Leading in a Culture of Changeby: Michael Fullan

Presentation by: Kelly Taylor

A Remarkable Convergence

• Theories abound about how to lead, this has created a wealth of ideas and strategies to help leaders confront “complex problems that do not have easy answers” (p. 3).

• This “convergence” gives leaders a “framework for thinking about and leading complex change more powerfully than ever before” (p.3).

• The figure on the next page represents this framework.

Moral Purpose

UnderstandingChange

RelationshipBuilding

KnowledgeCreation

and Sharing

CoherenceMaking

CommitmentExternal and

Internal

More good things happen;fewer bad things happen

A Framework for Leadership

Leaders

Members

Results

Energy - enthusiasm - hopefulness constellation

• “Energetic-enthusiastic-hopeful leaders “cause” greater moral purpose in themselves, bury themselves in change, naturally build relationships and knowledge, and seek coherence to consolidate moral purpose” (p. 7).

The Five Components of Change Leadership

• Moral Purpose

• Understanding Change

• Relationship Building

• Knowledge Creation and Sharing

• Coherence Making

Moral Purpose

• Defined as: “acting with the intention of making a positive difference in the lives of employees, customers, and society as a whole” (p. 3).

• Moral purpose is what infuses an organization with passion and purpose.

• Fundamentally, “moral purpose and sustained performance of organizations are mutually dependent” (p.28).

Moral Purpose, cont.

• One must have moral purpose in order to have a guiding force. It defines both the end product of leadership, and how one gets to the end product.

• Moral purpose is the driving force behind the other four components of the book, and is illustrated by the following case study.

National Literacy and Numeracy StrategyNational Literacy and Numeracy Strategy

• Plan for Reading and Math setting out actions, responsibilities and deadlines in England through 2002

• An sustained investment for at least six years, skewed toward those schools that need the most help

• Project infrastructure involving national direction from the Standards and Effectiveness Unit

• Every class will have a daily math and literacy lesson

• Detailed teaching program covering every school year for children from ages 5-11

• Emphasis on early intervention and catch up for pupils who fall behind

• Professional development programs designed to enable every primary teacher to learn to understand and use proven best practices in both curriculum areas

• Appointment of over 2000 lead math teachers and hundreds of literacy specialists to model best practices for their peers

• Intensive support to half of all schools where the most progress is required

• Investment in books for schools• Removal of barriers to implementation

(huge reduction in curriculum content outside the core subjects)

• Regular monitoring and inspection by a national agency

• National curriculum for initial teacher training

• Problem-solving philosophy involving early identification of difficulties and provisions for rapid solutions

• Provision of extra after-school, weekend, and holiday booster classes for those who need extra help to reach the standard

ResultsResults

• England moved from 57% proficient in literacy in 1996 to 75% in 2000

• From 54% proficient in Math in 1996 to 72% proficient in 2000

• “In summary, leadership, if it is to be effective, has to (1) have an explicit ‘making a difference’ sense of purpose, (2) use strategies that mobilize many people to tackle tough problems, (3) be held accountable by measured and debatable indicators of success, and (4) be ultimately assessed by the extent to which it awakens people’s intrinsic commitment, which is none other than the mobilizing of everyone’s sense of moral purpose” (p.20-21).

Understanding Change

• “Understanding the change process is less about innovation and more about innovativeness. It is less about strategy and more about strategizing. And it is rocket science, not least because we are inundated with complex, unclear, and often contradictory advice” (p. 31).

• We must understand change in order to become better leaders.

Steps to understand change

1. The goal is not to innovate the most, it is to solve complex problems. Do what you do and do it well.

2. It is not enough to have the best ideas, a leader has to get people to buy into them.

3. Appreciate the implementation dip, because that is part of any learning experience.

4. Redefine resistance by learning to view resistance as problems to be solved to alternative views.

5. Re-culturing the school by creating a culture of change.

6. Never a checklist, always complexity, because change is not a step-by-step process.

Relationship Building

• Relationships are essential to all successful change.

• The single factor common to every successful change initiative is that relationships improve.

• Leaders must be consummate relationship builders with diverse people and groups – especially with people different than themselves.

• “…the most effective leaders are not the smartest in an IQ sense, but those who combine intellectual brilliance and emotional intelligence” (p. 71).

Relationship Building, cont.

• Resistance is essential. If an ideas suffers no resistance, then it is not a good idea at all.

• “Defining effective leadership as appreciating resistance is another one of those remarkable discoveries: dissent is seen as a potential source of new ideas and breakthroughs” (p. 74).

Knowledge Creation and Sharing

• Collaborative cultures create knowledge sharing and vice versa.

• Sharing information without relationships just creates an information glut.

• Leaders of change work on “helping create new settings conducive to learning and sharing that learning” (p. 79).

Knowledge Building and Sharing, cont.

• “…the best companies are better than the best school systems when it comes to knowledge sharing” (p. 92).

• “The more that educators model knowledge sharing themselves in their daily work, the more that students will learn to do so” (p. 104).

• In order for schools to become successful, we must learn to share best practices, and our leaders must learn to help us with this sharing.

Coherence Making

• Understand that change is a leader’s friend, but its nonlinear messiness causes trouble.

• Experiencing messiness is necessary in order to discover the hidden benefits.

• Creative ideas and solutions are often generated when the status quo is disrupted.

• Living with change means simultaneously letting go and reining in.

• When you trust the dynamics of change, you will be conducive to making coherence.

• “effective leaders tolerate enough ambiguity to keep the creative juices flowing… they seek coherence”

Coherence Making, cont.

• One must first create a disturbance to make coherence. Equilibrium equals death.

• “In many organizations, the problem is not the absence of innovations but the presence of too many disconnected, episodic, piecemeal projects with superficial implementation” (p. 109).

• To be an effective leader, one must encourage differences between people to arise, and then guide them through this disturbance.

Coherence Making, cont.

After creating the disturbance, one must make coherence.Two concepts from complexity science deal with this.

1. Self-OrganizingNew relationships form from change as do new ideas.

2. Strange AttractorsThings that attract the energies and commitment

of employees to make things happen. Positive Attractors = Visions

Negative Attractors = Charismatic Leaders

“ Developing leaders for a culture of change involves slow learning over time. Rapid change, slow learning – a paradox that brings us to the hare and the tortoise” (p. 119).

The Hare and The Tortoise

• The three vital lessons learned from this book are more tortoise-like than hare-like, because one must learn slowly over time.

• Those lessons are “the vital and paradoxical need for slow knowing, the importance of learning in context, and the need for leaders at all levels of the organization, in order to achieve widespread internal commitment” (p. 121-122).

Three Lessons

• Slow Knowing – Leaders need to take their time to analyze and learn about new theories and ideas instead of jumping on every band-wagon that comes along.

• Learning in Context – Leaders must make learning specific to their followers, which is why one must learn in context. It is “developing leadership and improving the organization as your go” (p. 126).

• Leadership for Many – Leaders cannot initiate internal commitment. Leaders need to facilitate the growth of other leaders in order to foster internal commitment.

Final Thoughts

• “Ultimately, your leadership in a culture of change will be judged as effective or ineffective not by who you are as a leader but by what leadership you produce in others.”

• “Tortoises, start your engines!”

Bibliography

Fullan, Michael (2001). Leadership in a culture of change. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.