Our fall conference speaker is Peter Skarzynski. You can download my booknotes to Innovation to the Core the book that Skarzynski wrote with Rowan Gibson.
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Comments on Innovation
In Innovation to the Core Peter Skarzynski and Rowan Gibson stress the need for making innovation part of core business practice for companies. They provide strategies about how to make innovation part of the company’s culture.
Wonderments
As I read business books, I always wonder why is education so enamored with business books. Do business leaders ever read books on education? I doubt it. But, I know that I love to take ideas and make education better. So I learned several things from Innovation but I also have some “wonderments.” One of the wonderments I have of about the book is that they do not emphasize, as do some other books on creativity and entrepreneurship, that a culture of innovation is one that honors experiments, recognizing that not all experiments are successful. A culture of experimentation is one that allows, and respects, mistake. Although Skarzyski and Gibson give the percentages of how many ideas it takes to have one successful market idea, they don’t mention that that means there is a lot of trial and error behind the success; there are a lot of unsuccessful ideas. There is a freedom in such a culture.
Another wonderment is why don’t S & G state that a culture that is truly innovative, must be one that is openly honest and frank. Although this is inferred, it is not stated. Many hierarchies must be flattened in such a culture, and because mistakes/errors/trials (whatever one calls it even though those terms have a negative connotation) are not penalized and are actually encouraged, honest feedback is expected and given freely.
Another wonderment, although this is hinted at, is why don’t S & G spend more time talking about how true change really works. In order to make innovation become systematic, people need to know how the change process works. S & G remind us that it takes 3-5 years to create systematic change but they really don’t talk about how change is not a flow chart, it’s not linear; it’s really chaos—a fractal. The authors hint that there are interlocking pieces in creating the system, but the pieces are not sequential. It is helpful to think that change is like broccoli. There are many “florets” that interact and join ultimately in the stem but the pieces are not a hierarchy, nor do they progress in an orderly fashion. They can’t be implemented in a step 1, 2, 3 but are done simultaneously. Some helpful books about chaos theory, and the fractal nature of change, are James Glueck’s Chaos and Margaret Wheatley’s Leadership and the New Science.
In chaos theory one must pay attention to the “outliers”, those ideas that are outside the norm because those may be the “strange attractors” as defined by Wheatley. Sometimes in statistics we were taught to lop off the outlier as an anomaly. However, in chaos theory we pay attention to it because it could be the new direction to take our energy. So as we pay attention to the environment to look at new trends and places to innovate, we are, in fact, paying attention to the outliers or strange attractors.
In education we know that we can’t implement any innovation or idea wholesale, that to be effective leaders and practitioners must take pieces of best practice and implement based on an individual’s unique setting. This is important to remember when you think of creating change within your system. I have heard it said that for change to become part of a culture, it takes 3-5 years in an elementary setting, 5-7 in middle schools, 7-10 in high schools. One problem that schools face in trying to implement change is that we have starts and stops every year that businesses do not experience. It is difficult to sustain momentum with a three-month hiatus every year.
Plus, another discontinuity is that teachers have different cohorts of students from year to year. In business a group may start an innovation and keep working on it from development through implementation. However, teachers may start with a student or a cohort, then we have a summer break, and then a whole new group of students come the next year. The teacher may never know the true effect of any innovation because that child is now in another classroom. Such discontinuities create a disincentive to expand energy every year to be creative.
Other thinker who contribute to this discussion
Jennifer James, a cultural anthropologist, has contributed to this discussion about how change works. As S & G talk about making certain that innovation committees have members that include those who are new to the organization. Jennifer James says that if a person has been in an organization longer than six months, they have become part of that system and have consciously or unconsciously begun to absorb the culture of that organization. Someone who has been part of the organization less than six months has a fresh viewpoint, able to see the warts and flowers of the organization, able to look at effective practices and inefficiencies with a fresh perspective. They may see more clearly where changes need to occur. After six months that ability to have a telescopic viewpoint focusing on specifics has changed to be a wide angle view, seeing a broader but less focused picture.
Clayton Christensen, author of Disrupting Class, talked about toward change in education. He describes some organization changes as “disruptive innovation.” Practices and ideas become so embedded, members of the organization, consciously and unconsciously, work to sustain the system. Real change, disruptive innovation as Christensen calls it, then comes from the outside of the organization. For example, Target, a discount retailer, was a spin-off from Dayton’s, a traditional department store. It was not part of the same organization. In schools we have really not had any major changes. We have “tinkered”, to use a term from Larry Cuban of Stanford and his book Tinkering Toward Utopia.
With the need for diversity on innovation teams and the need for mixing and combining ideas, S & G say, “Mixing is the new norm.” Diverse opinions make for a rich energy to stimulate ideas. S & G talk about trendsetting cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and London because they have such diverseness in culture, age, political viewpoints, etc. Such comments are reminiscent of Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class. He talks about American cities that spawn creativity. They have the 3 T’s—talent, technology, and tolerance. Vibrant cities that attract and perpetuate creativity have a rich musical culture, technologically talented citizens, a well-educated population, and a culture that tolerates racial, sexual, and talent diversities. Florida’s book elaborates and supports S & G’s idea of how diversity of all kinds truly stimulates innovation and creativity.
Some of the principles that S& G talk about in the “Lenses” of Innovation remind me of Roger van Oech’s books about how to stimulate creativity. His books, A Kick in the Seat of the Pants and A Whack on the Side of the Head. He conducts workshops to help groups stimulate creative thinking. Some of his ideas have been used by teachers of the gifted and talented for many years.
