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LSUS Katherine Becks

Elementary Secondary Education; *Leadership; Leadership Qualities; *Leadership Styles; *Leadership Training

The more complex society gets, the more sophisticated leadership must become. This book is about how leaders can focus on certain key change themes that will allow them to lead effectively under messy conditions. Chapter 1 identifies theoretical reasons why change occurs as it does. They include moral purpose, understanding change, developing relationships, knowledge building, and coherence making; they have developed independently but are deeply compatible. Chapters 2 through 6 take each theme in turn and examine in more detail its inner workings. Through these five chapters, a comprehensive theory of leadership is developed. The matter of becoming a leader and how systems can foster leadership development are taken up in chapter 7. In recent times, the knowledge base for what makes for success under conditions of complexity is getting better--deeper and more insightful. Case examples of large-scale transformation in both business and education provide an ever-increasing body of experiences from which to gain insight. This book draws from these new ideas and finds remarkable convergences in what is being discovered about how to lead in a culture of complex change. (Contains 71 references and an index.) (RT)

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BESICORKAVAILIABLE1

U.S. $25.00 Canada $37.50

IN A CULTURE OF

NGE BUSINESS, NONPROFIT, AND PUBLIC

sector leaders are facing new and

daunting challengesrapid-paced developments in technology, sudden shifts in

the marketplace, and crisis and contention in

the public arenaif they are to survive in this

chaotic environment, leaders must develop the

skills they need to lead effectively no matter

how fast the world around them is changing.

Leading in a Culture of Change offers new

and seasoned leaders' insights into the

dynamics of change and presents a unique and

imaginative approach for navigating the

intricacies of the change process. Author

Michael Fullanan internationally acclaimed

expert in organizational changeshows how

leaders in all types of organizations can accomplish their goals and become exceptional

leaders. He draws on the most current ideas

and theories on the topic of effective

leadership, incorporates case examples of

large scale transformation, and reveals a

remarkable convergence of powerful themes

or, as he calls them, the five core

competencies. By integrating the five core competencies

attending to a broader moral purpose, keeping

on top of the change process, cultivating

relationships, sharing knowledge, and setting a

vision and context for creating coherence in

organizationsleaders will be empowered to

deal with complex change. They will be

transformed into exceptional leaders who

consistently mobilize their compatriots to do

important and difficult work under conditions

of constant change. 3

More Praise for Leading in a Culture of Change

"The sign of outstanding and inspired leadership is the ability to

lead rather than be led by the forces of change. How do leaders

in private, public, and not-for-profit sectors meet the challenges

of today's complex world? This book shows the way."

Veronica Lacey, president and CEO, The Learning Partnership

"Michael Fullan debunks the notion that there is a 'one-size-fits-

all' blueprint for managing change. Leading in a Culture of

Change is an excellent book for all educators and business lead-

ers. Readers will gain powerful new insights into developing the

core capabilities required for effective leadership under condi-

tions of complex change." Kenneth Lalonde, executive vice president,

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce

"A great book for leaders everywhere who are truly interested in

learning and cultivating the leadership potential in others."

Marilyn Knox, president, Nutrition, Nestle Canada Inc.

"Michael Fullan has no truck with simplistic solutions or super-

heroes. Instead he helps leaders understand the paradoxes of

complex cultural changeleaders from all sectors will learn from

his insights." Heather Duquesnay, director and chief executive,

National College for School Leadership, England

"Leading in a Culture of Change describes vividly the kind of

leadership necessary to bring about successful change in modern

times. At its heart is building capacitya powerful message."

Michael Barber, head, Standards and Effectiveness Unit,

Department for Education and Employment, London, England

LEADING IN A CULTURE OF

CHANGE

LEADING IN A CULTURE OF

CHANGE

MICHAEL FULLAN

IA JOSSEY-BASS NEED A Wiley Company MIK San Francisco

Published by

r JOSSEY-BASSli si A Wiley Company 989 Market Streetimm....""

1. San Francisco, CA 94103-1741 www.josseybass.com

Copyright © 2001 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 750-4744. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158-0012, (212) 850-6011, fax (212) 850-6008, e-mail: permreq@wiley.com.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fullan, Michael.

Leading in a culture of change : being effective in complex times / Michael Fullan.

p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

ISBN 0-7879-5395-4 (alk. paper) 1. Educational leadership. 2. School management and organization.

3. Educational change. I. Title. LB2806 .F794 2001 371.2dc21 2001002014

FIRST EDITION

HB Printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

Contents

Preface ix

1. A Remarkable Convergence 1

2. Moral Purpose 13

3. Understanding Change 31

4. Relationships, Relationships, Relationships 51

5. Knowledge Building 77

6. Coherence Making 107

7. The Hare and the Tortoise 121

References 139

About the Author 145

Index 146 vii

To WLIW

9

Preface

THE MORE COMPLEX SOCIETY GETS, THE MORE SOPHIS-

ticated leadership must become. Complexity means change, but specifically it means rapidly occurring, unpre- dictable, nonlinear change. Moreover, the pace of change is ever increasing, as James Gleick, the author of Chaos, point- ed out in a recent book called Faster, which he subtitled The Acceleration of Just About Everything (Gleick, 1999). How do you lead in a culture such as ours, which seems to spe- cialize in pell-mell innovation?

This is the leader's dilemma. On the one hand, failing to act when the environment around you is radically changing leads to extinction. On the other hand, making quick deci- sions under conditions of mind-racing mania can be equally fatal. Robert Steinberg said it best: "The essence of intelli- gence would seem to be in knowing when to think and act

Ix

10

PREFACE

quickly, and knowing when to think and act slowly" (cited in Gleick, 1999, p. 114).

This book is about how leaders can focus on certain key change themes that will allow them to lead effectively under messy conditions. The book is also about how leaders foster leadership in others, thereby making themselves dispensable in the long run. And it is about how we can produce more "leaders of leaders."

The good news is that society has not been evolving as recklessly as it seems. As we shall see, there are deep theoret- ical reasons why change occurs as it does. If we can come to understand these powerful themes, we will be able to influ- ence (but not control) them for the better. I identify these themes in Chapter One, which I call "A Remarkable Convergence" because certain powerful factors have emerged that have developed independently but that are deeply com- patibleindeed, synergistic. There are five themes in particu- lar: moral purpose, understanding change, developing rela- tionships, knowledge building, and coherence making. Chapters Two through Six take each theme in turn and exam- ine in more detail its inner workings. Through these five chap- ters I develop a comprehensive theory of leadership. In Chapter Seven, I take up the matter of becoming a leader and how systems can foster leadership development, which turns out to be more of a tortoise than a hare proposition. Leadership must be cultivated deliberately over time at all lev- els of the organization.

Two things have happened in recent times that aid our pursuit of effective leadership. One is that the knowledge base for what makes for success under conditions of complexity is

getting betterdeeper, more insightful. The other is that there

PREFACE xi

are many more case examples of large-scale transformation in both business and education. There is literally more to learn today than ever before. Since the early 1990s we have begun to study and learn from more and more examples of pur- poseful reform. We are uncovering fantastic new insights from these experiences. This book draws from these new ideas in both business and education, and in so doing finds remarkable convergences in what we are discovering about how to lead in a culture of complex change.

Leadership in business and in education increasingly have more in common. As we shall see, businesses are realiz- ing more and more that having moral purpose is critical for sustainable success. In this respect they have much to learn from schools. Schools are beginning to discover that new ideas, knowledge creation, and sharing are essential to solving learning problems in a rapidly changing society. Schools can learn from how the best companies innovate and get results. At the most basic level, businesses and schools are similar in that in the knowledge society, they both must become learn- ing organizations or they will fail to survive. Thus, leaders in business and education face similar challengeshow to culti- vate and sustain learning under conditions of complex, rapid change.

Fortunately, there are many more examples of organiza- tions that are engaged in successful change. I have benefited from working with a growing number of colleagues in Toronto and around the world helping bring about (and study) large-scale reform. The most interesting initiative is our

critical friend evaluation of the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategy in England, in which dramatic improve- ments in student performance are being attempted in all the

xli PREFACE

primary schools in the country (twenty thousand) over a five- year period (1997 to 2002); actually, more schools will be involved, because the results must extend beyond the primary schools into secondary schools and into the infrastructure. I thank my colleagues Lorna Earl, Ken Leithwood, Ben Levin,

Nancy Watson, Doris Jantzi, Blair Mascall, and Nancy Torrance for their work on the England evaluation.

We are also working on several other fronts: school dis- trict reform, such as the literacy project involving ninety-three

schools in the Toronto District School Board; the study of lit- eracy reform in the York Region District School Board; the development of "assessment literacy" in all eighty-four schools (and thus in the system) in the Edmonton Catholic School District; the Manitoba School Improvement Program; and the evaluation of school improvement in the Guilford County School District in Greensboro, North Carolina. We are also trying our hand at the redesign of teacher education, both in Toronto in our own program and in Louisiana, where comprehensive reform of teacher education and school improvement is being attempted. At the same time, we have monitored large-scale change projects conducted by others around the world. Andy Hargreaves and Carol Rolheiser have been particularly helpful in working through many of the ideas as we drew lessons from educational reform initia- tives.

