Tag Archives: Autonomy

Great Leaders create movements that stick | Amazing is what spreads

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“The Tipping Point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behaviour crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.  Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate” (Gladwell, 2002).

It is probably true… that understanding how to “start a movement” is a key leadership quality at all levels within organisations. Why is it that somethings tip and others do not; why some approaches are adopted and become habitual and others not? It is also probably true that movements start when the conditions are right and you emotionally connect, tell stories, ignite action, reach the tipping point and propagate the conditions for contagion, so that ideas spread, are well adopted and become typical. 

Indeed it might be… that those organisations who create movements by seeking small but precisely targeted pushes turn the Flywheel (Collins), so that the organisation becomes and stays great. This is focused, deliberate change and improvement, based on an understanding of how to start and propagate movements and trigger change that sticks. Great organisations take bets where the odds suggest that change will be well adopted, aligned to core purpose, impactful and importantly … irreversible. Great organisations deliberately stay close to their flywheel and make a few well-placed bets on a few key irreversible strategies that matter and make the difference … it is around these that great leaders create, trigger, propagate and sustain movements.

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However…it is probably true that education is riddled with dead-end initiatives and unsustained changes – the consequence is either a wasteland of innovation or multiple initiatives; where a thousand flowers are allowed to bloom and wither often in rapid succession; all of which has a damaging impact on the credibility of the organisation’s leadership.

 Which beg the questions…  What are the conditions required for a movement to start? AND how, as leaders, can we start, propagate and embed a movement/change based on key leveraging strategies that stick and accelerate improvement?

The importance of the firsts followers, the lone nut and creating conditions for movements to thrive…

What if… we understood how movements start and remind ourselves of this great clip and piece of observation from Derek Sivers … how to start a movement… hqdefault

Derek Sivers: Blog: https://sivers.org/ff

“…remember the importance of nurturing your first few followers as equals, making everything clearly about the movement, not you. … be public. … be easy to follow! …remember leadership is over-glorified. … It was the first follower that transforms a lone nut into a leader. … there is no movement without the first follower. …the best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow. … so when you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.” (Derek Sivers)

What if…, as leaders, we…

“…take responsibility for enabling others to achieve a shared purpose.” (Sinek)

…understanding that by enabling others to achieve and by creating conditions for connection and collaboration we provide the opportunity for movements to start.

“What happens when you build an organisation that is flat and open? what happens when you expect a lot and trust the people you work with?” (Seth Godin)

What if… we were aware that great leadership is about creating a climate where movements happen; that these need to be well focused, but trust that it is amazing that spreads.f163eaa3b112c76e1f850c9a4ba57189 What if… we recognised that change and movements do not take hold where there is disorganisation; where an organisation is…

  • Passive
  • Divided
  • Drifting
  • Reactive
  • and prone to inaction

What if… sustained change and the conditions for movements to grow occur where an organisation is…

  • Motivated
  • United
  • Purposeful
  • Values initiative
  • Moves to action?

“The role of the leader is to enable, facilitate, and cause peers to interact in a focused manner…but still only a minority of systems employ the power of collective capacity.” (Fullan, 2010)

Igniting and propagating a movement that sticks…

What if… we understood that the spread of a new idea, strategy or approach is determined by the adoption patterns of this small group of ‘socially infectious’ early adopters and connectors in an organisation that enable the reaching of a tipping point (Malcolm Gladwell). Who are the Connectors in your organisation? or the sneezers…

What if… we knew who our “sneezers” are? After all it is the sneezers who “unleash the idea virus” (Seth Godin) These are the people who are listened to, who are respected and admired. If you can build up a core of evangelizers among these sneezers, Godin says, your idea is much more likely to spread. What if… we understood how ideas become adopted by a population…perhaps then we would be more successful at starting and creating movements…

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What if… it is about 16%?

Maloney’s 16% Rule:  Once you have reached 16% adoption of any innovation, you must change your messaging and media strategy from one based on scarcity, to one based on social proof, in order to accelerate through the chasm to the tipping point.

