and motivate its
members.
• Your strategic aim in this stage is to articulate your
school’s ethos.
Outcomes in the Ethos Stage
• Student achievement: Define the rationale for a desired culture of
student achievement and the changes that will need to occur to create
this
• Communication: Engage in conversation at governance and executive
team level to gain acceptance for the notion of a collective change to
your culture of leadership
• Relationships within your community: Involve your community in
articulating your philosophy to gain their acceptance
• School initiatives: Build your executive team and its commitment to the
desired culture
• Your school’s reputation: Create the vision for your culture and develop
plans for defining and implementing your goals
Actions in the Ethos Stage
• Student achievement: Identify, record and track data on student
leadership and achievement
• Relationships within your community: Consult widely within the
community at all levels: Board, executive, staff, students, parents,
alumni, broader community
• Communication: Articulate the priority of leadership throughout the
community
• School initiatives: Develop a values-based strategic plan and an
aligned operational plan
• Your school’s reputation: Initiate a series of stories which discuss your
values and justify the need for building your leadership culture
Enablers in the Ethos Stage
• Student achievement: Encourage students with significant peer and
social influence who role-model the desired leadership model
• Relationships within your community: Build a track record of teamwork
between the governance and executive teams
• Communication: Develop a clearly defined vocabulary of leadership
and understanding of your ethos at the highest level: values, mission,
philosophy, goals, heritage
• School initiatives: Develop and implement a conceptual model of
leadership that works in your community and reflects its values
• Your school’s reputation: Cultivate a critical mass of community support
for your aspirations
Values to emphasise in the Ethos
Stage
• Consultation: Recognize the voices of students, staff, parents, alumni,
community partners and the Board in your plans and associated
documents
• Regard for the future: Allow for growth and change in your school and
its environment in the future – what you will become, not just what you
are and have been – in your strategic, operational and master plans
• Imagination: Investigate new solutions within your consultation and
planning processes
• Stewardship, heritage and tradition: Conserve the founding principles,
honourable traditions, points of distinction and successful processes of
your school
• Integrity: Correlate the words and actions of community members with
your community’s ethos and philosophy
You can do the same for each of
the stages of change ...
• Ethos: Articulating your culture – your values, your
philosophy, your strategies, your goals
• Excellence: Cultivating a shared passion to achieve your
goals to the highest standard
• Embedding: Creating a “leadership spine” – the shared
culture of leadership practice at all levels in your
community
• Example: Building team performance and discipline
through attention to the details of your culture
• Enterprise: Fostering a spirit of excitement, adventure and
initiative in your community
… and end up with this!
•
•
•
•
Authenticity
Transformation
Sustainability
Service
Values and
relationships
Change stages
•
•
•
•
•
Ethos
Excellence
Embedding
Example
Enterprise
• Student achievement
• Relationships in your
community
• Communication
• School initiatives
• Your school's reputation
School framework
domains
Your questions
Your take-aways
One thing:
• You know more about
• You feel more confident about
• You might use at your school tomorrow
• You might think about carefully for a long time before using
at your school
5. BUILDING
THE
ENTERPRISE
OF YOUR
SCHOOL
Build your
enterprise in a
cycle of school
cultural
change
Schools that encourage
a spirit of initiative and
enterprise, that teach
their members how to
take appropriate risks
and experiment have
the greatest chance of
maintaining a constant
cycle of improvement.
Ethos: Articulating
your culture –
your values, your
philosophy, your
strategies, your
goals
Enterprise:
Fostering a spirit
of excitement,
adventure and
initiative in your
community
Example: Building
team
performance and
discipline through
attention to the
details of your
culture
Leadership
through values &
relationships,
authenticity,
transformation,
sustainability,
service
Excellence:
Cultivating a
shared passion to
achieve your
goals to the
highest standard
Embedding:
Creating a
“leadership spine”
– the shared
culture of
leadership
practice at all
levels in your
community
A model for building a culture of
enterprise in your school
Building change through enterprise means the way in which your school
community encourages its members to explore new possibilities and ways
of improving itself:
• Build your enterprise
• Lead for enterprise
• Find your champions
• Know your enemy
• Learn from other schools
• Learn from business
• Evaluate your enterprise
Build your enterprise:
Defining enterprise
• Your strategic aim in this stage is to foster a spirit of
excitement, adventure and initiative in your community.