Clearly these are exciting timesthere is a lot going on. Not the least of these developments is the new realization that leadership is key to large-scale improvement yet must be rad- ically different than it has been. Further, effective leadership is in very short supply. We can therefore expect to see leadership development initiatives dominating the scene over the next decade.

PREFACE

Leadership required in a culture ofchange, however, is not straightforward. We are living in chaotic conditions. Thus leaders must be able to operate under complex, uncertain cir- cumstances. For this reason, I dedicate this book to a chaos theory concept, "wildness lies in wait." Bernstein (1996, p. 331) quotes G. K. Chesterton: "The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, or even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illog- icality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait."

Not a bad mantra for leaders in complex times: seek out and honor hidden inexactitudes.

April 2001 Michael Fullan

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Chapter One

A Remarkable Convergence

C RANGE IS A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD. ITS RELENTLESS pace these days runs us off our feet. Yet when things are

unsettled, we can find new ways to move ahead and to create breakthroughs not possible in stagnant societies. If you ask people to brainstorm words to describe change, they come up with a mixture of negative and positive terms. On the one side, fear, anxiety, loss, danger, panic; on the other, exhilara- tion, risk-taking, excitement, improvements, energizing. For better or for worse, change arouses emotions, and when emo- tions intensify, leadership is key.

This is not a book about superleaders. Charismatic leaders inadvertently often do more harm than good because, at best, they provide episodic improvement followed by frustrated or despondent dependency. Superhuman leaders also do us another

disservice: they are role models who can never be emulated

1

2 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

by large numbers. Deep and sustained reform depends on many of us, not just on the very few who are destined to be extraordi- nary.

This book, then, is about how all of us can improve our leadership by focusing on a small number of key dimensions. Each and every leader, whether the CEO of a multinational corporation or a school principal, can become more effec- tivemuch more effectiveby focusing on a small number of core aspects of leadership and by developing a new mind-set about the leader's responsibility to himself or herself and to those with whom he or she works.

I have never been fond of distinguishing between leader- ship and management: they overlap and you need both quali- ties. But here is one difference that it makes sense to highlight: leadership is needed for problems that do not have easy an- swers. The big problems of the day are complex, rife with paradoxes and dilemmas. For these problems there are no once-and-for-all answers. Yet we expect our leaders to pro- vide solutions. We place leaders in untenable positions (or, al- ternatively, our system produces leaders who try to carry the day with populist, one-sided solutions that are as clear as they are oversimplified). Homer-Dixon (2000b, p. 15) makes a similar observation: "We demand that [leaders] solve, or at least manage, a multitude of interconnected problems that can develop into crises without warning; we require them to navigate an increasingly turbulent reality that is, in key as- pects, literally incomprehensible to the human mind; we buf- fet them on every side with bolder, more powerful special interests that challenge every innovative policy idea; we sub- merge them in often unhelpful and distracting information; and we force them to decide and act at an ever faster pace."

16

A REMARKABLE CONVERGENCE 3

Heifetz (1994) accuses us of looking for the wrong kind of leadership when the going gets tough: "in a crisis . . . we call for someone with answers, decision, strength, and a map of the future, someone who knows where we ought to be goingin short someone who can make hard problems sim- ple. . . . Instead of looking for saviors, we should be calling for

leadership that will challenge us to face problems for which there are no simple, painless solutionsproblems that require us to learn new ways" (p. 21).

An alternative image of leadership, argues Heifetz (1994, p. 15), is one of "mobilizing people to tackle tough prob- lems." Leadership, then, is not mobilizing others to solve problems we already know how to solve, but to help them confront problems that have never yet been successfully ad- dressed.

There is, I will argue, a recent remarkable convergence of theories, knowledge bases, ideas, and strategies that help us confront complex problems that do not have easy answers. This convergence creates a new mind-seta framework for thinking about and leading complex change more powerfully than ever before. Figure 1.1 summarizes the framework.

There are strong reasons to believe that five components of leadership represent independent but mutual reinforcing forces for positive change. Chapters Two through Six are de- voted to building the case for the powerful knowledge base represented by these five components of effective leadership. In the following paragraphs I will discuss Figure 1.1, provid- ing a brief overview of the components.

Briefly, moral purpose means acting with the intention of making a positive difference in the lives of employees, cus- tomers, and society as a whole. This is an obvious value with

4 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

Leaders

Members

Results

Commitment (External and Internal)

More good things happen; fewer bad things happen.

Figure 1.1. A Framework for Leadership.

which many of us can identify, but I will argue in Chapter Two that there may be inevitable evolutionary reasons why moral purpose will become more and more prominent and that, in any case, to be effective in complex times, leaders

A REMARKABLE CONVERGENCE 5

must be guided by moral purpose. In Chapter Two we will take up case studies from both business and education that will demonstrate that moral purpose is critical to the long- term success of all organizations.

Second, it is essential for leaders to understand the change process. Moral purpose without an understanding of change will lead to moral martyrdom. Moreover, leaders who com- bine a commitment to moral purpose with a healthy respect for the complexities of the change process not only will be more successful but also will unearth deeper moral purpose. Understanding the change process is exceedingly elusive. Management books contain reams of advice, but the advice is often contradictory, general, and at the end of the day confus- ing and nonactionable. Chapter Three identifies these prob- lems and offers six guidelines that provide leaders with concrete and novel ways of thinking about the process of change: (1) the goal is not to innovate the most; (2) it is not enough to have the best ideas; (3) appreciate early difficulties of trying something newwhat I call the implementation dip; (4) redefine resistance as a potential positive force; (5) recul- turing is the name of the game; (6) never a checklist, always complexity.

Third, we have found that the single factor common to every successful change initiative is that relationships im- prove. If relationships improve, things get better. If they re- main the same or get worse, ground is lost. Thus leaders must be consummate relationship builders with diverse people and groupsespecially with people different than themselves. Effective leaders constantly foster purposeful interaction and problem solving, and are wary of easy consensus.

Fourth, the new work on knowledge creation and sharing

19

6 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

reflects an amazing congruence with the previous three themes. We live, after all, in the knowledge society, but that term is a cliche. What is deeply revealing is that new theoreti-

cal and empirical studies of successful organizations unpack the operational meaning of the general term "knowledge or- ganization." I will show how leaders commit themselves to constantly generating and increasing knowledge inside and outside the organization. What is astonishing (because it comes from an independent theoretical tradition) is how inti- mately the role of knowledge relates to the previous three themes. What has been discovered is that, first, people will not voluntarily share knowledge unless they feel some moral commitment to do so; second, people will not share unless the dynamics of change favor exchange; and, third, that data without relationships merely cause more information glut. Put another way, turning information into knowledge is a so- cial process, and for that you need good relationships. So Chapter Five focuses on knowledge building, but we will see that we need moral purpose, an understanding of the change process, and good relationships if we are to create and share knowledge.

All this complexity keeps people on the edge of chaos. It is important to be on that edge because that is where creativity resides, but anarchy lurks there too. Therefore, effective lead-

ers tolerate enough ambiguity to keep the creative juices flow-

ing, but along the way (once they and the group know enough), they seek coherence. Coherence making is a peren- nial pursuit. Leadership is difficult in a culture of change be- cause disequilibrium is common (and valuable, provided that patterns of coherence can be fostered).

In summary, moral purpose is concerned with direction

A REMARKABLE CONVERGENCE 7

and results; understanding change, building relationships, and knowledge building honor the complexity and discovery of the journey; and coherence making extracts valuable patterns worth retaining. But, alas, none of this is quite so linear and fixed as it would seem when one reads a simple description of each component.

There is another set of seemingly more personal character- istics that all effective leaders possess, which I have labeled the

energy-enthusiasm-hopefulness constellation. I do not think it is worth debating whether this constellation is a cause or an effect of the five leadership components. No doubt there is a dynamic, reciprocal relationship between the two sets. Energetic-enthusiastic-hopeful leaders "cause" greater moral purpose in themselves, bury themselves in change, naturally build relationships and knowledge, and seek coherence to consolidate moral purpose. Looking at the dynamic from the "other side," we can see that leaders immersed in the five as- pects of leadership can't help feeling and acting more ener- getic, enthusiastic, and hopeful. Whatever the case, effective leaders make people feel that even the most difficult problems can be tackled productively. They are always hopefulcon- veying a sense of optimism and an attitude of never giving up in the pursuit of highly valued goals. Their enthusiasm and confidence (not certainty) are, in a word, infectious, and they are infectiously effective, provided that they incorporate all five leadership capacities in their day-to-day behavior.

Note also how the five capacities together operate in a checks and balances fashion. Leaders with deep moral pur- pose provide guidance, but they can also have blinders if ideas are not challenged through the dynamics of change, the give and take of relationships, and the ideas generated by new

21

8 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

knowledge. Similarly, coherence is seen as part and parcel of complexity and can never be completely achieved. Leaders in a culture of change value and almost enjoy the tensions inher- ent in addressing hard-to-solve problems, because that is where the greatest accomplishments lie.