How many organisations fail to switch approach for new strategies and simply decide to re-invent or scrap it? Do we invest enough time in ‘social proof’ a demonstration of the effectiveness of the new strategy – measuring and communicating the impact? What if we understood that 16% is a significant tipping point; that point where the early adopters become interested – we then have a movement (if we seek and communicate ‘social proof’)

BUT…

What if… as senior leaders within organisations the actual tipping point is far beyond 16% – perhaps >80% after which the movement is embedded, change is sustained and habits become irreversible.

AND…

What if… we re-set our movements to ensure that there is on-going improvement that is fit for the time and focused on maximum effectiveness. An evolving, well positioned and aligned movement may require re-birth to maintain momentum of improvement and avoid plateauing:

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Diagram credit: Innovation-Management.org

Create the time, space and opportunity to connect and collaborate; creating the conditions for movement to trigger, propagate and become habitual.

What if … we understood the power of connection; actually the power of purposeful connection and collaboration. Remembering that connection means nothing without a commitment to move to action. Slide1 What if… we understood that an organisation cannot remain agile and innovative with a purely hierarchical structure (right side of diagram). That great organisations maintain a connected structure that supports innovation, grows its individuals and ensures that there is collective ownership and opportunity to drive the organisation forward (left side of diagram) (John Kotter). It is within this structure that your, connectors, sneezers, early adopters have the opportunity to follow and create a movement…remembering that it is the first followers that transform a lone nut into a leader and a fad into a movement.

What if… this also recognised that decision making is better done nearer to the action; that this is what empowers individuals to commit and convert into habit those things that make the greatest difference. (David Marquet) Slide1 What if… we understood that through connection and collaboration we grow resources and opportunity; we gain insight, ideas and innovation. This challenges that traditional assumption that change just costs time and money.

Getting out of the cave and inviting peers into our cave provides perspective and enables more deliberate focused innovation; we increase our odds of instigating the right movements around the things that matter…

What if… we get out of our cave and connect so that we create opportunity and increase our view of what is going to have the most impact; increasing our odds of success. What if this also involves inviting others into our cave to provide peer review.Deer_Cave_Mulu_National_Park_Borneo_Malaysia

Image Credit: wallpaperweb

Tell stories that connect emotionally and tell of a bright future, trigger movements and compel people to action?

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What if… we shared stories that motivate: Stories that are about SELF, are about NOW, are about US and are about the FUTURE. People respond to stories; how often do leaders use stories to  make an emotional connection? We are pre-disposed to responding to stories; we understand our world through story and strong leaders understand this; and will passionately link stories to the WHY and the moral purpose.

“The Story is everything.” (Spacey)

What makes a good story?… Kevin Spacey highlights the need for… CONFLICT, AUTHENTICITY and AUDIENCE. kevin-spacy-cmi Stories create emotional connection:

“People change what they do less because they are given analysis that shifts their thinking, than because they are shown a truth that influences their feelings.” (Kotter)

John West-Burnham highlights the importance of describing a preferred future.

“Successful and credible leaders are able to tell compelling and credible stories about the future – they are leaders to the extent that people accept and value the future they describe.” (John West-Burnham, 2012)

Stories bind movements together they give reasons to start movements, they tell of a worthwhile future and they connect emotionally; it is the story that moves people to action.

Inspired leaders, organisations and teams find their deepest purpose – their ‘why?’ – and attract followers through shared values, vision and belief.” “this has the ability to transform the fortunes of a group or enterprise – activating individuals, providing a cultural glue, guiding behaviours and creating an overall sense of purpose and personal connection.” (James Kerr, Legacy, 2013)

Movements are more likely to take hold and become habitual if we KISS and avoid complexity – Complexity unravels good ideas, diminishes adopters and stops ideas sticking.

