Author: Alan Jones

      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.

      The fourth shift school leaders must undertake is HOW THEY ORGANIZE THEIR OFFICES. Presently, main and central offices employ a command and control organizational structure. To best prepare our students for the digital world of work, school leaders “must beyond being directors that receive and give instructions up and down a vertical hierarchy to being CATALYST that empower and guide self-managing teams, fostering connection, dialogue, and cooperation across traditional organizational boundaries.”(McKinsey Quarterly, May 2023) .Students in today’s schools continue to sit silo like classrooms and departments in a private sector world organized around networks of autonomous teams working together. The following leadership practices can help drive the shift:

• Breaking up traditional silo like organizational structures—grade levels, subjects, departments, specialties—into self-regulating entrepreneurial teams based on themes, problems, fields of interest.
• Moving from a hierarchy of individual leaders to networks of leadership teams.
• Developing communication networks that share innovative approaches to teaching and learning.

      The third shift school leaders must undertake is HOW THEY SHOW UP. Presently, main and central offices are occupied by school leaders performing their particular professional roles. To best prepare our students for the digital world of work, school leaders must move beyond their identity as professionals and show up as humans, with the courage reveal their authentic selves. The intent is to move beyond task-driven and transactional relationships by taking time to enter teacher workplaces not only to model professional expectations, but, more importantly to share values, beliefs, hopes, and fears. Too often school leaders fall back on their professional selves to restore a sense of certainty and authority. When these professional walls go up, faculty members become reluctant to share their deepest passion, wisdom, creativity, and expertise.

      The second shift school leaders must undertake is HOW TO CREATE VALUE. Presently, main and central offices preoccupy themselves with the implementation function. The goal being adding programs or activities or structures or amenities that will set their school apart from other schools in their area.

      To accommodate the digital working world, school leaders must move beyond competing on the hard facts of schooling to creating educational environments that live up to the soft educational goals and values written into school mission statements: “passion for lifelong learning;” “empower students to think critically;” “fostering a love of learning;” “cultivating leadership skills;” “equipping students with the skills and values they need to thrive in the 21st century.”

      How should school leaders begin this shift? For those school leaders serious about making this sift, they should start with sitting in classrooms all day and asking themselves this question in each class: “In this class do I see any evidence of a mission stated goal or value being purposefully developed amongst the students in this class? If the school leader is honest with themselves, what they will observe in their classrooms is best summarized in a quote from John Goodlad’s A Place Called School (1984): “Boredom is a disease of epidemic proportions.” Now, a generation later, if you were ask students for a list of adjectives that describe their classroom experience, I doubt any of the goals and values written into school mission statements would make the list.

      In past and future blogs, I will continue describing those managerial and leadership strategies and dispositions that embed mission driven goals and values in classroom instruction. The journey towards mission driven leadership must begin with school leaders being brutally honest about the classrooms they supervise and the courage to change, in Goodlad’s words, “the extraordinary sameness in our schools.”

      I devoted the last four Blogs to a McKinsey study describing for trends in the private sector that will dramatically change the world of work. For each trend, I explained how institutional schooling fails to prepare young people for successfully working in occupations that are radically different than the ones their fathers and mothers worked in. A follow-up to the McKinsey study on the four trends in the private sector working world, was a second study describing the five shifts industry leaders must undergo to reimagine their role in the digital world they now work in. I will devote the next five Blogs to applying these private sector leadership shifts to how school leaders should think about and enact school environments that will best prepare young people for successful working in a digital world.

      The FIRST SHIFT school leaders must undertake is what they FOCUS ON. Presently, main and central offices are controlled by a managerial mindset that values certainty over uncertainty; standardization over novelty; and routinization over innovation. To best prepare out students for the digital world of work, schools’ leaders must move beyond a focus on implementation to a focus on impact. Instead of reliance on the certainties of managerial routines, school leaders become comfortable with a visionary mindset that focuses possibility. From a leadership perspective, this transformation requires the following elements:

• Aligning people with a clear and shared purpose and aspiration;
• Defining the value to be created for community members;
• Contributing positively to a wider society and the natural environment;
• Encouraging and empowering people in small self-regulating entrepreneurial teams;
• Fostering horizontal transparency and collaboration throughout the network and beyond.