Monthly Archives: April 2015

Failure is not an option… attitude matters…

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“Leaders (and teachers) who know what they are doing will aim for the heart. They connect to the deepest values of their people and inspire them to greatness. They make the business case come alive with human experience; they engage the senses, create messages that are simple and imaginative, and call people to aspire.” John Kotter

It is probably true that attitude matters…possibly the most. It is also probably true that this determines our belief in what is possible, determines the questions we ask and the quests that we embark upon. Attitude is everywhere; it determines our limits and those that we expect of others…it is the underlying attitudes that determine the outcomes and progress of students in classrooms and schools/academies.  It is also probably true that urgency, purpose, emotional connection and ownership are key for developing, fostering and motivating positive and focused attitudes that are aligned to the ambitions of the individual, class or organisation.

…Urgency is often the key to aligning and propagating attitudes – attitudes that can transform and create unusually positive outcomes. The compelling urgency for the safe return of the Apollo 13 astronauts is a neat example of how attitude sets the challenge unwaveringly and achieves what appeared to be a miraculous return to Earth… taken from the script of Apollo 13 (edited)…(click picture for the video clip)… maxresdefault

GENE KRANTZ (FLIGHT DIRECTOR) – So you’re telling me you can only give our guys 45 hours. It brings them to about there… Gentlemen, that’s not an option.

(the use of the visual on the blackboard here is key – people need to see and feel a problem  – only then are they likely to be moved to action.) 

MOCR ENGINEER – Gene, Gene. We gotta talk about power here… 

CONTROL – Without it they don’t talk to us, they don’t correct their trajectory, they don’t turn the heatshield around… we gotta turn everything off. Now. They’re not gonna make it to re-entry…With everything on the LM draws 60 amps. At that rate in sixteen hours the batteries are dead, not 45. And so is the crew. We gotta get them down to 12 amps. 

MOCR ENGINEER – Whoa. 12 amps! – How many? – You can’t run a vacuum cleaner on 12 amps, John. 

GENE KRANTZ (FLIGHT DIRECTOR) – Well, we’re gonna have to figure it out. I want people in our simulators working re-entry scenarios. I want you guys to find every engineer who designed, every switch, every circuit, every transistor and every light bulb that’s up there. Then I want you to talk to the guy in the assembly line who had actually built the thing. Find out how to squeeze every amp out of both of these goddamn machines. I want this mark all the way back to Earth with time to spare. We never lost an American in space. We’re sure as hell not gonna lose one on my watch!. Failure is not an option!

(the attitude here compels action, it expects much and takes a “whatever it takes” approached to a well defined and clear, compellingly urgent problem. How far does this type of attitude permeate our classrooms and academies?)

…and from Star Wars… (the importance of certainty and purpose of moving to action –  committing to a key internal decision to do something..)

Luke: All right, I’ll give it a try. Yoda: No. Try not. Do… or do not. There is no try. 

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Luke: I don’t, I don’t believe it.  Yoda: That is why you fail.

All of which begs to question how do we recognise, use and provoke great attitudes, that make everything possible and does whatever it takes in our academies and classrooms?

What if we understood how our attitude and that of others around us interact to achieve our ambitions or hold us back? Consider your colleagues and students … are they drains (takers of energy) or radiators (givers of energy)? Street_Drain_w_Double_Yellas_by_BewildaBeast8radiator What if we also considered Adam Grant’s great book, “Give and Take,” which provides greater insight and highlights that there are three types of people: Givers, Matchers and Takers. Takers only seek to gain from others, these add little or hold organisations back. Matchers, match what they give with what they have received. However, he argues that the Givers are the most and least successful…

“This is what I find most magnetic about successful givers: they get to the top without cutting others down, finding ways of expanding the pie that benefit themselves and the people around them. Whereas success is zero-sum in a group of takers, in groups of givers, it may be true that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” ― (Adam Grant)

Question: how do we create the conditions in our organisations that reward and support Givers?

What if we realised that establishing the WHY (Sinek), the PURPOSE (Pink) and aiming for the heart (Kotter) is key to motivating and harnessing buy-in. This has a direct impact on attitude and on mobilising the inner drive to improve and succeed. It is interesting how these ideas line-up. Simon Sinek argues that people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it … Dan Pink identifies three things that are important for people to feel/achieve success – a motivating purpose and the autonomy to seek mastery. Allied to John Kotter’s thoughts around aiming for the heart, we have the recipe to secure and maintain individuals attitudes and for keeping these aligned to the organisational, class or individual ambitions.

