Disruptive Idea: The Education Organization Is Not Structure But Capability

What does General Motors, alternative fuel, The Ken Burns Effect, Clayton Christensen, organizational structure, roles, routines, rules, education have in common? Nothing, until they were put into the Education Innovation Blender.

by m.naka

You may have heard of the Ken Burns Effect. But have you ever heard of the Larry Burns Effect?  Probably not, because I just made the term up. Larry Burns is a vice-president at General Motors in charge of alternative fuel-source research and development.

For the last decade, Larry’s job has been to figure out how to find a new way to power GM cars and do away with car’s reliance on the internal-combustion engine. His task is monumental and disruptive, because he job is to figure out a way to move General Motors away from gas-powered vehicles. Think about that, his job is to figure out a way to change what all his peers are doing and working on everyday.

Instead of getting into the internal organizational difficulties of trying to convince General Motors to give up making gas-powered vehicles, he has reframed the question. He asks himself each day, “If we were inventing the automobile today, what would we come up with?” 

What if the thinking behind what an organization is needs to be reframed? That is to say, what if the traditional view of organizations consisting of roles, rules, and routines are not in fact what the modern organization is, (or should be.) Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood contribute their thinking to this question in an essay titles “Organization Is Not Structure But Capacity” which is included in the book The Organization of the Future 2, by Frances Hesselbein and Marshall Goldsmith. To ask Larry Burns’ question, if we were inventing the educational organization today, what would we come up with?

Ulrich and Smallwood point out that the traditional view of organizations has long been defined by roles, rules, and routines.

Roles define the hierarchy of who reports to whom and who has accountability for work.
Rules represent policies and prescriptions for how works is done.
Routines reflect processes or cultures within the workplace.

Education roles are clear. Students report to teachers, teachers report to principals, principals report to superintendents, and superintendents report to the school board. Rules are created at the federal, state, county, local, and school site level. Prescriptions are about best practices, how to respond when students learn or don’t learn. Routines are consists of those multiple processes that educators must follow and the cultures that arise in their classrooms, schools, and districts.

All organizations are facing the current challenges of globalization, technology, diverse employee base, segmented and demanding customers, investors increasingly attuned to intangible results, and global competitors. The fact is, for education, most of these factors are not within their control.

The organization of the future will be built not just on functions of Roles, Rules, and Routines, but the capabilities of the organization. It is the capabilities of the organization, the capabilities of a school or district that truly define it. Ulrich and Smallwood have identified 5 capabilities for the organization of the future. 

by simontoplis

1. Talent- the ability to attract, retain, and deploy human capital, to assure competence and knowledge of the workforce.

What does this mean for Education? Are schools and school districts in a battle to attract the best? Some might say yes, but the reality is they simply hire from within their applicant pool. Employee competence is supposedly assured through the credentialing programs of colleges and universities.  Is this the best system to ensure highly capable talent is attracted and retained?

2. Leadership-the ability to build future leaders as an organization capability, to turn customer expectations into employee actions and to increase leadership brand.

Here education has an issue. Currently, leadership is entirely voluntary. Teachers decide that they would like to be leaders, obtain the necessary education and credentialing on their own, then must seek out leadership positions. There is no grooming process as there is in most other organizations. Leaders are not developed. They self select and are thrown into the fray with a modicum of training and support. Despite what most of the current educational leadership literature may say, in many cases, the principal is the lone leader at a school site, the lone person accountable for the operation of the school. In regards to this point, education has some thinking to do prepare itself to be an organization of the future.

3. Agility- the ability to respond quickly, change, be flexible, learn, and transform.

Education as an organization gets a resounding FAIL on these points. Many would argue that the very nature of the current educational organization does everything it can to prevent change, flexibility, and transformation.

4. An outside-in-connection-the ability to turn outside expectations from customers, investors, and communities into internal organization focus.

Education as an organization is often forced through legislation, regulation, or developed policy to respond to certain demands made upon it. However, if you asked students and parents what their expectations for their schools were, it would be difficult to make a strong argument that that schools are responding in this manner. 

5. Strategic Unity-the ability to create a shared point of view and common behaviors in an increasingly diverse work setting.

The shear size, diversity, and autonomy of the education system in this country makes a shared viewpoint problematic. If shared view points can be developed at a district level is more probable, but ensuring a set of common behaviors is hampered by the very nature of the educational organization. The base level of the educational organization is the teacher in the classroom, who, once the doors are closed, is free to follow or ignore the proposed or desired common behaviors of the organization.

Much debate currently rages about the structure of education. Can it be restructured, reshaped, reengineered, redesigned, de-layered, or rebuilt in terms of Roles, Rules, and Routines.  What role will Urlich and Smallwood’s 5 Capabilities of the future organization play in education’s future? Are these capabilities going to disruptive enough to challenge and change what the education organization of the future will be?

So too, those of us who see clearly the need for education to change, can struggle to make internal organizational change, or we can ask, “If we were inventing the education system today, what would we come up with?”  I call that the Larry Burns Effect.

What education needs is Disruptive Ideas.

We need to combine Christensen’s disruptive technologies the 5 Capabilities of the Future Organization  with disruptive ideas. We need disruptive methodologies, disruptive systems, disruptive strategies, disruptive innovations, disruptive imagination, disruptive creativity, disruptive visions, and disruptive initiatives.

The time has come for the Larry Burns Effect. We need to unleash these "disruptions" onto our education system and answer the questions, “If we were inventing the education system today, what would we come up with?” Education needs to become an “organization of the future.” Disruptive ideas for a reinvention of education!

Comments

[Joel Zehring]

I wonder how rank-and-file teachers might do this in our schools and districts? Larry Burns seems to have explicit permission to innovate. Teachers are often stuck (or feel stuck) in compliance mode.

We teachers need some training in grass roots leadership.

[Rob Jacobs]

School need to ask themselves, "In what ways can we structure ourselves or empower teachers to create an environment for innovation?" There are steps that districts can take, small though they may be, that can create opportunities and a culture that encourages and supports innovation from the ground up.