Figure 1.1 also shows how leaders who are steeped in the five core capacities by definition evince and generate long- term commitment in those with whom they work. Effective leaders, because they live and breathe the five aspects of lead- ership, find themselves committed to stay the course (in a sense, they are also inspired by others in the organization as they interact around moral purposes, new knowledge, and the achievement of periodic coherence), and, of course, they mo- bilize more and more people to become willing to tackle tough problems. We have to be careful when we talk about commitment. In the past, we have written about blind com- mitment or groupthinkwhen the group goes along uncriti- cally with the leader or the group (Fullan & Hargreaves, 1992). Leaders can be powerful, and so can groups, which means they can be powerfully wrong. This is why the five di- mensions of leadership must work in concert. They provide a check against uninformed commitment.

Even when commitment is evidently generated, there are qualifiers. Argyris (2000, p. 40) has helped us make the cru- cial distinction between external and internal commitment: "These differ in how they are activated and in the source of energy they utilize. External commitment is triggered by man-

agement policies and practices that enable employees to ac- complish their tasks. Internal commitment derives from energies internal to human beings that are activated because getting a job done is intrinsically rewarding." Argyris notes

22

A REMARKABLE CONVERGENCE 9

that "when someone else defines objectives, goals, and the steps to be taken to reach them, whatever commitment exists will be external" (p. 41).

Moral purpose is usually accompanied by a sense of ur- gency. Leaders in some such cases are in a hurry. If they are in

too much of a hurry, they will completely failyou can't bull- doze change. If leaders are more sophisticated, they may set up a system of pressure and support, which in the short run will obtain noticeable desired results, but these will mainly be derived from external commitment. Remember that external commitment is still commitment; it is the motivation to put one's effort into the task of change. It can include excitement and satisfaction of accomplishment. It is valuable. Later, I will

present case studies of change projects that generated a good deal of external commitment with impressive short-term re- sults. But we will also discuss the ins and outs of developing internal commitment on a large scalean extremely difficult proposition.

At this stage of the discussion, we need only make the point essential to the framework illustrated in Figure 1.1. The litmus test of all leadership is whether it mobilizes people's commitment to putting their energy into actions designed to improve things. It is individual commitment, but it is above all

collective mobilization. We will also see in subsequent chap- ters that collective action by itself can be short-lived if it is not based on or does not lead to a deep sense of internal purpose among organizational members. Generating internal over ex- ternal commitment and external over blind commitment is the mark of effective leadership.

What are the outcomes of all this effective leadership and commitment? In Figure 1.1, I have deliberately referred to

10 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

results very generally as causing "more good things to hap- pen" and "fewer bad things to happen." I will be presenting case studies from both business and education. In the case of business, good things are economic viability, customer sat- isfaction, employee pride, and a sense of being valuable to society. In schools, good things are enhanced student per- formance, increased capacity of teachers, greater involvement of parents and community members, engagement of students, all-around satisfaction and enthusiasm about going further, and greater pride for all in the system. In both cases, the re- duction of bad things means fewer aborted change efforts; less

demoralization of employees; fewer examples of piecemeal, uncoordinated reform; and a lot less wasted effort and re- sources.

This book delves into the complexities of leadership evi- denced in Figure 1.1. It provides insights, strategies, and, ulti- mately, better theories of knowledge and action suited to leadership in complex times. In the final chapter we will ex- amine more directly the question of how new leaders can be developed. How to become more effective as a leader is of growing concern for all those in positions to make a differ- ence; how to foster large numbers of leaders in all areas of so- ciety is a system question more worrisome today than ever before. If leadership does not become more attractive, doable, and exciting, public and private institutions will deteriorate. If the experience of rank-and-file members of the organization

does not improve, there will not be a pool of potential leaders to cultivate. A classic chicken-and-egg problem. Good leaders

foster good leadership at other levels. Leadership at other lev- els produces a steady stream of future leaders for the system as a whole.

A REMARKABLE CONVERGENCE 11

The conclusion, then, is that leaders will increase their ef- fectiveness if they continually work on the five components of

leadershipif they pursue moral purpose, understand the change process, develop relationships, foster knowledge building, and strive for coherencewith energy, enthusiasm, and hopefulness. If leaders do so, the rewards and benefits will be enormous. It is an exciting proposition. The culture of change beckons.

Chapter Two

Moral Purpose

YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE MOTHER THERESA TO HAVE

moral purpose. Some people are deeply passionate about improving life (sometimes to a fault, if they lack one or more of the other four components of leadership: understand- ing of the change process, strong relationships, knowledge building, and coherence making among multiple priorities). Others have a more cognitive approach, displaying less emo- tion but still being intensely committed to betterment. Whatever one's style, every leader, to be effective, must have and work on improving his or her moral purpose.

Moral purpose is about both ends and means. In educa- tion, an important end is to make a difference in the lives of students. But the means of getting to that end are also crucial. If you don't treat others (for example, teachers) well and fairly, you will be a leader without followers (see Chapter

13

14 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

Four, in which I describe how effective leaders constantly work on developing relationships at all levels of the organiza- tion). Of course, a case can be made that leading with in- tegrity is not just instrumental. To strive to improve the quality of how we live together is a moral purpose of the high-

est order. Sergiovanni (1999, p. 17) draws the same conclu- sion about what he calls the lifeworld of leadership.

Ask the next five people you meet to list three persons they

know, either personally or from history, who they consider

to be authentic leaders. Then have them describe these lead-

ers. Chances are your respondents will mention integrity, re-

liability, moral excellence, a sense of purpose, firmness of

conviction, steadiness, and unique qualities of style and sub-

stance that differentiate the leaders they choose from others.

Key in this list of characteristics is the importance of sub-

stance, distinctive qualities, and moral underpinnings. Authentic leaders anchor their practice in ideas, values, and

commitments, exhibit distinctive qualities of style and sub-

stance, and can be trusted to be morally diligent in advanc-

ing the enterprises they lead. Authentic leaders, in other

words, display character, and character is the defining char-

acteristic of authentic leadership.

At the loftiest level, moral purpose is about how humans evolve over time, especially in relation to how they relate to each other. Ridley (1996) and Sober and Wilson (1998) trace the evolution of self-centered and cooperative behavior in an- imals, insects, and humans. What makes humans different, says Ridley, is culture. Ideas, knowledge, practices and beliefs,

and the like enter consciousness and can be passed on "by di-

MORAL PURPO*

rect infection from one person to another" (p. 179). Ridley raises the interesting evolutionary hypothesis that "coopera- tive groups thrive and selfish ones do not, so cooperative so- cieties have survived at the expense of others" (p. 175). Thus leaders in all organizations, whether they know it or not, con- tribute for better or for worse to moral purpose in their own organizations and in society as a whole.

Sober and Wilson (1998) also state that it is futile to argue whether people are driven by egoistic (self-centered) or altru- istic (unselfish) motives. The fact is that all effective leaders are driven by bothwhat Sober and Wilson call "motiva- tional pluralism[, which] is the view that we have both egois- tic and altruistic ultimate desires" (p. 308). This is why everyday leaders shouldn't expect to be like Mother Theresa. (And who knows, maybe she got a lot of pleasure out of help- ing others). Most of us have mixed motives, and that is per- fectly fine.

I will also show that moral purpose doesn't stand alone. We will see that leaders who work on the five qualities in this booknot just the obvious first quality, which is moral pur- pose itself, but all four other componentswill, by definition, find themselves steeped in moral purpose. Whether you are an insurance executive or a school principal, you simply can- not be effective without behaving in a morally purposeful way. And if you follow the lessons in this book, you won't have to plan to be more moral in your pursuit; it will come naturally. Moral purpose is profoundly built into the five components of leadership as they are carried out in practice.

The complexity of pursuing moral purpose in a culture of change can be best illustrated through case examples. I select cases equally from education and from business to show that

15

16 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

the issues of leadership are increasingly common across both types of organizations. A major education example comes from our current multiyear large-scale evaluation of the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategy in England.

The Case of the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategy

Let us descend from this elevated abstract level and consider a real case, a very large scale case involving a whole country (twenty thousand schools with seven million students up to age eleven), namely the case of the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategy (NLNS) in England. Here is the proposi- tion: a new government comes into power in 1997, and the prime minister declares that his three priorities are "educa- tion, education, education." We have heard that before, but this government goes further. It says that the initial core goal is to raise the literacy and numeracy achievement of children up to age eleven. The government sets specific targets. The baseline they observe is that the percentage of eleven-year- olds scoring 4 or 5 on the test of literacy was 57 percent in 1996 (level 4 being the level at which proficiency standards are met); for numeracy the baseline was 54 percent. The min-

ister announces that the targets for 2002 are 80 percent for literacy (up from 57 percent) and 75 percent for numeracy (up from 54 percent). He makes a commitment that he will resign as secretary of state if those targets are not met.

Further, the leaders of the initiative in the Department for Education and Employment set out to "use the change knowl- edge base" to design a set of pressure-and-support strategies to accomplish this remarkable feat. Finally, they know they

MORAL PURPOSE 17

are going to be watched carefully as this highly political and highly explicit initiative unfolds. A team of us at the Univer- sity of Toronto are monitoring and assessing the entire NLNS strategy as it unfolds during the 1998 to 2002 period.

