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Management vs. Leadership: Do Leaders Matter?

Management vs. Leadership: Do Leaders Matter?. Patrick F. Bassett, NAIS President. bassett@nais.org. See Bassett Blog 2012/06. Do Leaders Matter?.

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Management vs. Leadership: Do Leaders Matter?

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  1. Management vs. Leadership: Do Leaders Matter? Patrick F. Bassett, NAIS President bassett@nais.org

  2. See Bassett Blog 2012/06 Do Leaders Matter? Research on the effect of national leaders on economic growth since WWII: individual leaders can play crucial roles, but the “effects of leaders are strongest in autocratic settings where there are few constraints on a leader’s power.“ In independent schools, the days of Frank Boyden are long over. 2001 government study in England: while school heads exercise “only a small, indirect effect on performance, there is a widespread belief…that leadership is a vital ingredient for success.”

  3. See Bassett Blog 2012/06 Do Leaders Matter? Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow: Evidence that in business, success and failure is much more clearly traceable to luck than leadership perspicacity. We seek and see patterns in leadership that don’t exist. Yet, “[f]or some of our most important beliefs we have no evidence at all, except that the people we love and trust hold these beliefs. Considering how little we know, the confidence we have in our beliefs is preposterous – and it is also essential.”

  4. See Bassett Blog 2012/06: The Bassett “Existential Take” Do Leaders Matter? What’s your Take? We have to choose to believe that leaders matter. Leaders have to believe that leadership is different from management, and act accordingly. Leaders, in an existential sense, must make meaning. Leaders exert leadership as they change the course of the river, whether or not Luck and Fate are involved as hidden, behind the scenes players, or we draft on them consciously to serve the outcomes we seek.

  5. “Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do thingsright.” ~Warren G. Bennis • School versions of “doing things right”? Of “doing the right things”? • An independent school dilemma? Unproven accusations? • An NAIS dilemma? - PoCC attendance? Regional values conflicts?

  6. Management: Manages Complexity by… Planning & Budgeting + Organizing & Staffing + Controlling & Problem-solving = Producing predictability, order, and consistency Leadership: Leads Change by… Setting a direction +Aligning people +Motivating & inspiring = Producing useful and dramatic change What Leaders Really Do ~ John Kotter PFB: BOTH essential to effective leadership of school. Summer Admin Retreat: What are our one to three major management priorities? Our two to three leadership priorities?

  7. Exceptional Management and Leadership Requires … Testing Assumptions San Francisco Exploratorium PFB: Physical distortions like The Ames Distorted Room less tricky than time and conviction distortions: Recreating the Good Samaritan parable in Seminary. Management’sWorldview by Bartley Madden

  8. Management vs. Leadership Testing Assumptions Management’sWorldview by Bartley Madden

  9. Exceptional Management and Leadership Requires … Testing Assumptions • Key Point #1: Our perceptions are rooted in assumptions based on what has proven accurate in the past. (PFB: Any Examples?) • Key Point #2: We improve our worldviews by embracing the diverse opinions of others • Diversity contributes to organizing feedback that can identify… • The outright obsolescence of one or more of our key assumptions (PFB: like “sacred cows”) • Promising new ideas which may be inconsistent with our existing worldviews. (PFB: like online learning & flip teaching at the school level) Management’sWorldview by Bartley Madden

  10. Exceptional Management and Leadership Requires … Testing Assumptions • Key Point #3. Our perceptions of reality, our use of language, and knowledge building are intertwined. • Any language, and the worldview it mediates, imposes limitations on our understanding. • Language, if used unreflectively, easily becomes imprisoning. • Language expresses but also determines what we can see and how we see it. • “If our metaphors encourage us to model accident chains, then we will start our investigation by looking for events that fit in that chain.” ~Sidney Dekker (world’s leading expert on airline crashes) Management’sWorldview by Bartley Madden

  11. Exceptional Management and Leadership Requires … Testing Assumptions • Example: Alaska Airlines crash of Flight #261 in 2000: • Language and syntax (subject/verb/object) encourages linear thinking and cause/effect assumptions. • Language and conventional wisdom would point to one of two probably causes… • Pilot error. • Mechanical failure (faulty jackscrew unit design) • Real cause, revealed after years of study: slight and incremental “improvements” to increase efficiency and adjustment in the maintenance & maintenance schedule: i.e., failure of the unit not because of the mechanical design but because of inadequate lubrication. Management’sWorldview by Bartley Madden

  12. Exceptional Management and Leadership Requires … Testing Assumptions • Key Point #4: The success of leadership’s change initiatives depends upon its analysis of “how the world occurs for employees.” (Cf. Barbados Group research paper “Putting Integrity into Finance – A Purely Positive Approach,” on SSRN – Social Science Research Network.) • Insights into human behavior key to improving individual and organizational performance: PFB – Dan Pink’s work on motivation • IDEO: “We build to think” – i.e., the importance of prototyping. • Factory example: Maintenance bonus related to … • How long it took to repair a critical piece of machinery which routinely broke down • Change incentive to…? • How much time between breakdowns. Management’sWorldview by Bartley Madden

