As someone once said, “In any bureaucracy, paper work increases as you spend more and more time reporting on the less and less you are doing”
Photo by Durotriges
According to Keith Sawyer, author of Group Genius, “In most companies, bureaucracy prevents innovation from emerging.”
Education is not immune to the damaging effects of bureaucracy, and in many ways suffers even more due to the number of government agencies adding to the layers of bureaucracy. Federal, state, county, district, and site level rules, regulations, processes, procedures, and mandates have created a maddening level of inefficiency.
Albert Einstein once said, “Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work”
Educators are faced with the task of creating an environment that can harness the wisdom, creativity, and intellect of their teachers and staff as a means of mitigating the harmful creep of bureaucracy. The key is to create schools and districts that are built on collaboration. Collaborative teams that can be assembled to harness their combined talents into innovations and solutions for schools and districts.
As detailed in his book Group Genius, Keith Sawyer describes collaborative organizations. Collaborative organizations are made up of teams who, “…form and reform, their structure emerging improvisationally from the bottom up, and membership is largely self-selected.”
Imagine a school site in which staff members from all grade levels, or department, or other areas volunteer to use the collaborative leverage of the group to innovate ideas and solutions to improve instruction, management, and the operation of the school. Teachers, janitors, counselors, psychologists, coaches, instructional aides, parents, and managers collaborating together from the bottom up to meet the needs of the school site.
Keith Sawyer calls these Innovation Labs.
Education is an ever-changing bureaucracy and districts and school sites must not just deal with change, they must come to expect and even welcome change. It must be embedded into the culture of a school and a district. “Innovation today is a continuous process of small and constant change, and it’s built into the culture of successful companies.”
Three characteristics would be the basis of the collaborative organization and an Innovation Lab. “The culture of the collaborative organization is based on flexibility, connection, and conversation.”
In his book The Social Psychology of Organizing, Karl Weick suggested what he called “loosely coupled” organizations. Bringing staff members together when needed into loosely coupled teams that innovate, create, and develop solutions for the school or the district. Like Lego blocks that can be brought together, disconnected, or re-formed easily without much disruption to the school or district. The benefit is a loosely coupled organization is much more innovative than carefully planned organizations.
According to Sawyer the, “University of Maryland reviewed the previous ten years of studies of organizational design; their conclusion was that team-based companies performed better than traditional bureaucratic firms.” Team-based schools and districts are better.
The Innovation Lab which is, “made up of people from different corporate functions representing all stages of product development, including purchasing, manufacturing, marketing, engineering, service, and finance—result in quicker product development times.”
The Innovation Lab is faster at solving problems and innovating because of the combined cross functions represented on the team. Breaking people out of their department, district office, or grade level silos allow the Innovation Lab to leverage the various knowledge, wisdom, experience, and insight to the team.
These sorts of teams have also been referred to as cross-functional teams. Regardless the label, imagine the speed and efficiency these teams could bring to solving problems, issues, and innovating ideas at the district or site level. All too often great ideas fail to work because some other concern or issue was not considered and anticipated because all the people that would be required to work together to implement the idea are not at the table at the moment it is conceived and developed.
Instead of running an idea by various departments or concerned persons after the fact, why not include them in the development of the idea. Innovation Labs can experiment with a high number of ideas and innovations because those required to work together to implement the innovations are communicating in real-time. Not in their silos after the fact.
“We’re really collaborating and building ideas together as opposed to the old model where everyone works in silos.”
How can you build a culture that is comfortable with change in your district or at your school? Think about issues and problems that have arisen in the past. How would an Innovation Lab or a collaborative organization have changed the outcomes of those issues and problems? Creating a culture of collaboration could be the key to taking a PLC, a school, or a district to the next level.
None of us is a smart as all of us.
The Great 8: Catalytic Questions For Your Thinking
1. What is a stake for your school or district? Can you afford not to create a collaborative organization?
2. What kinds of questions should you be asking yourself about your collaborative models?
3. What other organizations can you look to as a model of a good collaborative culture?
4. What assumptions are you making about the level of collaboration and the ability of your teams?
5. What is one step you can take right now to increase the collaboration taking place in your school or district? What might it look like?
6. Reframe the issue. Is it an issue of flexibility among staff, connection, or conversation? Is it a problem of communication, access, or time?
7. What criticisms will people have when you begin to create Innovation Labs or great collaboration? Anticipate and plan for solutions. Choose the idea that is easiest to implement.
8. Can you substitute one process, procedure, and regulation with one that will increase collaboration?
I needed to read this today. Thank you for posting it :-)
Posted by: brazen teacher | February 24, 2009 at 06:31 AM