The main elements of the implementation strategy are summarized by Michael Barber (2000, pp. 8-9), head of the government initiative:

A nationally prepared project plan for both literacy

and numeracy, setting out actions, responsibilities,

and deadlines through to 2002;

A substantial investment sustained over at least six

years and skewed toward those schools that need

most help;

A project infrastructure involving national direction

from the Standards and Effectiveness Unit, 15 re-

gional directors, and over 300 expert consultants at

the local level for each of the two strategies;

An expectation that every class will have a daily

math lesson and daily literacy hour;

A detailed teaching programme covering every

school year for children from ages 5 to 11;

An emphasis on early intervention and catch up for

pupils who fall behind;

A professional development programme designed to

enable every primary school teacher to learn to un-

derstand and use proven best practices in both cur-

riculum areas;

18 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

The appointment of over 2,000 leading math teach-

ers and hundreds of expert literacy teachers who

have the time and skill to model best practice for

their peers;

The provision of "intensive support" to circa half of

all schools where the most progress is required;

A major investment in books for schools (over 23

million new books in the system since May 1997);

The removal of barriers to implementation (espe-

cially a huge reduction in prescribed curriculum

content outside the core subjects);

Regular monitoring and extensive evaluation by our

national inspection agency, OFSTED;

A national curriculum for initial teacher training re-

quiring all providers to prepare new primary school

teachers to teach the daily math lesson and the liter-

acy hour;

A problem-solving philosophy involving early iden-

tification of difficulties as they emerge and the pro-

vision of rapid solutions or intervention where

necessary;

The provision of extra after-school, weekend, and

holiday booster classes for those who need extra

help to reach the standard.

The impact of the strategies on achievement, measured as a percentage of pupils reaching levels 4 or 5, is in many ways astounding (recall that twenty thousand schools are in-

MORAL PURPOSE 19

volved). By the year 2000, the whole country had progres- sively moved from 57 percent proficient achievement in liter- acy in 1996 to 75 percent; and from 54 percent to 72 percent in numeracy. We have no doubt that the targets of 80 percent and 75 percent will be achieved by 2002, although I do not present it as a problem-free case because a preoccupation with

achievement scores can have negative side effects, such as nar- rowing the curriculum that is taught and burning people out as they relentlessly chase targets.

There is a lot more than moral purpose operating in this case, and we will draw on it again in subsequent chapters. I use it here to illustrate the value and dilemmas of moral pur- pose. In terms of moral purpose, there are several points to be made. First, getting thousands of students to be literate and numerate who otherwise would not be so is not a bad day's work. This is bound to make a difference in many lives.

Second, moral purpose cannot just be stated, it must be accompanied by strategies for realizing it, and those strate- gies are the leadership actions that energize people to pursue a desired goal. In a recent interview in the Times Education Supplement, "Charisma and Loud Shouting" (2000, p. 28), Sir Michael Bichard, the permanent secretary at the Department for Education and Employment in England, said it this way: "For me leadership is about creating a sense of purpose and direction. It's about getting alignment and it's about inspiring people to achieve. . . . [There is a] need to en- thuse staff and encourage a belief in the difference their or- ganization is makingwhether it is a school or a government department. We can do a lot by making heroes of the people who deliver. It's important to make people feel part of a suc- cess story. That's what they want to be."

20 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

Third, pluralistic motives abound. The government wants to be reelected, and leaders may get a lot of personal gratifi- cation if it is successful, and their careers may be enhanced, and there is an explicit measurable purpose.

Fourth, who knows whether this is a right purpose? Is there collateral damage: do other subjects like the arts suffer? Are schools becoming preoccupied only by the test results? Are teachers getting burnt out? Will short-term success be fol-

lowed by deeper failure? And so on. Fifth, is the strategy really inspiring people (principals and

teachers, for example) to do better? How deep is their com- mitment? I have written about this case elsewhere (Fullan, 2001), and there are numerous legitimate questions about the National Literacy and National Numeracy Strategy case. Our conclusion at this stage is that the strategy has indeed caught the interest and energy of the majority of principals and teach- ers and that they are getting a sense of pride and accomplish- ment from the results so far. Nevertheless, to use Argyris's terms, the leadership strategy has generated only external commitment on the part of school educatorsalbeit real commitment that got real results. In order to go deeper, for example, to get at the creative ideas and energies of teach- ers, additional leadership strategies will be neededstrategies that will foster internal commitment (that is, commitment ac- tivated by intrinsically rewarding accomplishments).

In summary, leadership, if it is to be effective, has to (1) have an explicit "making-a-difference" sense of purpose, (2) use strategies that mobilize many people to tackle tough prob- lems, (3) be held accountable by measured and debatable in- dicators of success, and (4) be ultimately assessed by the extent to which it awakens people's intrinsic commitment,

MORAL PURPOSE 21

which is none other than the mobilizing of everyone's sense of moral purpose.

The Case of Monsanto

Pascale, Millemann, and Gioja (2000) report on the case of Monsanto, a life science company that underwent a remark- able transformation in the years 1993 to 1999 under the di- rection of its new CEO, Robert Shapiro. Shapiro used a series of "town hall meetings" to introduce the new direction and to begin a dialogue. Pascale et al. (pp. 80-81) quote at length from one of Shapiro's presentations in 1995, attended by three hundred of the company's informal leaders:

Here's what bothers me. There are almost six billion people

in the world but the global economy works for only one bil-

lion of them. Even for the favored group (and the two bil-

lion that are about to join it), there are rising expectations

as to the amounts, choice, quality, and health of food. At the

other end of the continuum, at least one and a half billion

of the world's population are in real trouble. Eight hundred

million of these are so malnourished that they cannot par-

ticipate in work or family life and are on the edge of starva-

tion. Finally, over the next thirty years, most of the additional people joining the planet will be born in poorer

places.

The system we have is unsustainable. We burn a lot of

hydrocarbons and waste a lot of stuff. There is not enough

acreage on earth to provide for humanity's food needs using

traditional technology. In developed countries there is the

interesting challenge of aging. The elderly consume a lot of

22 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

health care as technology offers more costly interventions.

Fewer people in the workforce end up supporting the higher

bill for those who are old. This, too, is politically unsustain-

able.

Food is shifting from an issue of fuel and calories to an

issue of choice. With growing nutritional and environmen-

tal consciousness, food must inevitably command a larger

share of mind.

These problems for humanity can also be seen as a trillion-dollar opportunity. These are all unresolved prob-

lems. It isn't just a question of modular extensions of what

we have (via technology and innovations in distribution).

We need to reinvent our approach fundamentally. Biotechnol-ogy is a profoundly different avenue for agricul-

ture and human health. And information technology pro-

vides enough of a difference in degree that it represents a

nanotechnology. Biotechnology is really a subset of infor-

mation technology. It does not deal with the information

that's encoded electronically in silicon but with the informa-

tion that is encoded chemically in cells, not used for E-mail

or spreadsheets but information that tells what proteins to

make, when to make them, and how to make them. The rate

of increase of knowledge in this field puts Moore's Law to

shame, doubling every twelve to eighteen months. We will

map the entire human genome by 2005, and will understand

most of the functionality of the genome in this same period.

I believe our agriculture and health care systems will be

revolutionized by the intersection of biotechnology and infor-

mation technology. There is something of great consequence

in the convergence of these technologies with our market

knowledge, and I want you to help me discover what it is.

MORAL PURPOSE 23

Pascale and his colleagues portray the interplay between Shapiro, as leader, and the employees: "Shapiro points to pieces in the puzzle (life sciences breakthroughs, agriculture, information technology, market knowledge); listeners relate his words to their own experience and fill in the blanks with their detailed knowledge of the business; Shapiro focuses on the unsustainable problems facing humanityimmense chal- lenges that cry out for nontraditional solutions" (p. 81). The authors observe: "many in the room are moved at the prospect of contributing to the elimination of world hunger and chronic suffering" (p. 83). All of this sounds very much like moral purpose. Ideas, energy, and action follow, with some ten thousand of Monsanto's thirty thousand employees becoming involved. Through leadership that mobilized the energies and ideas of employees, Monsanto made a rapid im- pact in the market. The consulting firm McKinsey called it one of the most thoroughgoing transformations in business history (p. 86).

Pascale et al. note: "Within three years following Monsanto's introduction of genetically modified seeds, farms had shifted 50 percent of all cotton and 40 percent of all soy- beans grown in the United States to disease- and herbicide- resistant crops. American cotton growers alone reduced her- bicide consumption by $1 billion" (p. 6). The share price, they report, "rocketed from $16 to $63" (p. 86).

It would be too simple if we concluded that Monsanto was an out and out success. There was growing objection on envi- ronmental grounds to genetically modified seeds; Monsanto initially regarded this objection as political backlash and as a public relations problem. Shapiro and his colleagues still felt that they were making a valuable contribution to the world,

24 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

but by 1999 Shapiro finally acknowledged: "Our confidence in this technology and our enthusiasm for it has, I think, widely been seen, and understandably so, as condescension or indeed arrogance. Because we thought it was our job to persuade, too often we forget to listen" (Pascale et al., 2000, p. 87).