• Once you have defined “the box”, you need to begin a
process where you help your team to step out of it
successfully and safely.
• Ultimately, a school with a strong and rigorous spirit of
enterprise is one to which people just want to belong.
Build your enterprise:
What we could say to our students
Twenty years from now you will be more
disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by
the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail
away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in
your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain
Build your enterprise:
The real state of play?
Schools must play a leadership role in developing the
innovation and creativity needed for Australia to play any
significant and competitive role in the global knowledge
economy. However, schools are not currently equipped to
assume this role because they are premised on an industrial
paradigm of control of the curriculum, learning, assessment
and credentialing – predominantly traditional subject
disciplines. Except in a small percentage of schools, few
students are exposed to environments that foster their
individual talents or empower their creativity through risktaking.
David Warner
Build your enterprise:
A couple of ideas
The creative act thrives in an environment of
mutual stimulation, feedback and constructive
criticism – in a community of creativity.
William T Brady
Don’t try to get your wild geese to fly in
formation.
Thomas J Watson, founder of IBM
Build your enterprise:
A couple more ideas
Innovation has a lot to do with your ability to
recognize surprising and unusual phenomena.
Herbert Simon, Nobel laureate in economics
What’s the secret of entrepreneurial success?
It’s knowing how to use OPB (other people’s
brains) and OPM (Other people’s money).
JB Furqua, Chairman, Furqua Industries
A Feeling For People,
A Feeling for Change
Today, you and your business are competing on the basis
of emotion and imagination. Your task is to capture the
energy and imagination of the people inside and around
your business and move this energy forward to create
wealth in the fullest sense of the word.
It takes real emotional strength to lead. While becoming an
emotional capitalist isn’t easy, being intelligent about your
emotions is critical to your success as a leader. Your
personal level of emotional capitalism will determine your
capacity to inspire or demoralise others.
Martyn Newman, Emotional Capitalists
The New Leaders, John Wiley & Sons Australia, 2007
Build your enterprise:
Enterprise and growth
• What makes a school great today will not
necessarily be replicable in the future as the
needs of its community change.
• When change is successfully embedded and
attention to the detail of this change is functioning
at a high level, schools must take care to ensure
that they continue to grow and evolve.
• This also helps you to build a culture of critical
evaluation where review is welcomed as a tool for
personal and group development.
Outcomes in the
Enterprise Stage
• Student achievement: Encourage students to demonstrate initiative
through leadership structures and programs
• Relationships within your community: Allow room at all levels for
growth, temporary error and risk-taking
• Communication: Articulate the value of innovation and experimentation
• School initiatives: Strengthen the school culture of research and
development
• Your school’s reputation: Build a history of success and character –
“war stories” which you can all share
Actions in the Enterprise Stage
• Student achievement: Develop and implement a program for enterprise
education and community outreach
• Relationships within your community: Develop a whole-school
framework for collaborative enquiry
• Communication: Develop and implement processes and associated
reward systems for successful innovation in the community
• School initiatives: Develop a comprehensive approach to risk
management in the school
• Your school’s reputation: Publish stories of your community’s
achievement and innovation which articulate your values and goals
Enablers in the
Enterprise Stage
• Student achievement: Articulate student leadership structures at
different levels in your school which promote incentives for contribution
and service
• Relationships within your community: Identify and encourage
community members who are willing to sponsor and co-partner with
students and staff to promote and support initiatives beyond the school
walls
• Communication: Demonstrate clear public support from the
governance and executive team for a spirit of enterprise
• School initiatives: Develop processes for generating and capturing
ideas within the community and converting them into successful
programs
• Your school’s reputation: Local, national and international involvement
in significant educational and community initiatives and networks
Values to emphasise in the
Enterprise Stage
• Creativity: Develop a comprehensive schedule for exhibiting student
work
• Adventure: Publish stories of significant community members including
alumni to convey a spirit of adventure
• Generosity: Use your service learning and charity programs to
inculcate a culture of giving
• Innovation: Develop systems for capturing and rewarding new ideas for
school improvement from within your community
• Public good: Initiate a flagship program for supporting another
community or institution
Reflection
•
•
•
•
What does enterprise look like?
