I have been working closely with a school and its leadership team during the current COVID-19 outbreak. The leaders have managed school closure, online meetings, preparing a roll out of online learning, canceling local trips, getting groups back in to the USA from abroad, communicating to parents, closing boarding programs, monitoring several news channels, communicating with multiple stakeholders and health and government officials and so on. Challenging times indeed.
No school was fully ready for the outbreak in spite of all their emergency plans; but, some are better prepared than others to pivot to a new way of teaching and learning in the online space. (Yes, resources do matter, and some schools unfortunately, and through no fault of their own do not have the resources and nor do their students). Why are some schools, including the one I am working with specifically, pivoting successfully to managing change and move to online learning?
The schools most ready to adapt to online learning are not necessarily the schools with the best strategies or resources for online learning. The schools best able to adapt are those with an already established culture of ongoing learning and development, risk taking, collaboration and trust. The move to online teaching and learning at this particular school will not be seamless, but it will shift quickly, creatively and successfully. Why? Because ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’. This school has an established culture for innovation. Teachers are already in the mindset of trying something new (and not sticking rigidly to the old); looking to solve a problem creatively (rather than becoming frozen); ready to take risks (and not being afraid of making mistakes); collaborating with peers (instead of being stingy with ideas). This is a culture that enables buy-in, flexibility and innovation and where the faculty daily collectively take responsibility to create an engaging and future-ready environment.
Culture cannot be left alone to self-create, and leaders must embark daily on an intentional journey to cultivate the culture they know will create an engaging, productive and innovative work place, or school in this case. School culture (or any organizational culture) is tough to create. It acts like a moving target and can often mean something different to everyone. It grows organically, and emerges from stories, interactions, conversations and policies. Thus, it must be carefully and intentionally cultivated.
This school’s leadership has over the past several years purposefully nurtured a culture for innovation that has as a key element (there are many aspects to building culture), magnifying the good. Some examples of this include, starting each meeting with an agenda item to magnify the good; sending handwritten notes of gratitude to peers and students; running magnify the good assemblies; encouraging shout-outs and, importantly, creating a strengths-based culture where the culture takes a more positive approach by focusing on identifying each person’s strengths and supporting the productive application of those strengths at work.
Another name for magnifying the good is appreciative inquiry. When a culture rests on this foundation, practices of appreciative conversations fill the hallways, meeting rooms and minds of people. Even the end-of-year summative reviews have an appreciative tone. Teachers and administrators are asked questions like “What are your leadership highpoints?”; “What are your hopes and dreams?”; “What are the opportunities for improvement?” Appreciative conversations and relationships mold values and attitudes of the people so they can both individually and collectively “imagine a preferred future together that is more hopeful, boundless, and inherently good…It is about … finding those positive, anticipatory images that compel action toward them.” An appreciative inquiry approach has proven to be foundational in “designing, transforming, and growing” an effective school culture that is ready to adapt to this massive global change. Teachers are eager to activate positive change in their teaching and learning approaches to make them more relevant to the rapidly changing needs of the students.
In conclusion, ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’ is believed to be a famous quote from the great scholar of leadership and management, Peter Drucker. Drucker was not saying that strategy was unimportant, but that rather that an intentionally cultivated, powerful and inspiring culture is a surer path to organizational success especially when the world is changing so rapidly and immensely that we may no longer have the strategies required to manage the change.
Dr. Peter Dry March, 2020
Reference:
Appreciative Inquiry Handbook for Leaders of Change by Cooperrider, Whitney and Stavros. 2008
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