What if… we understood that we needed to  “Keep it simple, stupid?” The KISS principle states that most systems work best if they are kept simple rather than made complicated. Complexity is the enemy to creating a movement or implementing change. Where strategies mis-fire, or change is not adopted, or where there is limited consistency and low habit development, complexity is likely to be the cause. What of we… also recognised that:

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 What if.. we also understood that when a thousand flowers bloom we are not deliberate or focused enough on propagating and developing those ideas that really matter that really make a difference. Innovation and movements need to be few, deliberate, leveraging, focused, contagious, simple and compelling. 

Wide held and owned set of beliefs in what is possible maintain movements and make them stick. Great organisations have deep, clear and simple beliefs, that are widely held and applied. These underpin the success of any movement or change. Where change or a movement mis-aligns with the underlying belief it will mis-fire.

What if… there is a wide-held and embedded belief in the organisation that we can do things that are amazing? The type of belief that enables and levers success from deep within the organisation – a belief that lives and breaths –  it is felt, insidious and ubiquitous; it is in the air.

“To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.” (Anatole France)

What if… we build this belief into great ambition, purpose and drive? Quotation-George-Akomas-Jr-decision-promise-belief-success-commitment-Meetville-Quotes-66977

“Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.” (Henry Ford)

 Making movements stick. “Fire bullets then cannonballs” (Collins)

What if… we sought stickability of change and movements? Not only does change or movement need to be compelling, it also needs to stick around. Creating a movement or instigating change should consider if it will stick, a year, two years, three years… if not, don’t launch or invest energy and time, it is futile. The stickiness and sustainability of change is key; it needs to have legs! Education is a wasteland of terminated, washed-up initiatives. This is a real problem, because where organisation are initiative rich and these rarely take hold, the leadership reputation is eroded and damaged; further innovation becomes less likely to stick.

What if… we fired bullets first to test the water and then fully back those ideas that have the potential to be sticky, by firing cannonballs.

““the stickiness factor”, is a unique quality that compels a phenomenon to “stick” in the minds of people and influences their future behaviour.”

What if… we understood how to make ideas stick? and we considered the six principles of sticky ideas (“Made to Stick”, Chip and Dan Heath).

  1. Simple
  2. Unexpected
  3. Concrete
  4. Credible
  5. Emotional
  6. Stories

Maybe then…

  • we would understand the dynamics of how to start, propagate and sustain a movement (change) around the few things that matter; the few things that make the difference.
  • we would better understand that it is more about the followers than the lone nut leader. That moving from 16% to 80% is the measure of success as well as understanding that re-invigorating change is required to avoid plateauing and sustain a trajectory of improvement.
  • we would create the connection and conditions for movements to start, ensuring the checks and balances are in place so that we back those movements that are deliberate, effective and well targeted… avoiding a thousand flowers blooming and then wilting.
  • We would use story to emotionally connect and move people to action.
  • We would take bets on a few ideas and strategies that have a high chance of success. where success is measured in sustainability, adoption, impact and whether the change will become irreversible (or evolvable in the same direction) Will this be in place – consistently applied in 3 years time?
  • We understood the key components for making change stick; the stickability factor.
  • We would KISS and avoid complexity; because complexity kills movements.
  • We would get out of the cave and invite peers into our cave more to get perspective and better understand the movements we need to create; having that wider view.
  • we would align belief about what is possible .. about what the future could be .. and that this aligned to a deeply held moral purpose .. that recognise that everything is possible .. so long as we are willing to do whatever it takes.

“Great leadership is the ability to place bets on the few things that matter; that have impact – great leaders use a wide-view to create and propagate movements that reach tipping points, achieve irreversible change and lasting impact. This enables a metronomic and efficient turning of the flywheel.”

May 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. 

Yoda-do

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

howtomakeaswitch

(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)

growth-mindset

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

To grade or not to grade… is probably not the question?

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obs in time

“Whether we grade observations or not, we need to ensure teaching is increasingly progress-orientated and outcome-orientated – concentrating the strategies that provoke progress and secure outcomes for students.”