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What if we realised that as teachers and leaders in addition to securing the why, we must also give autonomy and ownership of the how? This is important because to maintain a “whatever it takes attitude” there needs to be ownership and a freedom to determine the what and the search for mastery. This must also involve pushing the decision making closer to the action (David Marquet). What if we understood the motivating power there is in ensuring the attitudes and approaches value the near-win and the journey toward mastery? How do we reward the near win with our colleagues and students? As Sarah Lewis discusses, those seeking mastery have an attitude that drives them to strive and feel success in the near wins…

Mastery is in the reaching, not the arriving. It’s in constantly wanting to close that gap between where you are and where you want to be. …. We see it … in the life of the indomitable Arctic explorer Ben Saunders, who tells me that his triumphs are not merely the result of a grand achievement, but of the propulsion of a lineage of near wins.

We thrive when we stay at our own leading edge. It’s a wisdom understood by Duke Ellington, who said that his favorite song out of his repertoire was always the next one, always the one he had yet to compose. Part of the reason that the near win is inbuilt to mastery is because the greater our proficiency, the more clearly we might see that we don’t know all that we thought we did. It’s called the Dunning–Kruger effect… “You learn how little you know.” (Sarah Lewis)

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Click picture to see Sarah Lewis: Embrace the near win

What if we realised that by keeping the moral purpose at the centre, investing time on the why, reaffirming the purpose and by appealing to the emotional drivers we maintain high urgency in the system – be it at individual or organisational level. It is this owned inner drive, the intrinsic motivation that will compel toward action and keep attitudes aligned with the ambition. Chip and Dan Heath highlight the key is to motivate the elephant as well as the rider…

  • Find the feeling (WHY/Purpose) – make people feel something
  • Shrink the change (How) – shrink change so that it does not spook the elephant
  • Grow your people – instil a growth mindset – attitude

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(taken from Switch, Chip and Dan Heath)

What if attitude is about feelings and that stories are uniquely placed to motivate and develop attitudes that align with the ambition? As John Kotter highlights…(how often do we use stories … particularly those that tell of a preferred future?)

“Neurologists say that our brains are programmed much more for stories than for abstract ideas. Tales with a little drama are remembered far longer than any slide crammed with analytics.” (John Kotter)

What if we also understood that positive attitudes stem from a growth mindset? (Carol Dweck)

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What if we also understood that we need to develop attitudes in line with being deliberate? (Malcolm Gladwell) Leaders, teachers and students whose attitude drive them to…

1. …be motivated and exert effort to improve their performance.

2. …engage in tasks that take into account their pre-existing knowledge.

3. …seek and receive immediate informative feedback and knowledge of the results of their performance.

4. …repeatedly perform the same or similar tasks towards near wins…mastery.

“Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds.” (Malcolm Gladwell)

What if attitude is dependent on ignition? and we should seek to increase students and colleagues opportunities to be ignited by an experience, thought, fact, opportunity etc…

“Beneath every big talent lies an ignition story – the famously potent moment when a young person falls helplessly in love with their future passion.” (Dan Coyle)

For Albert Einstein, that moment happened when his father brought him a compass.

“Einstein later recalled being so excited as he examined its mysterious powers that he trembled and grew cold…. [Einstein wrote] “I can still remember – or at least I believe I can remember—that this experience made a deep and lasting impression on me. Something deeply hidden had to be behind things.”

What if we recruited much more on attitude, understanding that skills and knowledge gaps are easier to close?  Particularly because getting the right people on the bus is the key to great organisations (Jim Collins).

What if we realise that asking challenging questions and setting expectations high can  instil desired attitudes? If we ask ridiculous questions we prompt different possibilities and perspectives. (Questions must be based on the brutal truth of the present reality.)

  • “If your life depended on it what would you do?”
  • “What would we do if the target was 100%?”
  • “What do we need to do now, such that everything else is either easier or no longer required?” (Keller)

It is often the second question that really makes the difference – having attitudes and approaches that dig deep to understand problems and to find solutions that aren’t immediately apparent. What if we also realised that this is about getting the right people in the room – those best placed to ask the right question and not so many to complicate the answer. Steve Jobs only met with 3-4 people – any additions were removed.

Maybe then we would pay much more attention to the attitude of leaders, teachers, staff and students …and seek to create the conditions that foster positive and aligned attitudes.

Maybe then we would also look to other examples like the Apollo 13 mission and learn that attitude rarely exists without purpose and urgency – it does not happen in a vacuum. We might work harder to engage the emotions to drive attitudes and approaches.

Maybe then we would work harder to create the conditions necessary to ensure healthy and positive attitudes.

