“When AI threatens your job, listen to what a classic children’s book has to say about reinventing yourself.”
“1) Leadership is visible in decision-making patterns, not just traits. Students who demonstrated cognitive flexibility (quickly switching strategies under pressure) were more likely to take on leadership roles. 2) How people allocate attention matters. Future leaders were more likely to distribute effort across multiple priorities rather than focus narrowly on a single high-reward task. 3) […]
“When multiple leaders have legitimate claims to the same jurisdiction, organizations typically default to one of four responses: Hand it to the most capable leader, Give it to the squeakiest wheel, Ship it off to a committee, Pass it to whoever has existing budget. However, none of these will work for agentic AI. The stakes […]
“Leaders should do four things when asked to execute a call they disagree with: 1) Stabilize themselves; 2) prioritize where they can make an impact; 3) lead the team through the transition; and 4) preserve trust.”
“School may need two separate documents: An Operational Imperative Plan that lays out the work needed to maintain institutional health, improve existing programs, upgrade facilities, and strengthen operational capabilities. This is essential work and deserves serious attention and resources. A Strategic Positioning Plan that articulates the school’s distinctive choices about future direction, makes explicit hypotheses […]
“In fast-paced, high-stakes transformation efforts, strategic metaphors aren’t fluff—they’re focused interventions that calm the brain, coordinate energy, and clarify direction. Robert Hill and Michael Levenhagen demonstrated that leaders coping with ambiguity must develop a mental model of how the environment works (i.e., “sensemaking”) and communicate this vision to gain support (i.e., “sensegiving”), with metaphor development […]
“Team leaders hold the key to translating corporate purpose into employee commitment through regular dialogue, balanced relationships, and worker autonomy.”
“Just as individuals vary dramatically in their ability to process challenges and maintain energy under pressure, school leadership teams have vastly different capacities for handling complexity, making decisions, and sustaining momentum through difficult changes. Some teams can absorb multiple competing priorities, quickly convert problems into action plans, and maintain strategic focus even when facing setbacks. […]
“Forecasting what a business will earn and spend, allocating resources among teams clamoring for more, and practicing professional skepticism without killing the vibe with Steve Love, a chief financial officer.”
“Stupid questions are easy to turn into smart opportunities. Notice the following examples. “Don’t you think it would be better if…?” Or “What are some other options?” “Why did you do it that way?” Or “What didn’t happen that caused this failure?” “What were you thinking?” Or “What would you do differently next time?” “Are […]
“Whether you’re a classroom teacher, a school principal, or a district leader, writing can help you clarify what you believe, make sense of a challenge, or simply notice what’s working. It could be a weekly note to your team. A personal journal where you reflect on the hardest moment of your day or the most […]
“Any learning system needs to balance exploitation—using what you know works—with exploration, trying new approaches to discover better solutions… The stakes keep rising while educational systems remain largely unchanged. Technology, work, and society are transforming in ways that make traditional educational approaches increasingly obsolete. Students enter the workforce prepared for a world that no longer […]
“The key is treating AI adoption as an organizational learning challenge, not merely a technical one. Successful companies are building feedback loops between Leadership, Lab, and Crowd that let them learn faster than their competitors. They are rethinking fundamental assumptions about how work gets done. And, critically, they’re not outsourcing or ignoring this challenge.”
“Current training approaches don’t prepare leaders for the unpredictability of today’s crises. Learn 10 ways to improve your organization’s simulations — and leaders’ ability to adapt.”
“Employees are customers who decide daily how much energy to give to their work. Here’s how leaders can understand and segment their workforce to identify what employees want most — and act on it.”
“By defining the key attributes and competencies needed for transformative leadership, the Portrait provides a resource to guide professional growth and as a foundation for targeted training programs. By embedding the Portrait attributes into key areas of organizational strategic planning — such as professional development, recruitment and succession planning — organizations can cultivate a sustainable leadership […]
“There is an attempt here to scare presidents, and they should avoid being scared into doing things that aren’t required.”
“Many college presidents and deans are issuing mealymouthed statements, ending long-standing programs, removing content from websites and otherwise cowering in the face of… attacks on higher education. Then there’s Michael S. Roth… “Leaders in higher educational institutions should stand up for their values.” Roth told me in an interview last week. “We should stand up […]
“Employees whose psychological needs are met are intrinsically motivated by finding meaning and enjoyment in their work, which leads to not only better performance but also improved well-being. Using self-determination theory to manage employees can promote ethical behavior, innovation, and long-term commitment.”