It is probably true that we should not determine the quality of teaching based on short lesson observations, but use a triangulation of evidence that identifies the typical quality of teaching; evaluating the effectiveness of teaching for securing progress-over-time and its success in securing strong outcomes for students. (outcomes in a broad sense as well as”attainment”) 

It is also true that we need to ensure and support teachers to find their way to great progress/outcome-orientated teaching that has a deep impact on students life chances. It is this autonomy that secures the motivation and ownership to reflect and stretch toward mastery.

We should, however, explore the assumption that grading teaching denies formative development; understanding that it perhaps provides the framework for improvement. Without a descriptive continuum of effective practices there is a danger of mediocrity. Particularly as…

“Not all approaches aimed at securing progress over time are equally effective or equally well delivered”

So this begs the question how do we develop a deep understanding of what secures progress, how do we measure the quality of teaching and how do we ensure that feedback to teachers is precise, owned and liberating, such that it sparks deliberate improvement, debate and improvement? It is difficult to see how we do this without a  descriptive continuum of what matters. We can rename the continuum, but when we consider progress-over-time and outcome-orientated teaching not everything is equal…or equally well delivered. Slide1

What if we fully understood how we move from this…Slide8To this… (where teaching is progress and outcome-orientated?… and that it is this that is rewarded and developed?)

Slide16

What if we understood that measuring quality of teaching through observation alone only measures a teacher’s ability to perform a lesson by tumbling and jumping between different teaching and learning strategies to tick enough of the criteria to get them over the Good line? What if we understand the limited sample that a lesson observation provides?…(shown as the vertical line below)

jumpy progress What if we firmly framed any episode of learning or scrutiny in the context of student progress, in the past and into to the future as the measure of the typicality of teaching?… such that it becomes a measure of how:

  1. Progress-orientated the teaching has been, such that students have made good progress over time.
  2. Outcome-orientated the teaching is, such that students achieve in the future.

What if we viewed the window of observation as an opportunity to measure progress over time and future progress?… obs in time

What if we examine, reward and measure the conditions, teaching habits and approaches in lessons that give us evidence that students are making progress over time and are aimed at achieving worthwhile outcomes?

What if this involved us recognising and identifying poor proxies for learning and being smarter at evaluating what we see? (from Robert Coe)… Slide21

“every child a powerful learner” (Steve Mundy, 2015)

So given that not all approaches/strategies are equally able to leverage progress over time and that some proxies are compelling, even blinding, what should be valued to ensure that every child is a powerful learner? What if progress-orientated and outcome-orientated teaching was revealed in…

  • The quality of teacher subject knowledge, concept (and misconception) understanding as well as pedagogy understanding.
  • and that this was revealed in the quality of direct instruction and the ability to impart knowledge and to understand how students learn and make progress in their subject
  • and that this was expertly revealed in the quality of questioning that accelerates learning and unlocks understanding (perhaps the most efficacious part of the learning for progress?)
  • and that this has had the impact of increasing the quality of students answers and oracy that is beyond age-related expectation and directly improving writing.
  • and that through embedded formative assessment (within not after) – teaching plans, differentiates and intervenes to enable all abilities to make progress.
  • and that there is real clarity on the end point – students are well set to perform unusually well in assessment or exams as a result of outcome-orientated teaching.
  • and that teaching shows ambition, warmth and drive to secure progress for all; setting ambitious expectations for all students.
  • and that this is also revealed in the quality of work in books.
  • and that these highlight an appropriate amount and depth of learning as a consequence of time spent in lessons focused on writing and demonstrating learning.
  • and that teaching dwells and goes to depth at the expense of skimming content.
  • and that is informed by on-going feedback that is within and not bolt-on in lessons. And that time is committed in lessons to respond to feedback and make progress. What if we rewarded and looked for actual improvement in books from the front to back as evidence of ongoing feedback … and much less impressed by regularity of feedback sheet or dialogue that does little to improve the work?