Today, Monsanto has merged with Upjohn to form Pharmacia, with Shapiro as nonexecutive chairman. It is too early to tell how well Pharmacia will pursue the moral issues embedded in its biotechnology goals. It is still a strong finan- cial competitor, but what are the lessons here? First, a sense of moral purpose on the part of employees is important and can make a huge difference in the performance of the organi- zation. Second, and of growing significance in the global economy, moral purpose applies outside as well as inside the company. Pascale et al. put it this way:

[H] ow a system connects with its external world is also a

key source of that system's health. Connectivity is not just

about good relations with those outside the company. It im-

pacts the quality of strategy and design and has direct bear-

ing on a company's success.

Biotechnology presents just one example of issues that

are too complex to address without a design for broadening

the participation of people with diverse concerns and stakes

in the questions. Seeking out the views of scientists and gov-

ernment regulators, people affected in different ways by the

product help everyone imagine and design for unintended

consequences. To talk only to oneself as a company will lead

to strategic vulnerability [Pascale et al., 2000, p. 91].

MORAL PURPOSE 25

Commitment to the environment and to the broader global community as part and parcel of the long-term success of the organization is moral purpose writ large. Pascale and his colleagues conclude, "we can no longer afford to look at our business as atomistic agents alone in a world to which we connect only through competition" (2000, p. 92). If you want more than short-term gains, moral purpose sincerely sought is good for business. Pluralistic motives can coexist: do good, worry about the environment, and derive a profit. But leaders have to be explicitly aware of the interplay of these three forces.

I do not for a minute think that moral purpose automati- cally attracts people to do good things. Acting with moral purpose in a complex world is, as we have just seen, highly problematic. First, there are many, many competing "goods," which cannot all be pursued. This is why coherence making is such an important quality for effective leadership, as we will discuss in Chapter Six. Coherence making, which in- volves prioritizing and focusing, is greatly facilitated when guided by moral purpose.

Second, and more fundamentally, moral purpose is prob- lematic because it must contend with reconciling the diverse interests and goals of different groups. Diversity means dif- ferent races, different interest groups, different power bases, and basically different lots in life. To achieve moral purpose is to forge interactionand even mutual purposeacross groups. Yet the problem is that people are not equal, and the privileged have a vested interest in the status quo as long as it works in their favor.

Still, profit-minded businesses do better when they pay

26 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

attention to moral purpose. De Gues (1997) worked for Royal Dutch/Shell for almost forty years and studied "long- living companies." He found that in many countries, 40 per- cent of newly created companies last less than ten years and that even "the big solid companies" do not hold out for more than an average of forty years (p. 2). By contrast, long-lived companies (those lasting more than fifty years) had a strong sense of purpose and were adaptive to their environments without compromising core ideals.

De Gues (1997) talks about both the negative and the pos- itive case: "Companies die because their managers focus on the economic activity of producing goods and services, and they forget their organizations' true nature is that of a com- munity of humans" (p. 3). In contrast,

A healthy living company will have members, both humans

and other institutions, who subscribe to a set of common

values and who believe that the goals of the company allow

them and help them to achieve their own individual goals.

Both the company and its constituent members have basic

driving forces; they want to survive, and once the conditions

for survival exist, they want to reach and expand their po-

tential. The underlying contract between the company and

its members (both individuals and other institutions) is that

the members will be helped to reach their potential. It is un-

derstood that this, at the same time, is in the company's self-

interest. The self-interest of the company stems from its

understanding that the members' potential helps create the

corporate potential [p. 200].

Whether we are talking about a biotechnical company or

MORAL PURPOSE 27

a school, having moral purposeboth in terms of contribu- tion to society and development of commitment in employ- eesmakes excellent business sense in the middle to long run. Organizations without such purpose die sooner than later. At best, they win the odd early battle and steadily lose the war thereafter.

The message of this chapter is that moral purpose is worthwhile on just about every meaningful criterion; it may not become activated on its own accord, but it is there in nas- cent form to be cultivated and activated. I have argued else- where that moral purpose has a tendency to become stronger as humankind evolves (Fullan, 1999). Thus, in evolutionary terms, moral purpose has a predestined tendency to surface. Effective leaders exploit this tendency and make moral pur- pose a natural ally. Although moral purpose is natural, it will flourish only if leaders cultivate it.

There are signs that moral purpose is on the ascendency in schools and businesses. A good example is Palmer's The Courage to Teach (1998), in which he shows how the best teachers integrate the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual as- pects of teaching to create powerful learning communities. With respect to businesses, Garten (2001) interviewed forty prominent men and women around the world who held CEO, president, and chairperson positions in major companies. Garten describes how some executives have made the direct link between social responsibility and the morale, productiv- ity, and loyalty of employees, such as Jarma 011ila, chairman and CEO of Nokia Corporation, whom Garten quotes:

People want their company to be a good citizen. They want

it to show true concern for the world, for the environment.

4l

28 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

They want it to have a social conscience. There is now a very

clear expectation which is coming from political life as well

as our employees, that companies will have to have a soul, a

state of mind which represents a social conscience. That's

very different from the early 1990s when we were applauded

just for employing more people. There is a very high expec-

tation, something I did not see when I started as CEO in 1992 [p. 184].

Similarly, Bolman and Deal (2000, p. 185) predict that "culture and core values will be increasingly recognized as the vital social glue that infuses an organization with passion and purpose. Workers will increasingly demand more than a pay- check. They'll want to know the higher calling or enabling purpose of their work."

Garten (2001, p. 192) goes on to say, however, that most leaders "are badly understanding the rise of global problems that will affect their firms and the environment in which they operate. They are failing to see the gap between society's ex- pectations of what they should do and what they seem pre- pared to do."

The most fundamental conclusion of this chapter is that moral purpose and sustained performance of organizations are mutually dependent. Leaders in a culture of change real- ize this. Pascale, Millemann, and Gioja (2000, p. 92) found elements of this kind of leadership in the seven companies they studied, and call "sustainability" the challenge of the century: "The theory of sustainability is that it is constituted by a trinity of environmental soundness, social justice, and economic viability. If any of these three are weak or missing,

MORAL PURPOSE 29

the theory of sustainability says that that practice [what the organization is doing] will not prove sustainable over time."

We are now ready to extend our thinking, because in a non- linear world it is easy to lose one's way, even if one is moti- vated by moral purpose. If we live in a culture of changeand we certainly doto understand the change process is a vital quality of all leaders.

Chapter Three

Understanding Change

REMEMBER THAT A CULTURE OF CHANGE CONSISTS OF

great rapidity and nonlinearity on the one hand and equally great potential for creative breakthroughs on the other. The paradox is that transformation would not be pos- sible without accompanying messiness.

Understanding the change process is less about innovation and more about innovativeness. It is less about strategy and more about strategizing. And it is rocket science, not least be-

cause we are inundated with complex, unclear, and often con-

tradictory advice. Micklethwait and Wooldridge (1996) refer to management gurus as witch doctors (although they also acknowledge their value). Argyris (2000) talks about flawed advice. Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel (1998) take us on a Strategy Safari. Drucker is reported to have said that people

31

32 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

refer to gurus because they don't know how to spell charla- tan!

Would you know what to do if you read Kotter's Leading Change, in which he proposes an eight step process for initi- ating top-down transformation (1996, p. 21)?

1. Establishing a Sense of Urgency

2. Creating a Guiding Coalition

3. Developing a Vision and Strategy

4. Communicating the Change Vision

5. Empowering Broad-Based Action

6. Generating Short-Term Wins

7. Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change

8. Anchoring New Approaches in the Culture

Would you still know what to do if you then turned to Beer, Eisenstat, and Spector's observations (1990) about drawing out bottom-up ideas and energies?

1. Mobilize commitment to change through joint diagno- sis [with people in the organization] of business prob- lems

2. Develop a shared vision of how to organize and man- age for competitiveness

3. Foster concerns for the new vision, competence to enact it, and cohesion to move it along

4. Spread revitalization to all departments without push- ing it from the top

5. Institutionalize revitalization through formal policies, systems, and structure

UNDERSTANDING CHANGE 33

6. Monitor and adjust strategies-in response to problems in the revitalization process [cited in Mintzberg et al.,

1998, p. 338]

What do you think of Hamel's advice (2000) to "lead the revolution" by being your own seer?

Step 1: Build a point of view

Step 2: Write a manifesto

Step 3: Create a coalition

Step 4: Pick your targets and pick your moments

Step 5: Co-opt and neutralize

Step 6: Find a translator

Step 7: Win small, win early, win often

Step 8: Isolate, infiltrate, integrate

And, after all this advice, if you did know what to do, would you be right? Probably not. Some of the advice seems contradictory. (Should we emphasize top-down or bottom-up strategies?) Much of it is general and unclear about what to dowhat Argyris (2000) calls "nonactionable advice." This is why many of us have concluded that change cannot be managed. It can be understood and perhaps led, but it cannot be controlled. After taking us through a safari of ten manage- ment schools of thought, Mintzberg et al. (1998) draw the same conclusion when they reflect that "the best way to 'man- age' change is to allow for it to happen" (p. 324), "to be pulled by the concerns out there rather than being pushed by the concepts in here" (p. 373). It is not that management and leadership books don't contain valuable ideasthey dobut

45

34 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

rather that there is no "answer" to be found in them. Nevertheless, change can be led, and leadership does make a difference.