“Halfway through the second school year that the new model has been in use, officials argue that it is paying off. The number of schools in Houston that were rated D or F by the state dropped to 41 from 121. Math and reading scores on state standardized tests have risen. The overall gains were […]
“Once the need for hope is met, thriving rises to 38%, and suffering dips to 6%.”
“Leadership can often be equal parts high confidence and self-esteem and worrying if you’re doing it right while continually searching for answers. Whether you’re a leader in an organizational setting or have high influence in some other capacity, improving your leadership begins with a focus on what you’re already good at.”
““It’s a punishing job in normal times,” Holloway, a scholar of African American history, told me when I spoke to him last week. “But the standards we’re being held to are impossible. I had to ask myself, ‘What is it I want to do, how can I do it, and is this the right position?’”
“While AI’s ability to analyze complex data sets and iterate rapidly could revolutionize corporate strategy, it lacks the intuition and foresight required to navigate black swan events. Rather than fully replacing human CEOs, AI is poised to augment leadership by enhancing data analysis and operational efficiency, leaving humans to focus on long-term vision, ethics, and […]
“First, warring factions must agree that some polarizing conflicts are “wicked problems,” which don’t have any easy solutions. A wicked problem is a tug-of-war between competing priorities and values… Second, school systems hurting from polarization need leaders who can skillfully listen and mediate conflicts… Moving opposing viewpoints into the groan zone is a messy process. […]
“If accreditation serves as the concept model for the endorsement-as-credential, then Stewart Brand’s “pace layering” model is the concept model for the endorsement-as-implementation framework. Brand’s pace layering model reflects how complex, adaptive systems change over time. The layer at the bottom changes the slowest, with each layer above changing more quickly.”
“The study used a nationally representative U.S. sample of 2,729 managers and 12,710 individual contributors. Each group assessed how they are managing their team or how they are being managed based on a list of 20 managerial responsibilities.”
“What people tell us when they do this is that they often have never just sat with a student for 40 minutes and deeply listened to them about their experience and about what they want. That’s the first thing they say. The second thing they say is, “I cannot unhear what I just heard. When […]
“We define instructional design as the structures, processes, and routines that create the conditions for teaching and learning. The specific elements of instructional design include: Class scheduling, Teacher assignments, Student groupings, Course offerings”
“In honor of Thanksgiving in the U.S., we wanted to share a curated selection of our Management Tips on how to show gratitude and appreciation at work. We hope you find the advice useful at any time of year.”
“This article presents a classroom experiment that compared a strategy developed by a team of MBA students in the traditional way with one developed using a virtual AI assistant, which was an interactive tool that linked a tried-and-tested strategy toolkit as a plug-in to the generative AI underlying Chat GPT. The results of the two […]
“In this article we outline an effective way to leverage the power of storytelling, drawing on decades of combined experience helping senior executives lead large-scale change initiatives. There are four key steps: Understand your story so well that you can describe it in simple terms; honor the past; articulate a mandate for change; and lay […]
““The curious trick has been that if you actually let the local book-selling teams do what they think is best, you suddenly get much better bookstores,” Mr. Daunt said. Then he quickly added a caveat: “About a quarter of them become dramatically better, and a quarter become dramatically worse — but it is much easier […]
“Embracing hybrid methods can help organizations begin to remedy some of these outcomes. In this article we look at how, with this blended approach, organizations can achieve an optimal balance, allowing them to nimbly adapt to unforeseen challenges without losing sight of their ultimate objectives. First, let’s briefly review the core components of Waterfall and […]
“He’s not empathetic. He’s not caring. And he’s a jerk because of it; he is not very admirable because of it. But as he would argue, and as the lieutenant you quoted would argue, sometimes people who are caring and emotional, they aren’t going to fire people, they aren’t going to be tough, they aren’t […]
“A personality of a leader that might work in one situation might be exactly the wrong personality in another situation.”