Slide2

  • and that there is clear evidence of an ethic of excellence where students re-do and redraft work, so that they produce their very best work that they have ever done more often – something that diminishes as they progress from 3-19. Primary children often produce their best ever piece of work.

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  • and that leads to students attitudes and approaches that demonstrate a thirst for knowledge, enquiring and knowledgeable questions.
  • …and because teaching has imparted inspiring knowledge and achieved progress over time – learning takes on its own momentum.

What if we also realised that the greatest teachers have these as habits…consistent approaches and abilities to teach with purpose, precision and consistency.

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What if the importance of progress over time and having the end in mind was rewarded and that observation is seen as just one part of evaluating whether the conditions are present to secure progress? What if we triangulated with data, outcomes, planning, student voice, books and other evidence? Perhaps then we would measure the quality of teaching in this way…(apologies for the grading – but not everything is equal or equally well delivered)

Slide2 …by ignoring observed performance, we reward teaching habits and approaches that have created and secured the conditions for progress and outcomes. if there is no evidence of progress over time, historic good outcomes and/or evidence of outcome-orientated teaching then teaching cannot be typically good.

What if this meant that evidence over time led to a view of the typicality of teaching and that this is stickier than when judgements are based on one-off observations? Any observed episode then simply adds to what is already known about the typical quality of teaching to secure progress and outcomes.

What if we ensured that ownership for improvement was located with individual teachers – understanding that there is also an element of earned autonomy to this freedom… Not least because you…

“Prescribe adequacy, (but) unleash greatness…”

What if this empowered teachers who then have greater freedom to explore progress-orientated and outcome-orientated approaches to teaching…

  • Purpose (secure student progress to give them a better chance in life)
  • Autonomy (you decide how you secure student progress)
  • Mastery (it is a craft not a science, be creative and innovative – seek mastery in teaching to drive progress and secure outcomes) (Dan Pink)
“We know we are in a good school when the four following things happen: Teachers talk about teaching and learning; Teachers observe each other’s practice; Teachers plan, organise, deliver, monitor and evaluate their work together; Teachers teach each other” Judith Warren, Little The Power of Organisational Setting (1981)
What if we applied our understanding of deliberate practice to support teachers to improve…deliberate practice occurs when teachers…

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

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

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

4. …repeatedly perform the same or similar tasks.

So that…

“practice (is) intentional, aimed at improving performance, designed for (a student’s) current skill level, (aimed at excellence), combined with immediate feedback and repetitious.” (Malcolm Gladwell)

What if observers engaged with teachers in real time, so that observers support improvement, reflection and learning during lessons?

Maybe then we would…

  • …ensure that teaching is progress-orientated and outcome-orientated.
  • ….not use short observations alone to assess quality of teaching and instead triangulate observation that evaluates progress over time and the effectiveness of the teaching to deliver outcomes.
  • …tread carefully when considering removing grades as this may reduce our ability to understand what makes the difference and to show direction of travel for teaching improvement…even without grading a descriptive continuum is required – probably divided four ways… (beginning, embedding, effective, transferrable)(or 4,3,2,1)
  • …understand that not all strategies and approaches are equal or equally well delivered.
  • …understand that the efficiency and efficacy of teaching for progress and outcomes is what matters.
  • ..release teachers to own their improvement and to consider what we know about deliberate practice as a framework/continuum to enable teachers to receive immediate feedback that informs focused, repetitious improvement.
  • …realise that what maybe considered as traditional teaching is often the most effective at securing progress over time.

March, 2015

Judge teaching over time not over 20 minutes

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Progress over time

Whilst Ofsted highlight …”120. The judgement on the quality of teaching must take account of evidence of pupils’ learning and progress over time,” many schools rely heavily on brief 20 minute observations to judge the quality of teaching. This emphasises performance over systematic long term teaching impact on progress. The former encourages observation tricks and hoop-jumping the latter focuses on habits and approaches that sustain progress for each child over time.