  13. Exceptional Management and Leadership Requires … Testing Assumptions • What are management assumptions we make all the time? • What are leadership assumptions we make all the time? • Any evidence some of them may be obsolete? Management’sWorldview by Bartley Madden

  14. What System Do We Employ To Make Good Management & Leadership Decision? How “To Bake In” Assumption Testing & Diversity of Thinking What’s your Myers-Brigg’s Profile? What’s your Team’s Myers-Briggs Profile? The “Z-Method” of Decision-Making

  15. What System Do We Employ To Make Effective Decisions? For conundrums and issues: Investigate and gather the facts. ( = The Myers-Briggs’ “S”) Pay attention to the instinctive (= Malcolm Gladwell’s “blink” reactions - The Myers-Briggs’ “N”) Rationally determine the options (including the ethical framework - IGE’s “justice” (Kant); vs. “greater good” (Mills); vs. caring ethos (Gilligan) = The Myers-Briggs’ “T”) Consider the “downstream” impact. (= The Myers-Briggs’ “F”) NAIS Case Study/Crisis Protocols

  16. What System Do We Employ To Make Effective Decisions? For conundrums and issues: IGE’s 4 Ethical Frameworks part of a 4-way test that incorporates the Myer’s Brigg’s Z-analysis & the Warren Bennis dichotomy (“doing things right” and “doing the right thing”): The Legal Test (S) The Gut Test (N) The Front Page Test (T) The Role Model Test (F) NAIS Case Study/Crisis Protocols

  17. NAIS Film Vignettes To download films and PDF of slides of NAIS Take on each case study: http://www.nais.org/search/index.cfm?ItemNumber=149136 • NAIS Case Study #1: Harsh Transitions in the Second Grade • NAIS Case Study #2: Shock and Scandal • NAIS Case Study #5: Clash of Styles of Leaders • NAIS Case Study #9: Administrative Evaluations • NAIS Case Study #11: Digging Deeper for the Campaign • NAIS Case Study #13: Taking Charge…by a Trustee • NAIS Case Study #15: Marriage of a Student • NAIS Case Study #28: Peanuts Allergy • NAIS Case Study #29: Anonymous Letter from the Faculty • NAIS Case Study #30: Breaking the Rules…by the Adults • NAIS Case Study #31: Admissions Package Deal

  18. Developing Mental Models & Training for Management & Leadership Governance as Leadership Management as Leadership Three Levels of… Governance, Management, and Leadership

  19. The SAT Analogy Board Version: Our board is to our school as is to . Developing the Board & Admin Team(Board Member, May 2004, Chait et al.)

  20. The SAT Analogy Leadership Team Version: Our leadership team is to our school as is to . Developing the Board & Admin Team(Board Member, May 2004, Chait et al.)

  21. Loose steering wheel is to auto Fingernail is to blackboard Hamster is to wheel Three Levels of Board GovernanceSource: Bill Ryan, AISNE Governance Workshop, Oct 23. 2007 Analogies revealing some level of dysfunction: “Our board is to our school as…

  22. Three Levels of Governance/Management/Leadership(Adapted from Board Member, May 2004, Chait et al.) “The antidote to micromanagement is macroengagement.” ~Dick Chait Leadership 2.0: Distributive of management, authority, responsibility Applied to problem-solving: Rising benefit costs? Adding Chinese? Rightsizing?

  23. Generative Questions (from the college president to the board of a highly selective US college) • What does the college have to offer to students and society, in this century? How has that changed from a generation ago? • What does it mean for the college to be successful? To what degree is our view of the college’s success in the context of our peers, and to what extent is it independent of them? • By what standards should we expect to judge in five years our stewardship of the college? • Who are the students we should be enrolling in the college? Why? How?

  24. Generative Questions (from the college president to the board of a highly selective US college) • Who are the faculty we should be attracting to the college? Why? How? • What is the comparative advantage of the college’s location, and how should we capitalize upon it. • What is the comparative disadvantage of the college’s location, and how should ameliorate it? • Are there assets of the college currently underutilized? • Is the college organized to respond to the present challenges and to realize its aspirations for the future?

  25. “Leaders lead change by… setting a direction, aligning people, and motivating & inspiring, producing useful and dramatic change.” ~John Kotter See Bassett PowerPoint: Change Agency Leadership

  26. The End (See related slides in Appendix) For copy of the presentation: NAIS Members - Search on website for ‘”Bassett PowerPoint”; non-NAIS members - Email charles@nais.org for a PDF version.

  27. Appendix For copy of the presentation: NAIS Members - Search on website for ‘”Bassett PowerPoint”; non-NAIS members - Email charles@nais.org for a PDF version.

  28. Trendbook 2011/2012 IDEO’s Product Development Team: designer, engineers, psychologists, anthropologists. Promoting people of color to leadership the key to further diversification Return

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