The Tools for Cooperation and Change: Lessons for Irish Education
From the man who coined the term "disruptive innovation" and ranked as the most influential business thinkers in the world Clayton Christensen's (1) ideas on change management and leadership are something I often refer to when looking at my role as a school leader.
In his 2006 article co-authored with Matt Marx and Howard H. Stevenson they explain how to choose the right tools and offer advice for managers (leaders) contemplating change.
While reading the article I have tried to draw parallels to change management and leadership in education and most notably Junior cycle reform in Ireland and possibly some lessons to be learnt.
Christenson, Marx and Stevenson state the "primary task of management is to get people to work together in a systematic way". While the authors use the term management they refer throughout the article to CEOs and leaders in organisations. Leadership and management go hand in hand. They are not the same thing, but they are necessarily linked, and complementary (Murray 2013). If we take that the manager’s job is to plan, organize and coordinate. The leader’s job is to inspire and motivate. Christenson et al. state that "Its a complicated job" much like being an orchestra conductor "managing the talents and actions of various players to produce a desired result". It becomes even more complicated though when we are trying to change something, rather than continue with the status quo. There are many examples of even the best CEOs/leaders/managers stumbling in their attempts to encourage people to work together toward a new goal.
For Durk Jager of Proctor and Gamble who had to resign after 17mths in charge or Carly Fiorina of HP could we read Ruairi Quinn or Jan O'Sullivan for Irish education. But here starts some of the difficulty for educational system change. Who is the leader/manager of the company or entity that is Irish Education. It the case of Junior cycle reform it seems at present that we have joint managing directors; Minister for Education and teacher unions who are both trying to determining policy direction.
Assessing the Existing Level of Agreement
The authors state that the first step in any change initiative must be to assess the level of agreement in the organisation along two critical dimensions.
The first is the extent to which people agree on what they want :
where they want to go, what their goals are
their values and priorities
The second dimension is the extent to which people agree on cause and effect:
which actions will lead to the desired outcome
When there is a shared understanding of cause and effect there will probably be agreement about which processes or initiatives adopt.
Envision a table with one axis labeled “what they want” and the other “cause and effect.” This is an agreement matrix. Now the hard part: Leaders must assesswhere within this matrix their organization lies, and where they want to moveto.
It is important to note that there is no best position to aspire to in the agreement matrix. The tools that will induce employees in one quadrant to cooperate with a change program may well misfire with employees in a different quadrant.
There may be pockets of schools and staffrooms around the country which lie in different quadrants with regard to school level reform but in order for system wide change to be effective we must first assess where the Irish Education System as a whole lies with regard to Junior Cycle reform and then look at what are the most effective tools to use to achieve cooperation and change.
If employees agree on goals but disagree on how to achieve them they fall into quadrant three. If employees disagree on both goals and how to get there they fall into quadrant 1 and so on with each quadrant. Some of the examples given in the article include Microsoft in 1995 which fell into Q3 as Netscape was threatening them a the primary window to access the Internet after which they saw off that threat through the vision paper "Interent Tidal Wave" by Bill Gates.
The merger of JP Morgan and Bank One fell into Q1 where power tools of threats and firing were used to successfully merge. Indeed the warring Balkan states are also referenced in Q1 as exemplifying this lack of agreement. Implementing change for organisations that lie in Q4. Clear consensus on both dimensions can make these organizations' cultures highly resistant to change. People are generally satisfied with what they get out of working in the organization and agree strongly about how to maintain that status quo.
So where does Junior cycle reform sit, it could be said that there is widespread support for Junior Cycle Reform (Travers Feb 2014) and for enhancing the quality of Learning experiences of students. The new structure for learning, teaching and assessment has been much debated in national press and in staffrooms for the past two years with many differing opinions and views being put forward and as outlined by Pauric Travers the responses by teachers has been influenced by a range of issues. Some related to the proposals themselves but others to much deeper rooted issues; "a decade of rapid social change, demographic and educational change followed by salary cuts, deteriorating career structures and casualization of the teaching profession which have left many distrustful." While many of these issues lie beyond the scope of the reform they must be addressed as an urgent requirement for the well being of our education system.