Supporting teachers to move from Requiring Improvement to Good is often achieved by insisting on a number of non-negotiables. Teachers seek and are supported to tick-off a series of aspects of teaching and learning; they perform a 20 minute section of a lesson by tumbling and jumping between different teaching and learning strategies and approaches to ensure that they tick enough of the criteria to get them over the Good line. The consequence is that observations are high-stakes with Teachers performing a range of tricks that often hamper learning and rarely support the conditions required for students to make good or better progress over time. Teachers then carry the label of their last 20 min observation. Improving teaching needs to move much more toward rewarding teaching that has strong habits that typically create learning conditions that enable students to consistently make good progress.

jumpy progress

Student progress is not linear over time. Students make progress when the conditions are right and when they make breakthroughs in their learning (progress is more catastrophic than uniform). The blue line highlights a better description of progress over time (accepting that there will also be ‘dips’ in learning along this blue line). When teaching is good/outstanding it secures jumps in students progress because the teacher habits and typicality of approach maintains conditions for learning that promote and provoke students to make progress more often. The vertical line provides a representation of a lesson observation, scaled larger than reality, but nevertheless highlighting the tiny sample of a students journey measured by observation. We also then extrapolate the judgements made in this lesson and make the assumption that this represents a teachers performance across all of their classes all of the time … it doesn’t.

The bar below highlights how small a sample the 20 minute observation represents compared the learning over time. This sample is very likely to be unrepresentative and  hide the typicality and actual quality and effectiveness of teaching. This also only shows one class; if we place 6-8 more blue bars alongside then the sample size becomes even more unrepresentative (or ridiculous). We can be guilty of placing far to much emphasis on the 20min observed sample and place too little weight on the evidence of progress over time or use the conditions, habits and practices to extrapolate progress into the future. If we agree that what matters is the typical quality of teaching and the ability of that teaching to genererate good progress or better over time then we should look beyond the 20 minute observation to seek evidence of progress over time. We should also consider how the conditions for learning in the observation can be extrapolated (with care) to assess the likely progress of students into the future.

obs in time

We have made too much of progress in a lesson or part lesson. We have not helped ourselves at times by using phrases like, “do the students know or can they do something that they could not at the start of the observation.” In feedback we are often susceptible to making it clear to teachers that we are judging the lesson (20mins) and not them as a teacher. The reality is that measurable progress for students is unlikely in 20 minutes, but that it is possible to examine and judge the conditions present in the lesson that give us reassurance that students have, are and will make at least good progress over time…are they getting a good deal?

The first bar below shows how dominant the sample observation can be on grading a lesson and by extension the teacher that delivered the lesson. Where we weight the judgement heavily on what is observed it tempts a teacher performance; a mad rush to run through a range of strategies that are often detailed on the observation form. The consequence is the teachers teach a lot, students are busy and often bewildered, moved-on, and asked to show how much progress they think they have made. The punctuation in the lesson through questioning, AFL, modeling, peer assessment, paired work, group work, four minutes of writing…. Tick boxes on the form, but in quick combination reduce the conditions required to secure progress over time. Far better to judge the typicality of teaching and therefore the effectiveness of teaching by considering a range of evidence.

bars

If we are to reward typicality of teaching and teaching that generates good or better progress over time then the weighting of our evidence should use a range of sources. The evidence from the observation of the teaching should provide an insight into the conditions that are typical for the students over time. Much more emphasis should be placed on evidence from students, their books, evidence from panning (backwards and forwards) and the data/outcomes for this class.