“You don’t actually reach the stable point, because there is no stable point. A successful group is fundamentally unstable. If you recognize the instability, that means, ok, we are continually adapting and changing. And when something doesn’t go the way you thought it was going to go, ok, what do we do? But that’s what […]
“Unfortunately, the word “middle” implies that the person in that spot is on the way to somewhere else—ideally, the top. That thinking is misguided. Instead, we need to view middle managers as being at the center of the action. Without their ability to connect and integrate people and tasks, an organization can cease to function […]
“How will generative AI affect our industry and company in the short and longer term? …Are we balancing value creation with adequate risk management? …How should we organize for generative AI? …Do we have the necessary capabilities? …They will also want to direct a preliminary, fundamental question to themselves: Are we equipped to provide that […]
“Each project will bring different benefits to different stakeholders. Change managers and project leaders should identify the main benefit expectations for each key stakeholder early in the transformation. Here is a simple approach to identifying the main benefits of your change projects:”
“Companies that reduce and simplify workload on the front lines find that they can position employees to deliver a better customer experience.”
“We were still running from behind in 2012 when I asked Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, then a talented reporter and editor, to form an Innovation Committee. The committee’s first mandate was to develop a suite of new products that would generate quick, new revenue. But after a few months, Sulzberger, now publisher of the Times and chairman of […]
“Transforming from individual contributor to team leader can be quite difficult. Over the past 20 years, sponsors pointed to two key strengths — an ability to drive results and functional or technical expertise — as the central reasons for identifying and nominating employees as high potentials. But to reach the next level, high potentials who’ve […]
“#1. Everything is your fault. It sucks and it’s not fair, but it’s the truest thing about leadership. Try to deny this and you’ll erode any respect or trust you may have with internal and external stakeholders.”
“Beyond having an engaged workforce generally, what else can organizational leaders do to help? Gallup sought to identify the most salient aspects of work life that relate to mental health. Nearly 50 individual metrics were analyzed to distill the most common and highest return-on-investment actions that result in a positive impact on employee mental health. In […]
“This school year in particular, it seems like every interaction between teachers and administrators is contentious. Most leaders have done their level best to respond to the malaise sweeping through the teaching profession… Still, teaching is such a demanding profession that these measures seem meretricious, even insulting. On top of that, an education leader’s job […]
“Good leadership, like coaching, comes from face-to-face communication and building relationships, not via emails or memos. Being out and about also affords the head opportunities to listen to concerns and have conversations about issues that might otherwise fester.”
“Don’t mistake dilemmas for problems. A problem has a solution; you fix it. A dilemma is built into a situation; you cope with it.”
“Already we can begin to see certain themes that are related to nature’s resilience: Decentralization, Redundancy, Diversity, Adaptability. These qualities make interesting contrasts to the qualities we often see expressed in modern management and machine production: Centralize for economies of scale, Eliminate redundancy as waste, cut costs, Standardize on approach, Restrict range of motion as […]
“A recent survey found 85 percent of school principals are experiencing job-related stress and 48 percent are dealing with burnout. What can be done to keep them in their roles?”
“Based on my decade of experience designing and facilitating strategy retreats in small and large companies around the world, there’s a more creative approach CEOs can take to make the most of this annual opportunity with their executive teams.”
“One and Onlys are often seen as trailblazers because they show us what is possible. They instinctively understand this human peculiarity: They work hard to embrace their differences, to stand out and not blend in. When One and Onlys live their lives always being different, it means they inherently have learned to think outside the […]
“If you spend too much time mulling trivial decisions, such as what to wear or how to respond to a tweet, the less amenable you are to change. Not to mention, the mental effort of poring over those small decisions will leave you exhausted. Focus your energy instead on important and consequential decisions, whether that means […]
“Seven years into my role, I remain steadfast in my thinking that this will be my permanent professional home. Recently, I was asked what it would take to make that goal a reality: What are the conditions that would make it possible for me to last long term in this headship, given the volatility of […]
“People yearn for parental figures. And these types of parental figures, which we believe have existed in the past in all sorts of institutions (government, businesses, and heads in our schools), might not have even really existed at all. They’re illusions, lore. But they’ve become part of our story whether they were real or not. […]
“Ultimately, good governance is the bedrock upon which our schools and their missions rest, and the key to that is establishing a productive partnership between the head and the board.”
“Communicate often and clearly. Develop managers to lead and retain their teams. Workplace wellbeing is a differentiator; make it a priority”
“Servant leadership sounds something like this: How are you doing? What do you need? How can I help you be successful? Then listen, and serve their needs.”