So our purpose in this book is to understand change in order to lead it better. The list that follows summarizes this chapter's contribution to understanding the change process. As with all five components in Figure 1.1, the goal is to de- velop a greater feel for leading complex change, to develop a mind-set and action set that are constantly cultivated and re- fined. There are no shortcuts.

Understanding the Change Process

The goal is not to innovate the most.

It is not enough to have the best ideas.

Appreciate the implementation dip.

Redefine resistance.

Reculturing is the name of the game.

Never a checklist, always complexity.

Before delving into a discussion of each of the items on this list, let's consider Goleman's findings (2000) about lead- ership that gets results, because they relate to several elements of the list. Goleman analyzed a database from a random sam- ple of 3,871 executives from the consulting firm Hay/McBer. He examined the relationship between leadership style, orga- nizational climate, and financial performance. Climate was measured by combining six factors of the working environ- ment: flexibility, responsibility, standards, rewards, clarity, and commitment. Financial results included return on sales, revenue growth, efficiency, and profitability.

A OR

UNDERSTANDING CHANGE 35

The following are the six leadership styles Goleman iden-

tified (2000, pp. 82-83):

1. Coercivethe leader demands compliance. ("Do what I tell you.")

2. Authoritativethe leader mobilizes people toward a vision. ("Come with me.")

3. Affiliativethe leader creates harmony and builds emotional bonds. ("People come first.")

4. Democraticthe leader forges consensus through par- ticipation. ("What do you think ? ")

5. Pacesettingthe leader sets high standards for per- formance. ("Do as I do, now.")

6. Coachingthe leader develops people for the future. ("Try this.")

Two of the six styles negatively affected climate and, in turn, performance. These were the coercive style (people re- sent and resist) and the pacesetting style (people get over- whelmed and burn out). All four of the other styles had a significant positive impact on climate and performance.

With this basic introduction to leadership styles, let us now turn to the list items.

The Goal Is Not to Innovate the Most

The organization or leader who takes on the sheer most num- ber of innovations is not the winner. In education, we call these organizations the "Christmas tree schools" (Bryk, Sebring, Kerbow, Rol low, .& Easton, 1998). These schools

36 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

glitter from a distanceso many innovations, so little time but they end up superficially adorned with many decorations, lacking depth and coherence.

Relentlessly taking on innovation after innovation is Goleman's pacesetter leader (2000, p. 86):

The leader sets extremely high performance standards and

exemplifies them himself. He is obsessive about doing things

better and faster, and he asks the same of everyone around him. He quickly pinpoints poor performers and demands

more from them. If they don't rise to the occasion, he re-

places them with people who can. You would think such an

approach would improve results, but it doesn't. In fact, the

pacesetting style destroys climate. Many employees feel

overwhelmed by the pacesetter's demands for excellence,

and their morale dropsguidelines for working may be clear in the leader's head, but she does not state them clearly;

she expects people to know what to do.

The pacesetter often ends up being a "lone ranger," as Superintendent Negroni puts it when he reflects on his expe- rience (and on his eventual change to lead learner). During the first three years of Negroni's superintendency in Springfield, Massachusetts, his overall goal was "to change this inbred system": "Intent on the ends, I operated as Lone Ranger. I didn't try to build relationships with the teachers' union or with the board. Instead, I worked around them. Most of the time, I felt that I was way out in front of them. I would change things on my own" (quoted in Senge et al., 2000, p. 426). For all the changes he pushed through, Negroni says, "these were three brutal years for all of us. . . .

UNDERSTANDING CHANGE 37

I was running so fast and making so many changes that I was getting tired. People around me were even more sick and tired" (pp. 426-427).

Eventually, through reflective practice and feedback, Negroni moved to transforming the district into a learning in- stitution. He explains:

Our most critical role at the central office is to support learn-

ing about learning, especially among principalswho will

then do the same among teachers in their schools. At the be-

ginning of the year, three or four central office administra-

tors and I conducted forty-six school visits in forty-six days,

with the principals of each school alongside us. Then the ad-

ministrators and all forty-six principals met together to sum-

marize what we had seen. This is one of a series of walk-throughs that principals do during the course of a school yearwith me, with other central office administra-

tors, and with each other. The sequence includes a monthly

"grand round," when every principal in the district goes

with me and the eight academic directors to spend the day

in one school. We break up into subgroups for hour-and-a-

half visits, then come back and (still in subgroups) discuss

what we saw. Then a representative from each subgroup

makes a presentation to all of the principals [quoted in Senge

et al., 2000, p. 431].

These principals are still deeply engaged in innovation, but it is less frenetic, more organically built into the culture. Thus pacesetters must learn the difference between competing in a change marathon and developing the capacity and commit- ment to solve complex problems.

38 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

It Is Not Enough to Have the Best Ideas

It is possible to be "dead right." This is the leader who has some of the best ideas around but can't get anyone to buy into them. In fact, the opposite occursshe experiences over- whelming opposition. The extreme version of this kind of leader is Goleman's coercive leader (2000, p. 82): "The com- puter company was in crisis modeits sales and profits were falling, its stock was losing value precipitously, and its share- holders were in an uproar. The board brought in a CEO with a reputation as a turnaround artist. He set to work chopping jobs, selling off divisions and making the tough decisions that should have been executed years before. The company was saved, at least in the short-term." Before long, however, morale plummeted, and the short-term success was followed by another, less recoverable downturn.

Even the more sophisticated versions of "having good ideas" are problematic. Pascale, Millemann, and Gioja (2000) call these leaders social engineers:

Corporations around the world now write checks for more

than $50 billion a year in fees for "change consulting." And

that tab represents only a third of the overall change cost if

severance costs, write-offs, and information technology pur-

chases are included. Yet, consultants, academic surveys, and

reports from "changed" companies themselves indicate that

a full 70 percent of those efforts fail. The reason? We call it

social engineering, a contemporary variant of the machine

model's cause-and-effect thinking. Social is coupled with en-

gineering to denote that most managers today, in contrast to

their nineteenth-century counterparts, recognize that people

need to be brought on board. But they still go about it in a

UNDERSTANDING CHANGE 39

preordained fashion. Trouble arises because the "soft" stuff

is really the hard stuff, and no one can really "engineer" it

[p. 12, emphasis in original].

But surely having good ideas is not a bad thing. And yes, it is an element of effective leadership, as in Goleman's au- thoritative style. Goleman (2000) talks about Tom, a vice president of marketing at a floundering national restaurant chain that specialized in pizza: "[Tom] made an impassioned plea for his colleagues to think from the customer's perspec- tive. . . . The company was not in the restaurant business, it was in the business of distributing high-quality, convenient- to-get pizza. That notionand nothing elseshould drive what the company did. . . . With his vibrant enthusiasm and clear visionthe hallmarks of the authoritative styleTom filled a leadership vacuum at the company" (p. 83).

Goleman's data show that the authoritative leader had a positive impact on climate and performance. So do we need leaders with a clear vision who can excite and mobilize peo- ple to committing to it, or don't we? Well, the answer is a bit complicated. For some situations, when there is an urgent problem and people are at sea, visionary leaders can be cru- cial. And at all times, it helps when leaders have good ideas. But it is easy for authoritative leadership to slip into social engineering when initial excitement cannot be sustained be- cause it cannot be converted to internal commitment.

Put another way, the answer is that authoritative leaders need to recognize the weaknesses as well as the strengths in their approach. They need, as Goleman concludes, to use all four of the successful leadership styles: "Leaders who have mastered four or moreespecially the authoritative,

40 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

democratic, affiliative, and coaching styleshave the best cli- mate and business performance" (p. 87).

Appreciate the Implementation Dip

One of our most consistent findings and understandings about the change process in education is that all successful schools experience "implementation dips" as they move for- ward (Fullan, 2001). The implementation dip is literally a dip in performance and confidence as one encounters an innova- tion that requires new skills and new understandings. All in- novations worth their salt call upon people to question and in some respects to change their behavior and their beliefs even in cases where innovations are pursued voluntarily. What happens when you find yourself needing new skills and not being proficient when you are used to knowing what you are doing (in your own eyes, as well as in those of others)? How do you feel when you are called upon to do something new and are not clear about what to do and do not under- stand the knowledge and value base of new belief systems?

This kind of experience is classic change material. People feel anxious, fearful, confused, overwhelmed, deskilled, cau- tious, andif they have moral purposedeeply disturbed. Because we are talking about a culture of pell-mell change, there is no shortage of implementation dips or, shall we say, chasms.

Pacesetters and coercers have no empathy whatsoever for people undergoing implementation dips. They wouldn't know an implementation dip if they fell into it. Effective leaders have the right kinds of sensitivity to implementation. They know that change is a process, not an event. They don't panic

UNDERSTANDING CHANGE 41

when things don't go smoothly during the first year of under- taking a major innovation or new direction. They are em- pathic to the lot of people immersed in the unnerving and anxiety-ridden work of trying to bring about a new order. They are even, as we shall discuss, appreciative of resistance.