With the emphasis on rewarding and promoting teaching that secures progress over time then perhaps feedback and judgements should highlight typically good or typically outstanding or typically requiring improvement or typically inadequate as more appropriate judgements on the quality of teaching. The importance of progress over time to a judgement is highlighted in this table…

table

This rewards those teachers that work hard, have good habits and the professional ability to generate that conditions in a classroom that secure good or better progress over time. This means that we should have stickier judgements for individual teachers. The first bar below highlights the range of grades that could be achieved in an academic year by a single teacher due to the high stakes nature of 20 minute observations (the observation providing a label to be carried by that teacher until the next observation). Where the emphasis is more around typicality then judgements are stickier and more reflective of the typical quality of teaching (shown by bar two). This will have the effect of polarising teaching judgements. Where teaching uses effective approaches and habits that secure progress over time the evidence will always be in books, in the planning, in the student voice, the routines, shown in the quality of feedback, in the purpose and meaningfulness of the learning journey…where this happens good and outstanding teaching becomes securer over time. Where the opposite is true, where teachers rely on the performance, mark less, plan less, have less purpose and less focus on the journey and the outcomes the typicality of teaching will require improvement…and that is likely to be true for all classes … and we are back to the importance of habits that sustain student progress over time.judgements

What would observation criteria that emphasised the importance of progress over time look like? Here is an example that places progress over time as the key determinant on the typical quality of teaching. Below this are an indication of the approaches that would contribute towards securing the conditions required for securing progress over time…

lesson obs

The form, therefore, indicates areas that may be observed that are more likely to support good progress over time. These are not prescribed or essential, neither are they a set of tick boxes to be checked to determine the grade. When the key determining judgement is progress over time, the 20 minute lesson observation is no longer a performance or does it necessitate the teacher jumping through hoops. Whilst the lesson could be all singing and all dancing it could also be students sat silently redrafting a piece of work for 20 minutes or performing or engaged in a piece of art etc. This approach frees teachers to not change practice under observation; secure in the knowledge that the observer is measuring progress secured over time not the number of tricks and hoops-jumped in 20 minutes.

Prescribe adequacy, unleash greatness…

All of which links to the trendy ideas around moving from tight to loose. To get to good it is often about being tight; using non-negotiables to raise the bar. To move through typically good to typically outstanding it is about loosening or unleashing greatness. You do this because teaching is a craft not a science; the ability to facilitate 30 teenagers often of mixed ability to make good progress requires an awareness, a professionalism and ability to keep all students progressing. Sometimes that is about engaging, inspiring, provoking responses and sometimes that is learning vocabulary, a spelling test, redrafting, testing, feeding back, being diagnostic and closing gaps. The best person to judge this interplay is the teacher. We need to recognise this and use observation to judge teaching impact over time and not on how many boxes a performer ticked in 20 minutes. This should empower teachers who then have greater freedom and…

  • Purpose (secure student progress to give them a better chance in life)
  • Autonomy (you decide how you secure student progress)
  • Mastery (it is a craft not a science, be creative and innovative – seek mastery in teaching to drive progress) (Dan Pink)

Where a teacher has taken on a class, from another teacher or at the start of the year there needs to be a shift in the emphasis placed on the different parts of the evidence. An early judgement on typicality would extrapolate the observed conditions, judge the likely impact of habits, use teacher planning and dialogue to consider the likely typicality and impact of teaching over time…and re-visit later to judge impact. The longer the teacher has a class the more the emphasis will shift to actual measurable progress over time from their starting point with the class.

As we reward progress over time (making it a determining judgement)  we need to increasingly compare actual (external) outcomes with our typical gradings of teaching. There has been a poor relationship between the quality of teaching judged through lesson observation compared to actual outcomes of the students; class performance often does not stack up well against observation data. A focus on progress over time should generate a greater link between the judgements on typicality teaching and student outcome. 

So ticking tricks in 20 minutes is mis-leading and does not focus on what matters. What matters is that students receive typically good and outstanding teaching every lesson so that they make progress over time. Those teachers that create the conditions for progress more often should be rewarded, for it is the impact of this teaching that supports students to make progress over time that counts. The freeing/loosening nature of this view on teaching and rationalising the part that observation has to play in judging teaching releases professionals to teach anyway they choose, without ticking any prescribed boxes, so long as students make progress over time and this is reflected in a triangulation of evidence then teaching is typically good and outstanding and these judgements are stickier….and that feels right.

April, 2014