Michael Fullan Leadership & sustainability

1. Michael FullanLeadership & sustainability System Thinkers in Action A compelling strategy for widespread and lasting improvement

2. Leadership & sustainability • Leadership (not ‘leaders’) is the key to the new revolution. Leadership is to this decade what standards were to the 1990s if we want large-scale, sustainable reform • Succesful leaders in learning organizations, and operating in comlex times… (Leading in a Culture of Change) • Moral purpose • Understanding change processes • Relationship building • Knowledge building • Coherence making

3. Leadership is crucial to success • A combination of ‘pressure and support‘ • or • Accountability and capacity building • Capacity building involves the collective ability – • dispositions, skills, knowledge, motivation and resources – • to act together to bring about positive change

4. Sustainability • What is needed in present and future society? • The ability to learn how to learn and other meta-cognitive or ‘thinking skills’; the ability to learn on the job and in teams; the ability to cope with ambiguous situations and unpredictable problems; the ability to communicate well verbally, not just in writing; and the ability to be creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial • David Hargreaves • Centrally driven reforms can be a necessary first start (when performance is seriously unacceptable) but can never carry the day of sustainability

5. Matrix KNOWLEDGE POOR KNOWLEDGE RICH CENTRAL PROFESSIONAL PRESCRIPTION JUDGMENT Barber

6. An adaptive challenge …Sustainability • Public service with a moral purpose • Commitment to changing context at all levels • Lateral capacity building through networks • Intelligent accountability and vertical relationships • Deep learning • Dual commitment to short-term and long-term results • Cyclical energizing • The long lever of leadership

7. 1. Public service with a moral purpose • Raising the bar and closing the gap of pupil learning • Treating people with demanding respect (moral purpose is supportive, responsive, and demanding, depending on the cirumstances • Altering the social environment (e.g., other schools and districts) for the better

8. 2. Commitment to changing at all levels • Changing whole systems means changing the entire context within which people work • If context is everything, me must directly focus on how it can be changed for the better • It will take time and cumulative effort. Once it is under way, it has self generating power to go further If you want to change people’s behavior, you need to create a community around them Contexts are the structure and culture within one works

9. 3. Lateral capacity building • Complexity theory tells us that if you increase the amount of purposeful interaction and infuse it with the checks and balances of quality knowledge, selforganizing patterns (desirabele outcomes) will acrue

10. 4. Intelligent accountability and vertical relationships • Take shared responsability for positive outcomes • Positive outcomes arise from a combination of personal effort and wider social resources • Learning communities interact around given problems, they generate better practices, shared commitment, and accountability to peers Vertical relationships … between state, district between district, school How good is your school?

11. 5. Deep learning • Adaptive work … • Demands learning • Demands experimentation • Difficult conversations • Species evolve whereas cultures learn (Heifetz) • Whoever makes the most mistakes wins!! • Fear creates a focus on the individual rather than the collective • Fear causes a focus on the short run (driving) out consideration of the longer run • Drie standaardvragen van Fullan: • Wat zou er moeten gebeuren? • Wat gebeurt er? • Wat maakt het verschil?

12. 6. Dual commitment to short-term and long-term results • Governments have to show progress in relation to social priorities (in health service, street crime, pupil achievement) within one election term Each level above you helps or hinders (it is rarely neutral)

13. 7. Cyclical energizing • If we want sustainability, we need to keep an eye on energy levels (overuse and underuse) • It is not hard work that tires us out as much as it is negative work • Positive collaborative cultures … • push for greater accomplishments • avoid the debilitating effects of negative cultures • (Collaborative cultures can become too intense and burn us out) • We need a combination of full engagement with colleagues, along with less intensive activities that are associated with replenishment)

14. 8. The long lever of leadership • Leadership is the lever for sustainanability; system thinkers in practice • We need a system laced with leaders who are trained to think in bigger terms and to act in ways that affect lagger parts of the system as a whole: the new theoreticians A certain kind of leadership … (amalgams of level 4 and 5) How many do you leave behind who can go even further? The capacity to be alone is a valuable resource when changes of mental attitude are required … Solitude facilitates ‘learning, thinking, innovation, and maintaining contact with one’s own inner world’

15. Energy Regressive archetypes are cognitively and emotionally simpler and easier to use Progressive archetyes require much more skill and persistence

16. Seven ‘languages of transformation’ Kegan & Lahey It’s doable; you can get better at them through reflective practice

17. 10 preconditions of sustainability • Leading with a compeling, driving conceptualiztion • Collective moral purpose • The right bus • Capacity building • Lateral capacity building • Ongoing learning • Productive learning • A demanding culture • External partners • Growing financial investments Fullan, Bertani & Quinn

18. 10 guidelines for system leaders committed to sustainability • The reality test (face the facts) • Moral purpose • Get the basics right • Communicate the big picture • Provide opportunities for people to interact with the big picture • Intelligent accountability (evidence based) • Incentivize collaboration and lateral capacity building • The long lever of leadership • Design every policy, whatever the purpose, to build capacity, too • Grow the financial investment in education Barber & Fullan

19. The main message Make system thinking and sustainability the agenda