Maybe then we would work harder to generate or communicate urgency and that this needs to be born out of a clear moral purpose and that this is best aimed at the heart.

Maybe then we would find more ways to reward attitudes that drive us toward success.

Maybe then we would be more attuned to understanding the importance of and the need to create conditions for ignition … to ignite a passion in a colleague or our students … that will propagate attitudes than align with our ambition.

Maybe then we would recognise the importance of attitude and stance when recruiting – getting the right people on the bus.

Maybe then we would understand that autonomy and ownership of the how and what are key to generating the motivation required to propagate great attitudes

Maybe then we would create organisations and classrooms where attitude is understood, fostered and grown – because attitude matters and failure is not an option.

“Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”  (Samuel Beckett)

April 2015

Seeing the wood for the trees: beware organisational blindness

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blind-spot

“Can’t see the wood for the trees: the whole situation is not clear, because you’re looking too closely at small details, or you’re too closely involved.“

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It is probably true that the longer we lead, teach or support within an organisation the blinder, more conditioned we become to accepting how things are. Our organisational blindness restricts our ability to be shocked or provoked into action; our ability to see the ‘brutal truths’ (Collins) of our situation decreases with time (and surprisingly quickly). We are less able to see the reality of our present situation and less able to seek the required improvement.

“Organisational blindness inhibits individuals and teams from seeing the brutal truth of their reality; leading to missed opportunities, an inability to not see what really matters or be agile enough to strategically move to a brighter future.”

Which begs the question, how do we correct our organisational blindness; overcome our biases and conceptions that grow through time and be alive to the brutal truths so that we can focus on the things that matter; those things that will address the reality and not our perception of the reality? So how do we provoke fresh thinking and fresh perspectives?

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“You absolutely cannot make a series of good decisions without first confronting the brutal facts.” (Collins)

What if we fully understood that we learn to live with and accept things over time. That over time we become organisationally blind to our reality. The story goes that if you place a frog in water and gradually boil the water, the frog sits happily until death, but throw a frog into boiling water and it will jump straight out…the difference between becoming conditioned and normalised to our organisation and seeing it through fresh eyes and from a new, wider perspective.

frog-in-pan

What if we understood that when we move organisations we have our sharpest understanding and insight during the first 6 weeks and after that we gradually become part of the system (Dr Patrick Dixon). What if we worked harder to find ways of re-creating this opportunity; to more often see through fresh eyes?

What if we realised that our institutional blindness is our greatest risk? As the future becomes increasingly uncertain and the educational landscape shifts often, an organisation that is sleepy and fog ridden with organisational blindness is very vulnerable to “wildcard” events as well as to normal rates of change. There are a number of island Academies who have required reinvention; a significant contributing factor being organisational blindness and a poor perspective on what matters now.

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What if we recognise that decisions, strategies and approaches are often only appropriate and right for a point in time? Great organisations are able to be agile and evolve practices so that they stay on the leading edge. Our vulnerability increases where organisational blindness is deep and widely shared such that we are unable to see what is right for now.

What if we realised a key strength of being part of a collaborative network or Multi Academy Trust (MAT) is the ability to connect, compare, contrast and have the wider view that improves our organisational blindness, enabling a greater identification of the brutal truths. What if we accelerated our connectivity, because together Academies in firm and soft collaborations can raise standards and overcome the blindness and vulnerability caused through isolation?

What if the most dangerous institutional blindness is when it occurs at the top. If the Head/Principal is the most significant leader then blindness at this level can cripple an organisation. More than ever we need all leaders to be system leaders…

“All leaders, South West leaders.” (Sir David Carter, RSC)

What if the fragmented nature and isolation of some academies increases organisational blindness? Where island organisations exist and/or there is significant blindness there is significant danger that the organisation becomes less attuned to reality and less successful.

“We still have an education system that is fragmented and unstandardised (adapted from Lord Nash); one where there are too many island schools/academies whose viewpoint is unavoidably organisationally blind.”

What if we recognised that much of what we see and think is hugely vulnerable to selective perception: seeing only the things that fit with our own preconceptions or prior beliefs? Whilst we rely on internal scrutiny these perceptions will limit our notion of performance and this worsens over time.

“Selective perception is the tendency to not notice and more quickly forget stimuli that causes emotional discomfort and contradicts our prior beliefs.”

What if we accept that the people within organisations are least likely to be able to evaluate its quality? What if we fully exploited, embraced and sought external scrutiny, because as leaders we understand that this perspective will be truer, more balanced and less open to bias than our own?