“Heifetz defines the productive zone of disequilibrium as the optimal range of distress within which the urgency in the system motivates people to engage in adaptive work. In other words, this is the place where people are creative and come up with solutions. Move too high in the Productive Zone of Disequilibrium, and people panic […]
“Although the research we reviewed took on many approaches and perspectives, we found three overlapping domains of skills that strong principals have mastered—(1) instruction, (2) people, and (3) the organization.”
“Effective principals orient their practice toward instructionally focused interactions with teachers, building a productive school climate, facilitating collaboration and professional learning communities, and strategic personnel and resource management processes.”
“Fourth, there is the question of how to catch students up on what they missed during the pandemic. This is a serious problem… The right choice here is to get very specific on what needs to be made up and what does not; teams of teachers and administrators could work together to decide what is […]
“Spend less time on finance, spend less time in conference rooms, less time on PowerPoint and more time just trying to make your product as amazing as possible.”
“To manage the influx of disruption, seize opportunities, and even create the next unicorn, executives need to systematically expand the boundaries of their understanding, gather more insight, and ultimately synthesize faster so they can integrate risks and opportunities into courageous strategies. Of course, they need to do all of this while making smart short-term and […]
“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
“What most participants took away from the 90-minute forums, though, was just how complicated the problem is, he said, noting: “It’s like picking what’s the best of a lot of not very attractive options.” …In the end, no plan will make everyone happy. But Goldberg predicts that people who participated in the forums will at […]
“Higher-education institutions in the United States have already taken dramatic first steps to keep their people safe and to keep learning alive. Here are some other actions they can consider in the weeks and months ahead.”
“Everyone who writes about innovation stood on his shoulders.”
“Managers must ensure each employee knows what’s expected of them at work and has the materials and equipment they need to do their work right. Managers must create a culture that values providing genuine recognition for work well done. Managers must care about their employees, encourage their personal and professional development, and respect their opinions. Managers must help employees understand how […]
“Working collaboratively is an integral part of organization life, but it often proves more interpersonally difficult than anticipated. One of the most fundamental challenges organizations face is how to manage the interpersonal threats inherent in employees admitting ignorance or uncertainty, voicing concerns and opinions, or simply being different…. Interpersonal risk is a powerful force that […]
“Creating an institution around the idea of constant and continuous reinvention is a challenging concept for most academics (such as myself) to get our heads around… Actually living in an environment where ideas around innovation are rapidly translated into action feels – well – a bit risky.”
“A company’s accountability problem may actually be a coaching problem in disguise.”
Here are your jobs, leaders: Create a compelling vision of the digitally powered future. Foster conversations so that people can understand the vision and what it means for them. Clean up legacy situations — information systems, work rules, incentives, management practices, or dysfunctional functions — that slow or prevent change. Start some pilots to build […]
We make it part of every manager’s responsibility to sit down and have one-to-ones with employees where the manager comes only with questions, and it’s the manager’s job to empathize and to learn.”
“Perhaps the best examples of rearward innovation are edible. The culinary story of the past several decades is dominated not by the scientific improvements we were promised, but by a return to food and drink’s more delicious past. Traditional cooking, craft beer, heirloom vegetables and grass-fed beef have brought food forward by turning back.”
“A major obstacle is the way these ideas are being articulated and explained by those pushing them. For example, why are the new ways of learning better? What does the research say? Will this help our kids in college, careers and beyond? How? And what do the new terms mean, for real life? It would help to […]
“They want and need flexibility… But independent schools as structured, particularly at boarding schools, have been slow to support this flexibility because of rigid systems, differing views regarding employment, and the concrete reality.”
“The report summarizes seven of the most prominent trends and changes; we found that teaching force to be: 1. Larger 2. Grayer 3. Greener 4. More Female 5. More Diverse, by Race-Ethnicity 6. Consistent in Academic Ability 7. Unstable.”
“The Challenge Map is designed for education leaders who are looking for resources to help address common education challenges. For each challenge, you’ll find emerging trends and interesting practices League districts are implementing, as well as links to summaries and research-based tools aligned with the specific challenge.”
What’s at the heart of credibility? Two critical elements: perceived competence (people’s faith in the leader’s knowledge, skills, and ability to do the job) and trustworthiness (their belief in his or her values and dependability).”
