Chapter 21 -- The Jossey-Bass Reader on
Educational Leadership
Good-Bye, Command and Control
In many surveys senior leaders report that more than two-thirds of their organizational change efforts fail.
Self-managed teams are far more productive than any other form of organizing.
Rather than rethinking our fundamental assumptions about organizational effectiveness, we have stayed preoccupied with charts and plans and designs.
People organize together to accomplish more, not less.
Organization is a naturally occurring phenomenon.
Organization occurs from the inside out, as people see what needs to happen, apply their experience and perceptions to the issue, find those who can help them, and use their own creativity to invent solutions.
Belief in the System
Leaders who have embraced a more participative, self-organizing approach are overwhelmed by the capacity, energy, creativity, commitment, and love that they receive from the people in their organization.
As people drive to work they're wondering how they can get something done for the organization despite the organization.
By honoring and trusting people who work with them, leaders have unleashed startling high levels of productivity and creativity.
Strategies for Change
We need to encourage the creativity that lives throughout the organization, but keep local solutions localized.
Most change efforts fail when leaders take an innovation that has worked well in one area and attempt to roll it out to the entire organization.
The primary task of being a leader is to make sure that the organization knows itself.
The constant tinkering and hunting for solutions that work does not look neat.
Only when everyone in our organization understands who we are, and has contributed to this deep understanding, do we gain the levels of commitment and capacity we so desperately need.
Moving to Action
Leaders put a premium on action. Organizations that have learned how to think together and that know themselves are filled with action.
People do not need the intricate directions, time lines, plans, and organization charts that we thought we had to give them.
From leaders, people need information, access, resources, trust, and follow-through.
You can only engage people enough so that they want to do perfect work.
Ultimately we have to rely not on the procedure manuals but on people's brains and commitment to doing the right thing.
Imposed control breeds passivity.
No More Quick Fixes
Self-organization is a long-term exploration requiring enormous self-awareness and support.
There are no quick fixes; for most organizations, meaningful change is at least a three to five-year process.
If we are to develop organizations of greater and enduring capacity, we have to turn to the people of our organization.
The Leader's Journey
Those who have led their organizations into new ways of organizing often say that the most important change was what occurred in themselves.
Leaders managing difficult personal transitions are usually simultaneously opening new avenues for people in the organization.
They are moving toward true team structures, opening to more and more participative processes, introducing new ways of thinking.
Organizational change is a dance, not a forced march.
You can encourage the experimentation and tinkering, the constant feedback and learning, and the wonderful sense of camaraderie that emerges as everyone gets engaged in making the organization work better than ever before, even in the most difficult of circumstances.
Sustainability, Not Employability
Sustainability- We cannot create an organization that means something to its people if that organization has no life beyond the next project or contract.
Commitment and loyalty are essential in human relationships.
The organizations that people love to be in are ones that have a sense of history and identity and purpose.
The Real Criteria for Measuring Change
the sense of belonging is palpable in an organization.
Leaders should ask: "Are people in the organization more committed to being here now than they were at the beginning of this effort?"
We should create organizations that know how to respond continuously to shifts in markets and environments, organizations that have learned how to access the intelligence that lives everywhere in the system.
Jossey-Bass Publishers. The Jossey-Bass Reader on Education Leadership.