What does enterprise feel like?
Who are the entrepreneurs?
Who and what support entrepreneurial thinking
and creativity in schools?
• What can you do to support enterprise in your
school?
• How will you know when it’s working?
Lead for enterprise:
The basics
UK research establishes success on the basis of performance in
4 core tasks and 4 key personal traits:
•
•
•
•
Core leadership tasks
Building vision and setting
directions
Understanding and developing
people
Redesigning the organisation
Managing the teaching and
learning program
•
•
•
•
Key personal traits
Open-mindedness and
willingness to learn from others
Flexible (not dogmatic) thinker
Strong moral compass within a
system of core values including
persistence and resilience
Optimism and a positive
disposition
Geoff Southworth, School Leadership: What we know and what it
means for schools, their leaders and policy, CSE, 2009
Lead for enterprise:
School reform
Transformative Schools: These are schools where innovation is pursued
on the back of high levels of consistency and agreement among the staff.
School leaders adopt a disciplined approach to innovation, which ensures
that any proposed new initiative is based on relevant research and/or
successful practice in other schools, is documented and trialed, and then
can be shared with other staff so that the lessons can be spread …
When the system is weak and lacks capacity, then priority should fall to
consistency, with innovation coming on stream later down the path.
Vic Zbar, School improvement and reform:
The ‘holy trinity of consistency, innovation and capacity,
CSE, 2009
Lead for enterprise:
Creative leadership
5 characteristics of creative leadership:
• A willingness to accept risk
• An ability to work with half-baked ideas
• A willingness to bend rules
• An ability to respond quickly
• Personal enthusiasm
John Adair, Leadership for Innovation,
How to organize team creativity and harvest ideas,
Kogan-Page, 2007
Lead for enterprise:
Sustainable leadership and change
in education
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Depth: delivering leadership for the fundamental moral purpose of deep and
broad learning while caring for and among others
Length: meeting the challenges of leadership succession, of leading across
and beyond individual leadership over time
Breadth: distributed leadership that encompasses what leadership might
deliberately become
Justice: socially just leadership that shares knowledge and resources with the
community
Diversity: promoting cohesive diversity and networking among the
community’s varied components
Resourcefulness: prudent and resourceful leadership that both recognises
talent early and wastes neither people nor money
Conservation: steadfast preservation of long-standing purposes and
honourable traditions
Andy Hargreaves and Dean Fink, Sustainable Leadership, Jossey-Bass, 2006
Reflection
1.
2.
3.
4.
How do you feel about these ideas?
How would your colleagues rate your leadership skills and traits? In
what ways can your leadership skills and traits help or hinder the
development of a culture of enterprise?
Which of the principles of school reform, creative leadership and
sustainable leadership sit most comfortably with you? Which of them
will require the most development on your part?
How might you apply this contemporary leadership practice in your
school?
Find your champions:
Nurturing creative thinkers
Iconoclasts’ brains work differently to 97% of the population in 3 key ways:
• Perception: they see and connect data differently
• Fear: they ask ‘what if’ and see opportunity where most cannot
overcome inherent fear of the unknown, fear of failure and fear of
embarrassment
• Social intelligence: most are not socially adept and require social
connectors to link them and their ideas to the mainstream
Gregory Berns, Iconoclast,
A neuroscientist reveals how to think differently,
Harvard Business Press, 2010
Find your champions:
Dispelling myths about creativity
Myth
1.
Reality
The smarter you are, the more creative
you are
The young are more creative than the
old
1.
3.
Creativity is for flamboyant risk-takers
3.
4.
Creativity is a solitary act.
4.
5.
You can’t manage creativity.
5.
2.
2.