What if we grew more system leaders to horizon scan and have a wide perspective that can correct blindness… to find coherence, to light the way, to reduce blindness so that the system as a whole saw more of the light; lifting our young people and communities up?

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What if system leaders connected the dots and collaborated; being strategically altruistic. Recognising that where we strategically give and collaborate we reduce our institutional blindness and contribute to correcting institutional blindness in others. By connecting the dots and by being a deliberately altruistic system leaders we reduce blindness in ourselves and others.

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What if we spent more time out of our organisation? What if we actively supported leaders and teachers to spend time in other Academies? So that we eased and removed organisational blindness, provided perspective and shifted the frame of reference such that we were better able to see the brutal truths and plot improvement. Fresh eyes provide a new perspective; in the land of the blind the one-eyed person is king…

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“Complacency in leadership limits our ability to notice the unacceptable and maintain high expectations. Leaders need to welcome and proactively seek challenge and peer review.”
(adapted from Steve Munby)
What if we recognise inhibiting hubris. Jim Collins in “How the Mighty Fall” identifies the dangers of hubris, the excessive pride that brings down a hero – following success, leaders often become arrogant about their success and almost view it as an entitlement.  As a result, they become complacent and lose sight of (become blind to) what caused/s their success.  Organisations that were perceived to be successful can be vulnerable to disruptive changes (occasionally dramatically)…

“There is no danger that Titanic will sink. The boat is unsinkable and nothing but inconvenience will be suffered by the passengers.” -Phillip Franklin, White Star Line Vice-President

Der Untergang der Titanic

What if by recognising the problems caused by organisational blindness that we are better able to avoid catastrophes and to find an appropriately risk-aware approach based on the true realities of our performance and provision?

What if we protected ourselves from this false sense of security, the false notion of being able to control situations or understand present performance. It is this that compromises our ability to cope and evolve to meet the demands of the present and the future. Perhaps this is about remaining students of our work and seeking external opinion and thoughts; taking every opportunity to vacuum the brains of others for insight and perspective…

“Like inquisitive scientists, the best leaders remain students of their work, relentlessly asking questions–why, why, why?–and have an incurable compulsion to vacuum the brains of people they meet.” Jim Collins.
What if we sought peer review and scrutiny as the best way to avoid both complacency and organisational blindness? Even if this makes us feel uncomfortable and exposed to the truth… perhaps a humbling truth, but with this comes new understanding, insight and perspective to enable improvement.
 “What makes us vulnerable makes us beautiful.” (Brene Brown)
“What do we see when leaders are at their best. – a balance between confidence and humility.” (Steve Munby)
What if Ofsted valued system leadership more? Valued the system contributions made to other organisations and the wider community? After all Ofsted wields significant power to nudge the education system in the direction it chooses.
What if we also recognised that unless leaders, teachers and staff go beyond the organisation there is significant danger of Cabin Fever; becoming conditioned (negatively) to everyday experience, with little ability to measure quality or what is normal? It is healthy and desirable to offer and ensure that all staff gain wide perspectives – as organisational blindness can be damaging and provide a warped sense of performance or quality…(often selectively perceiving the organisation based on low amounts of evidence or restricted perspectives).
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Maybe then we would recognise the prevalence and harm of organisational blindness…understanding that our ability to see with fresh eyes lasts around six weeks, after which, without corrective approaches, we become increasingly blind to the brutal truths of our reality, less able to identify improvement and actions that are right for now.

Maybe then we would have far less complacency within the system; the sort of complacency born out of hubris and organisational blindness.

Maybe then we would see the brutal truths in ourselves and our organisations. Enabling our organisation to avoid dangers and to be agile enough to cope and thrive despite the present pace of change.

Maybe then we would see the huge opportunity that presently exists for shifting our fragmented island system of Academies into local hubs and multi Academy Trusts to reduce blindness, create coherence and shift the quality of education for whole communities.

Maybe then we would connect and collaborate not just to see again, but so that we could treat blindness in others and be system leaders.

Maybe then we would welcome scrutiny and peer review as a way to reduce blindness, bring better perspective and focus and to therefore accelerate improvement.

Maybe then we would seek opportunities for staff and ourselves to “get out more often” to improve our blindness and that of others? … as well as reduce cabin fever and the dangers of selective perception.

Maybe then we would connect more and be strategically altruistic to improve the wider system; playing our part in removing organisational blindness. After all great organisations don’t settle and achieve greatness through conscious choice…

“Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice.” (Collins)  (A choice that needs to be seen through the fog of organisational blindness)

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April 2015