The stumbling blocks lie as Pauric Travers outlines in "how these shared aims can or should be achieved" in addition to the most fundamental objection of teachers to school based assessment for certification purposes" So Does that place us as an education system with no broad consensus in some areas on the vertical axis and no consensus on the horizontal axis; so somewhere between the Balkans and Microsoft in 1995 or indeed are teachers in schools firmly rooted in quadrant 4 - they are generally satisfied with what they get out of their job and are happy to maintain the status quo when it comes to assessment.
Moving from Agreement to Cooperation
The tools of cooperation can be grouped into four major categories: power, management, leadership and culture.
Power tools include fiat, force, coercion, and threats. These tools cause people in organizations to hunker down and seek survival strategies. That may work, especially in a consensus-free environment. Management must have the authority to use the power tool and to follow up with real consequences. They are essentially variations on coercion and fiat.
Management tools include training, standard operating procedures, and measurement systems. These are usually most effective when group members agree on cause and effect, but not necessarily on achievement goals based on participation in the organization.
Leadership tools include salesmanship, role modeling, vision creation, and charisma. These tools elicit cooperation, as long as there is a consensus that the change is consistent with the reason employees are in the enterprise. The same actions viewed as visionary and inspiring among employees in the upper left quadrant can be regarded with disdain and indifference by those in the lower quadrants. for example Vision statements the authors outline can be met with a "collective rolling of the eyes" if employees don't agree with want they want.
Culture tools include rituals, tradition, folklore, democracy, and apprenticeship training. Companies with strong cultures are, in many ways, self-managing. As people instinctively prioritise similar options and their common view of how the world works, which was learned as the organisation solved grew to meet challenges, subsequently means little debate is necessary about how best to achieve priorities. But strong culture can make such organisations highly resistant to change. Many of the tools in this quadrant only facilitate cooperation to maintain the status quo - such as rituals and folklore - they are not necessarily tools of change. Employees are deeply unlikely to cooperate with any strategy for change unless it matches there deeply shared beliefs about what must be done and how to achieve it.
In the diagram below each set of tools is matched with a quadrant of "The Agreement Matrix"
Their are other tools at the disposal of leaders and managers such as negotiation, strategic planning and incentives - however these will only work when there is a certain level of agreement on both dimensions of the matrix. They are included in the diagram above.
Christenson et al. note that using financial incentives - "essentially paying employees to want what management want - may backfire in an environment of low consensus." They highlight that this is particularly true in the world of second level education (K-12 public education), which they say is "decidedly in the lower-left quadrant of the agreement matrix" (The Balkans!!) "teachers, taxpayers, administrators, parents, students and politicians" they say " have divergent priorities and disagree strongly about how to improve".
As outlined previously organisations appear in different quadrants and organisation as they grow move from one to another. Most start in the lower left quadrant. In my current position where I was appointed as principal in a green field school site with only the first year students and very few staff I would have used power tools to prioritise and drive the school forward and define how things got done. But as we have grown over the past two years I have used tools from other quadrants. From defining a vision to handing the vision over to staff to develop and enhance it further. By modelling an open, inclusive, innovative, respectful teaching and learning environment. By supporting and encouraging teachers to be creative and try new things. By encouraging students to use their voice as to how the school can be improved. To listen. As the school has grown consensus as started to develop among the staff on both axis to achieve our goals.
But not all people in the school are in the same quadrant in the agreement matrix, this would be "very rare" in any organisation as outlined by Christensen et al. We must also acknowledge that some will always be left behind and it is an impossibility that all will agree with the direction of and roadmap for change or indeed if their is a need for change. One of the greatest tools any leader will have is to know which tool to use in any given situation and time and not to waste energy, time or even credibility using tools that won't. By knowing a bit more about the tools and where and when they are best used Christenson et al. in their paper hope that by making the instincts of effective leaders more explicit we can become more effective change leaders.
1 Clayton Christensen is the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. He is regarded as one of the world’s top experts on innovation and growth and his ideas have been widely used in industries and organizations throughout the world. A 2011 cover story in Forbes magazine noted that ‘’Everyday business leaders call him or make the pilgrimage to his office in Boston, Mass. to get advice or thank him for his ideas.’’ In 2011 in a poll of thousands of executives, consultants and business school professors, Christensen was named as the most influential business thinker in the world. - See more at: http://www.claytonchristensen.com
2 Adapted from “The Wall Street Journal Guide to Management” by Alan Murray, published by Harper Business ,2013
3 Pauric Travers Independent Chairperson 12 February 2014, Junior Cycle Reform a Way Forward