There is no correlation between
creativity and intelligence above IQ 120
Minds either shaped by deep expertise
or freed from conventional thinking can
both lead to creativity
Successful innovation is more likely to
result from calculated risk-taking.
Collaboration results in innovation as
much as individualism.
Managers can create the conditions in
which creativity is more likely to occur.
Harvard Business Essentials, Innovator’s Toolkit,
Harvard Business Press, 2009
Find your champions:
Being a sponsor
Acting as a sponsor for an untried project is no picnic. Most
sponsors, I believe, tend to bet on people rather than on
products. We have a saying at 3M that, ‘The captains bite
their tongues until they bleed.’ The first virtue of a sponsor is
faith. The second is patience. And the third is understanding
the differences between temporary setback and terminal
problem.
Louis Lehr, CEO of 3M
Find your champions:
Your school’s own knowledge laboratory
Epochal historical events have determined that the laboratory, not the
monastery, will continue to dominate the life of learning. Other latetwentieth century trends, like the democratization and commercialization
of knowledge, are now pressuring existing institutions to meet the
demands of a knowledge society. Above all, the ascendancy of the
laboratory is reshaping the basic mission of other institutions, pushing
some towards obsolescence, giving others a new lease on life.
Ian F McNeely with Lisa Wolverton, Reinventing Knowledge, From
Alexandra to the Internet, WW Norton & Co, 2008
Reflection
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Do you see yourself as a creative thinker? How would your
colleagues answer this question?
What examples have you seen from your careers of creative
thinkers in education?
How might you encourage the nurturing of creative thinkers in your
school?
How can you support the connection of their thinking with the reality
of practice in your school?
How can you support the development of knowledge and systems to
foster the reality of creative practice in your school?
In particular, what can you do to create space and resources for a
“laboratory” for research and development in your school?
Know your enemy:
Lessons from the London LEAs in the 2000s
8 significant teacher-identified obstacles to professional growth:
• Lack of trust in teachers
• Lack of confidence/knowledge
• League tables and inspection
• Lack of time
• Overload and lack of confidence
• Fostered dependency
• Poor leadership
• Loss of what has been gained
Michael Fullan, Change Forces With A Vengeance, Falmer Press, 2003
Know your enemy:
Overcoming immunity to change
7 critical attributes of an organization that is a home for the continual
transformation of talent:
• It recognizes that, like adolescence, adulthood must be a time for ongoing
growth and development
• It honours the distinction between technical and adaptive learning agendas
• It recognizes and cultivates the individual’s intrinsic motivation to grow
• It assumes that a change in mindset takes time and is not evenly paced
• It recognizes that mindsets shape thinking and feeling, so changing mindsets
needs to involve the head and the heart
• It recognizes that neither change in mindset nor change in behaviour alone
leads to transformation, but that each must be employed to bring about the
other
• It provides safety for people to take the kinds of risks inherent in changing
minds
Robert Kagan & Lisa Laskow, Immunity to Change,
Harvard Business Press, 2009
Know your enemy:
Risk-aversion vs courage
It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong
man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust
and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly ... who knows the great
enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause,
who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and
who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his
place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never
known neither victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt
Reflection
1. How do you feel about these ideas?
2. What examples of barriers to school improvement have
you seen in your careers?
3. What can you do to discourage them in your school?
4. Which do you feel more comfortable with – the head or
the heart?
5. How well do you deal with the need for patience?
6. How well do you manage (as opposed to avoid) risk
7. What can you do to diminish a culture of immunity to
change in your school?
Learn from other schools:
The Chicago schools in the 1990s
5 lessons for sustaining growth and change in the face of the
stifling potential of regulatory and systemic bureaucracy:
• Create policies, goals and procedures that support school
development in the face of external expectations
• Build local capacity by enhancing the knowledge and skills of
staff to work cooperatively and coherently and to engage
parents and the community more effectively
• Introduce systems of rigorous accountability
• Spawn innovation and diffuse knowledge of effective
improvement efforts
• Build external partnerships – universities, learning networks,
profit and not-for-profit organisations
Michael Fullan, Change Forces The Sequel, Falmer Press, 1999
Learn from other schools:
West Des Moines in the 2000s
5 key factors in creating a genuine learning community:
• Invite engagement through larger teams
• Replace central planning with local experimentation
• Learn to be patient
• Find ways to create the change initiative itself as a shared
learning opportunity
• Revisit and refine your guiding principles
Peter Senge et al, Schools That Learn,
A Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, Currency, 2000
Reflection
1. How do you feel about these ideas?
2. How do they resemble the best schools in which you have
worked?