Leaders who understand the implementation dip know that people are experiencing two kinds of problems when they are in the dipthe social-psychological fear of change, and the lack of technical know-how or skills to make the change work. It should be obvious that leaders need affilia- tive and coaching styles in these situations. The affiliative leader pays attention to people, focuses on building emotional bonds, builds relationships, and heals rifts. The leader as coach helps people develop and invests in their capacity build-

ing (Goleman, 2000). Further, elements of authoritative leadership help. Enthu-

siasm, self-confidence, optimism, and clarity of vision can all inspire people to keep going. The problems start when you are only authoritative or only affiliative or only a coach. Thus leaders who are sensitive to the implementation dip combine styles: they still have an urgent sense of moral pur- pose, they still measure success in terms of results, but they do things that are more likely to get the organization going and keep it going.

Redefine Resistance

We are more likely to learn something from people who dis- agree with us than we are from people who agree. But we tend to hang around with and overlisten to people who agree with us and we prefer to avoid and underlisten to those who don't.

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42 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

Not a bad strategy for getting through the day, but a lousy one for getting through the implementation dip.

Pacesetters and coercers are terrible listeners. Authorita- tive leaders are not that good at listening either. Affiliative and

democratic leaders listen too much. This is why leadership is complicated. It requires combining elements that do not eas- ily and comfortably go together. Leaders should have good ideas and present them well (the authoritative element) while at the same time seeking and listening to doubters (aspects of democratic leadership). They must try to build good relation- ships (be affiliative) even with those who may not trust them.

We will spend more time in Chapter Four taking up the complexities of resistance and its hitherto unappreciated pos- itive side. Suffice it to say here that we need to respect resisters

for two reasons. First, they sometimes have ideas that we might have missed, especially in situations of diversity or complexity or in the tackling of problems for which the an- swer is unknown. As Maurer (1996, p. 49) says, "Often those who resist have something important to tell us. We can be in- fluenced by them. People resist for what they view as good reasons. They may see alternatives we never dreamed of. They

may understand problems about the minutiae of implementa- tion that we never see from our lofty perch atop Mount Olympus."

Second, resisters are crucial when it comes to the politics of implementation. In democratic organizations, such as uni- versities, being alert to differences of opinion is absolutely vital. Many a strong dean who otherwise did not respect re- sistance has been unceremoniously run out of town. In all or- ganizations, respecting resistance is essential, because if you ignore it, it is only a matter of time before it takes its toll, per- haps during implementation if not earlier. In even the most

UNDERSTANDING CHANGE 43

tightly controlled and authority-bound organization, it is so easy to sabotage new directions during implementation. Even

when things appear to be working, the supposed success may be a function of merely superficial compliance.

For all these reasons, successful organizations don't go with only like-minded innovators; they deliberately build in differences. They don't mind so much when othersnot just themselvesdisturb the equilibrium. They also trust the learning process they set upthe focus on moral purpose, the attention to the change process, the building of relationships, the sharing and critical scrutiny of knowledge, and traversing the edge of chaos while seeking coherence. Successful organi- zations and their leaders come to know and trust that these dynamics contain just about all the checks and balances needed to deal with those few hard-core resisters who make a career out of being against everythingwho act, in other words, without moral purpose.

Reculturing Is the Name of the Game

It used to be that governments were the only group constantly reorganizing. Now, with reengineering and mergers and ac- quisitions, everybody is doing it. And they are getting nowhere. Gaius Petronious nailed this problem almost two thousand years ago: "We trained hard . . . but it seemed every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reor- ganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any situation by reorganizing, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization" (cited in Gaynor,

1977, p. 28). Structure does make a difference, but it is not the main

44 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

point in achieving success. Transforming the culturechang- ing the way we do things around hereis the main point. I call this reculturing. Effective leaders know that the hard work of reculturing is the sine qua non of progress. Further- more, it is a particular kind of reculturing for which we strive:

one that activates and deepens moral purpose through collab- orative work cultures that respect differences and constantly build and test knowledge against measurable resultsa cul- ture within which one realizes that sometimes being off bal- ance is a learning moment.

Leading in a culture of change means creating a culture (not just a structure) of change. It does not mean adopting in- novations, one after another; it does mean producing the ca- pacity to seek, critically assess, and selectively incorporate new ideas and practicesall the time, inside the organization as well as outside it.

Reculturing is a contact sport that involves hard, labor- intensive work. It takes time and indeed never ends. This is why successful leaders need energy, enthusiasm, and hope, and why they need moral purpose along with the other four leadership capacities described in this book. Later on we will see case examples of reculturing, because it is very much a matter of developing relationships (Chapter Four), building knowledge (Chapter Five), and striving for coherence in a nonlinear world (Chapter Six).

Never a Checklist, Always Complexity

It is no doubt clear by now why there can never be a recipe or cookbook for change, nor a step-by-step process. Even seemingly sophisticated plans like Kotter's (1996) eight steps,

UNDERSTANDING CHANGE 45

or Hamel's (2000) eight, discussed earlier in this chapter, are suspect if used as the basis for planning. They may be useful to stir one's thinking, but I have argued that it will be more productive to develop one's own mind-set through the five core components of leadership because one is more likely to internalize what makes for effective leadership in complex times. This makes it difficult for leaders because they will be pushed to provide solutions. In times of urgent problems and confusing circumstances, people demand leaders who can show the way. (Just try leading by explaining to your board of directors that you have based your strategic plan on the properties of nonlinear feedback networks and complex adaptive systems.) In other words, leaders and members of the organization, because they live in a culture of frenetic change, are vulnerable to seeking the comforting clarity of off-the-shelf solutions. Why not take a change pill, and if that doesn't work, there will be another one next year.

Alas, there is no getting around the conclusion that effec- tive leaders must cultivate their knowledge, understanding, and skills of what has to come to be known as complexity sci- ence. (For the latest, best discussion of this subject, see Pascale

et al., 2000; and Stacey, 2000; see also my Change Forces tril- ogy, 1993, 1999, forthcoming). Complexity science is one of those remarkable convergences of independent streams of in- quiry that I referred to in Chapter One. This science, as Pascale et al. claim, grapples with the mysteries of life and liv- ing; it is producing exciting new insights into life itself and into how we might think about organizations, leadership, and social change: "Living systems [like businesses] cannot be di- rected along a linear path. Unforeseen consequences are in- evitable. The challenge is to disturb them in a manner that

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46 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

approximates the desired outcomes" (Pascale et al., 2000, p. 6, emphasis in original).

The Complexities of Leadership

Leading in a culture of change is about unlocking the myster- ies of living organizations. That is why this book places a pre- mium on understanding and insight rather than on mere action steps. Complexities can be unlocked and even under- stood but rarely controlled.

There are, as can be seen, dilemmas in leading change. Goleman's analysis helps us because it informs us that ele- ments of different leadership styles must be learned and used in different situations. But knowing what to do in given cir- cumstances is still not for sure. If you are facing an urgent, crisis-ridden situation, a more coercive stance may be neces- sary at the beginning. Those dealing with failing schools have drawn this very conclusion: the need for external interven- tion is inversely proportionate to how well the school is pro- gressing. In a case of persistent failure, dramatic, assertive leadership and external intervention appear to be necessary. In the long run, however, effectiveness depends on develop- ing internal commitment in which the ideas and intrinsic mo- tivation of the vast majority of organizational members become activated. Along the way, authoritative ideas, demo- cratic empowerment, affiliative bonds, and coaching will all be needed.

In the preceding paragraph I deliberately said that more coercive actions may be needed "at the beginning" of a crisis. This is where leadership gets complicated. When organiza- tions are in a crisis they have to be rescued from chaos. But a

UNDERSTANDING CHANGE 47

crisis usually means that the organization is out of synch with its environment. In this case, more radical change is required, and this means the organization needs leadership that wel- comes differences, communicates the urgency of the chal- lenge, talks about broad possibilities in an inviting way, and creates mechanisms that "motivate people to reach beyond themselves" (Pascale et al., 2000, p. 74; see also Heifetz, 1994).

Recall from Chapter Two the case study of the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategy in England. Most people would agree that the public school system is in a state of cri- sis. It needs authoritative leadership before it disintegrates, but the system is still out of line with its environment, which calls for accelerated change and learning. There can be a fine line between coercive and authoritative leadership. Certainly the strategy in England has elements of coercive as well as pacesetting leadership. Is this degree of pressure required to get large-scale change under way? We don't really know, but I would venture to say that the strategy that moved the English school system from near-chaos to a modicum of suc- cess is not the same strategy that is going to create the trans- formation needed for the system to thrive in the future. For that you need plenty of internal commitment and ingenuity. School systems all over the world, take heed.

The need to have different strategies for different circum- stances explains why we cannot generalize from case studies of success. In 1982, Peters and Waterman's In Search of Excellence galvanized the management world to inspiration and action. As it turns out, however, of the forty-three excel- lent companies (and they were excellent at the time), "half were in trouble" within five years of the book's appearance;

48 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

"at present all but five have fallen from grace" (Pascale et al., 2000, p. 23).

To recommend employing different leadership strategies that simultaneously and sequentially combine different ele- ments seems like complicated advice, but developing this deeper feel for the change process by accumulating insights and wisdom across situations and time may turn out to be the most practical thing we can domore practical than the best step-by-step models. For if such models don't really work, or if they work only in some situations, or if they are successful only for short periods of time, they are hardly practical.

