The fifth shift school leaders must undertake is how they get work done. Presently, main and central offices get work done by employing routine managerial tasks and functions—budgets, schedules, protocols, hierarchies that control outcomes. To best prepare our students for the digital world of work, school leaders must go beyond being CONTROLLERS to becoming COACHES who operate with a mindset of discovery and foster continual rapid exploration, execution, and learning. The leadership practices enabling this shift include the following:
- Moving from a hierarchy of individual leaders to networks of leadership teams;
- Regularly reprioritizing initiatives to simultaneously execute today’s programs, co-create tomorrow’s programs, and let go of yesterday’s programs;
- Engaging and leading people, helping them understand—and be excited by—the fact there will be ongoing and significant change.
In closing, all of the five shifts described in these latest blogs, if followed by school leaders, would require a fundamental shift in how schools are organized—grades, departments—how curriculum are organized—courses, subjects, credits—and how teachers are organized—classrooms, transmission—and how schools are located—in buildings. Embedded in all of these shifts is shift in mindset from institutional goals to educational goals—the goals that are listed in mission statements, but, are quickly forgotten when main and building office doors close.
Alan C. Jones 