3. How do you think your staff will respond to these ideas?
Your students? Your parents and broader school
community? The Board?
4. What strategies will you use to manage these conditions
and the expectations of your community with respect to
change and innovation? Whose help will you need?
Evaluate your culture of enterprise:
Performance management
Good performance management systems require effective leadership
during their introduction, and to ensure they work well within the school.
However, they are essentially professional and collegial in nature and are
directed to school improvement in general and improved teaching in
particular.
Examples of good performance management and professional
development in schools around Australia exist, but the record is patchy at
best, and there are many schools with no systematic approach to
improvement in place. Rectifying this is an ambitious agenda and is far
from an easy task.
Vic Zbar, Graham Marshall & Paul Power,
Better Schools, Better Teachers, Better Results, ACER 2007
Reflection
1. How do you feel about these ideas?
2. How does our profession respond to processes
of evaluation?
3. What are the best examples of collegial and
professional evaluation that you have seen?
4. What strategies will you use to introduce and/or
manage your evaluation processes?
Conclusions:
A model for building a culture of
enterprise in your school
Building change through enterprise means the way in which your school
community encourages its members to explore new possibilities and
ways of improving itself:
• Build your enterprise
• Lead for enterprise
• Find your champions
• Know your enemy
• Learn from other schools
• Learn from business
• Evaluate your enterprise
Build your enterprise:
A cultural process
for change in schools
• Authenticity
• Transformation
• Sustainability
• Service
Values and
relationships
Change stages
•
•
•
•
•
Ethos
Excellence
Embedding
Example
Enterprise
• Student achievement
• Relationships in your
community
• Communication
• School initiatives
• Your school's reputation
School framework
domains
Your questions
Your take-aways
One thing:
• You know more about
• You feel more confident about
• You might use at your school tomorrow
• You might think about carefully for a long time before using
at your school
Your questions
Today: Building the school leader’s
confidence and expertise with change
To make human civilization work well [with 21C] technologies and exist at
peace with Gaia, we need another revolution, putting into place the
desirable management, laws, controls, protocols, methodologies and
means of governance. This is a complex and absolutely necessary
transition – the 21st Century Revolution…
Whether the revolution happens smoothly depends on the education that
is put in place and how widely it is acted upon.
James Martin, The meaning of the 21st century, 2006
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Values and leadership in schools
Who am I? A servant’s heart for leadership
Where do I fit in? Context and strategy in school leadership
How can I best serve others? Leadership and change in schools
Building the enterprise of your school
Your take-aways
Five things:
• You know more about
• You feel more confident about
• You might use at your school tomorrow
• You might think about carefully for a long time before using
at your school
A final thought on leading for change
As an observer of life in organizations, I think I can say with some
authority that people who are making an effort to embrace the
future are a happier lot than those who are clinging to the past.
That is not to say that learning how to become part of the twentyfirst century enterprise is easy. But people who are attempting to
grow, to become more comfortable with change, to develop
leadership skills – these men and women are typically driven by a
sense that they are doing what is right for themselves, their
families and their organizations. That sense of purpose spurs
them on and inspires them during rough periods.
And those people at the top of enterprises today, who encourage
others to leap into the future, who help them overcome natural
fears, and who thus expand the leadership capacity in their
organizations – these people provide a profoundly important
service for the entire human community.
We need more of these people. And we will get them.
Professor John P Kotter, Harvard Business School
Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take with
you nothing that you have received…only what you have
given: a full heart enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice,
and courage.
Francis of Assisi
Dr Phil Cummins
phil@circle.org.au
www.circle.org.au
+61 410 439 130