We can also see the complexities of leadership in J. B. Martin's comparison of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy:

Jack Kennedy was more the politician, saying things pub-

licly that he privately scoffed at. Robert Kennedy was more

himself. Jack gave the impression of decisive leadership, the

man with all the answers. Robert seemed more hesitant, less

sure he was right, more tentative, more questioning, and

completely honest about it. Leadership he showed; but it has

a different quality, an off-trail unorthodox quality, to some

extent a quality of searching for hard answers to hard ques-

tions in company with his bewildered audience, trying to

work things out with their help [cited in Thomas, 2000, p. 390].

Robert Kennedy had his ruthless and conspiratorial mo- ments, but it is likely that his style of leadershipcommitted to certain values, but uncertain of the pathwaysis more

UNDERSTANDING CHANGE 49

suited to leading in a culture of change. Being sure of yourself when you shouldn't be can be a liability. Decisive leaders can attract many followers, but it is usually more a case of de- pendency than enlightenment. The relationship between lead- ers and members of the organization is complicated indeed, as we will also see in subsequent chapters.

It is time now to continue our practical journey. The next stop is relearning in a different way what we thought we al- ready knew: that relationships are crucial. Of course they are, but what does that really mean in a culture of change?

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Chapter Four

Relationships, Relationships, Relationships

IF MORAL PURPOSE IS JOB ONE, RELATIONSHIPS ARE JOB

two, as you can't get anywhere without them. In the past, if you asked someone in a successful enterprise what caused the success, the answer was "It's the people." But that's only partially true: it is actually the relationships that make the dif- ference.

In pursuing the importance of relationships in this chap- ter, I will also relate them to the role of moral purpose in business and education. In so doing, I will do something dif- ferent: let's talk about businesses as if they had souls and hearts, and about schools as if they had minds. We will see that moral purpose, relationships, and organizational success are closely interrelated. We will also find that businesses and schools have much in common. Businesses, as I concluded in the previous chapters, are well-advised to boost their moral

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purposefor their own good as well as for the good of soci- ety. Schools, particularly because we live in the knowledge society, need to strengthen their intellectual quality as they deepen their moral purpose.

Businesses as If They Had Souls

In "Relationships: The New Bottom Line in Business," the first chapter of their book The Soul at Work, Lewin and Regine (2000) talk about complexity science: "This new sci- ence, we found in our work, leads to a new theory of business that places people and relationshipshow people interact with each other, the kinds of relationships they forminto dramatic relief. In a linear world, things may exist independ- ently of each other, and when they interact, they do so in sim- ple, predictable ways. In a nonlinear, dynamic world, everything exists only in relationship to everything else, and the interactions among agents in the system lead to complex, unpredictable outcomes. In this world, interactions, or rela- tionships, among its agents are the organizing principle" (pp. 18-19).

For Lewin and Regine, relationships are not just a prod- uct of networking but "genuine relationships based on au- thenticity and care." The "soul at work" is both individual and collective: "Actually, most people want to be part of their organization; they want to know the organization's purpose; they want to make a difference. When the individual soul is connected to the organization, people become connected to something deeperthe desire to contribute to a larger pur- pose, to feel they are part of a greater whole, a web of con- nection" (p. 27).

RELATIONSHIPS, RELATIONSHIPS, RELATIONSHIPS 53

It is time, say Lewin and Regine, to alter our perspective: "to

pay as much attention to how we treat peopleco-workers, subordinates, customersas we now typically pay attention to structures, strategies, and statistics" (p. 27). Lewin and Regine make the case that there is a new style of leadership in successful companiesone that focuses on people and rela- tionships as essential to getting sustained results.

It's a new style in that it says, place more emphasis than you

have previously on the micro level of things in your com-

pany, because this is a creative conduit for influencing many

aspects of the macro level concerns, such as strategy and the

economic bottom line. It's a new style in that it encourages

the emergence of a culture that is more open and caring. It's

a new style in that it does not readily lend itself to being

turned into "fix it" packages that are the stuff of much man-

agement consultancy, because it requires genuine connection

with co-workers; you can't fake it and expect to get results

[P. 571.

It is time, in other words, to bury the cynic who said "leadership is about sincerity, and once you learn to fake that, you've got it made."

Lewin and Regine then present a series of chapters de- scribing successful businesses that combine a tough commit- ment to results underpinned by a deep regard for people inside and outside the organization. Examples range from Verifone, the electronic company that increased its revenues from $31.2 million to $600 million in eleven years, to Monsanto, the biotechnology company I discussed in Chapter Two. Lewin and Regine cite Monsanto's main goal, which

54 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

was to help people around the world "lead longer, healthier lives, at costs that they and their nation can afford, and with- out continued environmental degradation" (quoted in Lewin & Regine, 2000, p. 208). We saw in Chapter Two that Monsanto, using relationship and caring principles (as well as strategies for activating them), transformed itself from 1993 to 1999, quadrupling share prices.

I also warned in the last chapter: don't generalize prema- turely from successful cases. Lewin and Regine leave us with a happy ending with the CEO, Shapiro, talking about Monsanto's awareness of human impact on the environment: "Around that [awareness of impact on the environment] coa- lesced a commitment to sustainable development, which you might describe as finding ways to continue economic growth while not negatively impacting the environmenteven im- proving the environment, because that is going to be neces- sary" (cited in Lewin & Regine, 2000, p. 223, emphasis in original).

We saw from Pascale, Millemann, and Gioja (2000) that Monsanto later faltered because, although it was strongly connected inside, it failed to engage deeply enough with those on the outside. It is still a good company (now merged), but it certainly lost ground. The lesson: never be complacent; re- ality-test your own rhetoric with outside (and inside) skeptics and dissenters. It is like, say Pascale et al., "walking on a trampoline" (p. 77).

Related to the soul, there is a powerful message from Kouzes and Posner (1998), who discuss "encouraging the heart." At the outset Kouzes and Posner observe that "lead- ers create relationships" (p. xv). The authors identify seven essentials to developing relationships (p. 18): (1) setting clear

RELATIONSHIPS, RELATIONSHIPS, RELATIONSHIPS 55

standards, (2) expecting the best, (3) paying attention, (4) per- sonalizing recognition, (5) telling the story, (6) celebrating to- gether, and (7) setting the example.

What separates effective from ineffective leaders, conclude

Kouzes and Posner, is how much they "really care about the people [they] lead" (p. 149). (You may want to take their twenty-one-item Encouragement Index, pp. 36-37, as one check.)

Other business authors echo the newfounded emphasis on relationships: Bishop (2000) argues that leadership in the twenty-first century must move from a product-first formula to a relationship-first formula; Goffee and Jones (2000) ask, "Why should anyone be led by you?" Their answer is that we should be led by those who inspire us by (1) selectively show- ing their weaknesses (revealing humanity and vulnerability), (2) relying on intuition (interpreting emergent data), (3) man- aging with tough empathy (caring intensely about employees and about the work they do), and (4) revealing their differ- ences (showing what is unique about themselves).

Let us now consider some school examples, which focus on developing relationships as essential for getting results. Schools, especially elementary schools, are known for their culture of caring, but can they get tough about bottom-line results? Are they really all that caring if they cannot show that students are learning?

Schools as If They Had Minds

Nothing presents a clearer example of school district recul- turing than School District 2 in New York City. Elmore and Burney (1999, pp. 264-265) provide the context:

56 LEADING IN A CULTURE OF CHANGE

District 2 is one of thirty-two community school districts in New York City that have primary responsibility for elemen-

tary and middle schools. District 2 has twenty-four ele- mentary schools, seven junior high or intermediate schools,

and seventeen so-called Option Schools, which are alterna- tive schools organized around themes with a variety of dif-

ferent grade configurations. District 2 has one of the most diverse student populations of any community district in the city. It includes some of the highest-priced residential and

commercial real estate in the world, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and some of the most densely populated poorer communities in the city, in Chinatown in Lower Manhattan and in Hell's Kitchen on the West Side. The stu- dent population of the district is twenty-two thousand, of whom about 29 percent are white, 14 percent black, about

22 percent Hispanic, 34 percent Asian, and less than 1 per- cent Native American.

Anthony Alvarado became superintendent of District 2 in 1987. At that time, the district ranked tenth in reading and fourth in mathematics out of thirty-two subdistricts. Eight years later, by 1996, it ranked second in both reading and mathematics. Elmore and Burney describe Alvarado's ap- proach: "Over the eight years of Alvarado's tenure in District 2, the district has evolved a strategy for the use of professional development to improve teaching and learning in schools. This strategy consists of a set of organizing principles about the process of systemic change and the role of professional development in that process; and a set of specific activities, or models of staff development, that focus on system wide im-

RELATIONSHIPS, RELATIONSHIPS; RELATIONSHIPS 57

provement of instruction" (1999, p. 266). The seven organiz- ing principles of the reform strategy are as follows: (1) it's about instruction and only instruction; (2) instructional im- provement is a long, multistage process involving awareness, planning, implementation, and reflection; (3) shared expertise is the driver of instructional change; (4) the focus is on sys- temwide improvement; (5) good ideas come from talented people working together; (6) set clear expectations, then de- centralize; (7) collegiality, caring, and respect are paramount. Elmore and Burney (1999, p. 272) explain:

In District 2, professional development is a management