“One of my senior leaders, the vice president of student affairs, and I had been talking about how to make ourselves much more student-centered in every aspect of the school. He suggested it’d be good and informative for me to spend a couple of nights during orientation week with the freshmen, and it coincided with […]
“This recent surge of technology-enhanced schooling called “personalized learning” merges the polestars of school reform since the 1890s. First, there is a reunion of efficiency and effectiveness, and second, the two wings of the progressive movement—“administrative” and “pedagogical” reformers, under different aliases have reappeared, reunited, and now use similar vocabularies.”
“The shift from primary emphasis on “scientific management” to advance efficiency in schools and classrooms–what later critics called “the cult of efficiency“– to a focus on effectiveness, i.e., student outcomes, in the late-20th century to determine “success” and “failure” is prologue to what is now occurring in 21st century U.S. schools.”
“As business leaders recognize the limitations of business silos and hierarchies, they invariably attempt to add new structures, like matrices or networks, to make their structures more agile… Instead of restructuring, companies can initiate change by assigning accountabilities for specific business outcomes to small teams or individual problem owners.”
“Through an analysis of a longitudinal data set collected from more than 6,000 students and their teachers nationwide, Lee found that students who were taught by a succession of teachers who majored or minored in mathematics had better success in short-term math achievement. In the long term, the students also were more likely to graduate […]
“Givers make up the majority of the worst performers, but also the majority of the best performers.”
The folk wisdom surrounding superintendents or chancellors heading urban districts says to appoint insiders if you like what has been happening in the system under the exiting superintendent in order to extend and protect what is working well for students, teachers, and the community. Stability and tweaking what works is the order of the day […]
In our orientation, we treat our new teachers the way we would like them to treat our students. Our district’s vision for learning is modeled after John Hattie’s (2009, 2012) meta-analysis of influences on student achievement, and each of Hattie’s best practices is incorporated into our new teacher induction. Following are Hattie’s conditions for learning […]
“Here are the six. Your customers, your suppliers, your employees, your owners, your regulators, and the communities you operate in. And if you can truly see through the eyes of all six of these counterparty groups and understand their needs, their aspirations, their insecurities, their time horizons. How many blind spots do you have now? […]
“The groups that performed well treated mistakes with curiosity and shared responsibility for the outcomes. As a result people could express themselves, their thoughts and ideas without fear of social retribution. The environment they created through their interaction was one of psychological safety.”
There are five pillars to sustaining change: permission, support, community engagement, accountability and staying the course.”
“Today’s top talent does not want a boss, they want a coach. Managers should establish expectations, coach, and create accountability”
“Researchers from the University of Minnesota and the University of Toronto studied 180 schools across nine states and concluded, “We have not found a single case of a school improving its student achievement record in the absence of talented leadership.””
In a growth culture, people build their capacity to see through blind spots; acknowledge insecurities and shortcomings rather than unconsciously acting them out; and spend less energy defending their personal value so they have more energy available to create external value. How people feel – and make other people feel — becomes as important as […]
“The Peter principle, the eponymous scholar [Laurence J. Peter] explained, happens when any employee in a hierarchy rises to the level of his or her own incompetence… Organizations, Peter and his co-author Raymond Hull argued, tend to reward rank-and-file high performers with promotions to management, even though the roles demand utterly different skills.”
Begun with an initial cohort of 12 high schools across the country, no one model of a secondary school was pushed. Instead, Sizer and his staff formulated 10 principles upon which educators should build schools that fit their setting. These principles were: 1. Learning to use one’s mind well: The school should focus on helping […]
Instead of having a committee vet ideas, they needed a process that operated with speed and urgency, and innovators and stakeholders who curated and prioritized their own problems/idea/technology. All of this would occur before any new idea, tech or problem hit engineering.”
So what does this half-century old experiment say to us in the in the 21st century about school reform? 1. When engaged teachers, administrators, and students are given the freedom to experiment and the help to do it, they will come through. 2. There is no one best way of schooling youth.”
It is impossible to plan for the unknown, but two orientations are essential for schools of the future. First, schools must be agile, flexible, open to change, fully awake to new and innovative approaches to learning, willing to experiment and courageous enough to discard tired and dated practices. At the same time, they need to […]
Our research shows a direct link between employees’ understanding of their company’s identity and key measures of business health.”
“Having at least one out of three group members experiencing positive affect can significantly and positively impact group decision making for two reasons. First, members experiencing positive affect tend to share a greater amount of unique information than those experiencing neutral affect. Additionally, they are more likely to initiate the sharing of unique information and […]