These authors have all contributed ideas to support S & G’s ideas in how change works, how teams need to bring diverse ideas together, and how creativity and innovation come from the ability to look at the same idea from a different perspective.
Questions:
- What is innovation in schools? It isn’t about a market product. It can’t be measured by increased sales and profits. Is the goal of schools the same as businesses? Is innovation about how education is delivered? Is it about outcomes? We would have to define what it is before we say that we need to create innovation.
- S & G talk about establishing an innovation board. What would that look like in schools?
- How can schools have an innovation committee that crosses job roles? How can we meet with superintendents, central office, principals, teachers, students, community members, school boards, and parents? Etc. How can we include higher ed in our discussions? PLCs are job alike groups where teachers work to improve instruction. How can we broaden this teamwork to include people who are not in job-alike roles and who can bring diverse ideas to the attention of the system?
- I usually think about P-12 schools but when I think of how education needs to change, higher ed needs to be part of the discussion. How do conversations include P-12 and higher ed on the same innovation boards? Higher ed is doing a lot in creating hybrid courses and online access to information but are we truly innovating or are we again “tinkering” with structural, not foundational, principles? Is higher ed innovating with the times?
- Schools have survived partly because they are a monopoly and haven’t had to compete from a market perspective. Charter schools, private schools, home schools are some competition now but have we really changed what we are doing because of them? No.
- S & G talk continuously about creating wealth. In education we define wealth differently. It’s about students learning. We are creating personal “wealth” for them; we are creating the ability/skill for them to create their own physical wealth as we work to create personal capabilities. The difficulty is in how this is measured. Unfortunately, we use AYP as a measure when this is a simplistic measure for a complex system.
- Companies often have hierarchies that have direct lines of reporting. Schools, however, are more “loosely coupled” as described by Karl Weick. The loose coupling makes it more difficult to have effective communication patterns. How can we change this?
- Singularity University is the only higher ed institution that was created to offer degrees in trends of the future. Plus, Singularity offers an executive training program to train leaders of the future. Why aren’t other higher ed institutions changing their offerings? Why are they so stuck?
- S & G talk about that there is game-changing potential at intersection points. Where are those points for P-12?
One of the issues for us is that we have operated as though our prime concern is that students are “educated”. But we can’t always agree as to what that means. Does it mean that all students are proficient for NCLB but that ignores the really gifted/talented students. Are we educating for college readiness? Are we educating for job skills? Are we educating to impart values and culture? The answer is that yes, we are educating for all of those but only MEASURED for proficiency toward making adequate yearly progress.
However, we will not change education until we talk about some of the other purposes of schools. (The purpose of education and the purpose of schools are different. Education is the outcome; schools are a cultural institution.) We cannot change education until we honor the hidden and real agendas of the cultural institution.
What do we expect of schools? Schools are the last institution that all children (except those that are home schooled) experience. We used to have communities, churches, schools that would be part of a child’s experience. But currently schools are the institution that imparts our cultural values—timeliness, what it means to be American, taking turns, and so.
One of the functions of schools is that they provide childcare. As our parents work, we need a safe place, a learning environment, to provide a place for children to be.
Schools also teach socialization. We want our children to learn how to deal with other people. We teach them how to work in groups, how to get along with others, how to resolve conflict, just to name a few.
Schools also teach a lot of life skills that are not measured by standardized tests. Children learn to organize, to speak publicly, to be exposed to areas such as physical education, art, music, that students may not experience if left to their own devices.
We will not change education, or schools, until we do several things: one, change how schools are funded. If we want to make certain that we are educating children, schools should be paid when children make a year’s growth academically in reading, math, and science. They can be with age mates to honor the socialization needs of children social studies, music, physical education, and art. Therefore, if children gain two years of growth in one year, schools would receive two years of remuneration from the state. If, however, children don’t make a year’s growth in a year, schools are not paid until they do. This forces ownership that each child must learn. Plus, some students could graduate early, which is great if they are ready. Conversely, some may stay until they are 21 and they would leave better educated and better prepared for life (plus better prepared to help support us in our retirement.) Two, we have to recognize the difference between education and schools. We have to honor the purpose of schools and make certain that the changes we make still honor the cultural needs for child care, socialization, and cultural experiences that schools provide our communities. For many communities, the school is the heart. Consolidation of small districts, if someone is going to lose “their” school, causes great consternation because communities revolve around school activities and the identity created around the school.
10. What is the role of teacher unions in the whole innovation process? Shouldn’t unions get with the times and stop creating adversarial conditions between teachers and administration, between teachers and community? After all, aren’t we all after the same thing?? The education and growth of our children??? What if our unions provided training, insight, innovation teams for teachers?
- One of S & G’s discussion points is about leaders who provide continuous leadership over time. Some CEOs stay a long time. If the average tenure for an urban superintendent is three years, and other superintendents move frequently as well, how does this inhibit the ability of schools to sustain an innovation culture?
12. What leadership development for innovation do we provide for educational leaders? We want them to provide leadership and skills in innovation but how do they learn it? When the position has become so politicized and what makes news in the media is about test scores, how can superintendents create a culture of innovation when that may seem like that is not germane to increasing test scores?
Final Thoughts:
The idea of innovation teams is so appealing. In schools we would have to define what the focus of the innovation would be—academic achievement, delivery systems, business practices, etc. It would be particularly fun to create teams that are across job roles to look at ways we can improve what we provide for our children and our communities.
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