Education Innovation

Professional Learning Community- Harness The Power of "Q"

Research has proven that Professional Learning Communities are one of the most powerful educational paradigms. The Professional Learning Community takes the individual teacher and hooks them into a network of their grade level or department level peers. This network in turn makes it possible for teacher to leverage the power of those present at the table to do more for students.

I have advocated that technology and other key drivers have created an environment in which individual Professional Learning Communities can be networked with, not only other Professional Learning Communities, but useful individuals such as specialists, district personnel, researchers, etc. I call this model the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative. The essence of the PNLC is that the “who” of potential members and collaborators is increased exponentially because of individual members networking through collaborative technology platforms, the “what.” Educators working together in the ongoing purpose of increasing student learning and achievement while sharing physical space, virtual space, or both simultaneously.

The Professional Networked Learning Collaborative makes use of what network researchers call a “small world network.” Keith Sawyer, author of Group Genius, explains that small world networks consist of, “…many densely connected small groups with less strong connections.”

Brian Uzzi of Northwestern University and Jarrett Spiro of Stanford University studied the 20the century Broadway musical industry, an industry in which many teams of people created projects, and then moved on to new projects, but maintained varying levels of interconnectedness. The Broadway musical industry was a network. From their research the derive a single number, which they called “Q.” Q is a measure of how densely interconnected the entire community is.

As Keith Sawyer points out, “When Q is low, there aren’t many links among teams, and those links aren’t very strong. When Q is high, the teams are connected by more and more people who know people on the other teams. If Q is very high, then teams are connected by many members and everyone has worked with everyone else multiple times.”

The Professional Networked Learning Collaborative attempts to harness they power of Q by creating connections with many more people than the team members sitting at the table. As these connections increase and are frequently re-visited, the level of Q increases.

Connections are the key. More connections increase the surface area of the typical PLC and exposes them to many more people who can contribute in meaningful ways to the work of the PLC.

“Connections expose a team to new sources of creative material. But if the network is totally connected, there is less diversity of ideas and the web risks falling into a rut of conventional styles. Recall the research showing that brainstorming groups often fall into groupthink and become less innovative than solitary workers. The most creative web is the one in which good connections exist among the teams, but the teams still enjoy independence and autonomy.”

Professional Networked Learning Collaboratives leverage the INDIVIDUAL networks of each member. No two networks look the same; therefore the PNLC is leveraging multiple unique networks. This uniqueness helps to offset the problem of groupthink and allows the PNLC the autonomy and professional discretion that Professional Learning Communities enjoy.

Want to raise the IQ of your teacher collaboration, then create your own Professional Networked Learning Collabortive and harness the power of Q. More Q equals more IQ.

Do The Math- The Networked Collaborative Formula

The Professional Networked Learning Collaborative has a large network surface area. Network surface area is a measurement of the extent and number of connections from the team members who are physically present with each other, and community partners, useful outsiders, specialists, consultants, professors, etc. who join the network as virtual team members for a time to help the work of the team.

Each member can potentially leverage not only their network, but also the network of others who are in their network. This principle is known as Metcalfe’s Law. The number of potential connections between nodes grows more quickly than the number of nodes. The total value of the network where each node can reach every other node in the network grows with the square of the number of nodes. In other words, when PNLC members connect their networks, it creates more value than the sum of networks independently.

Network Surface Area = (# Team Members x Member Networks²)

The greater the number of network members the greater the network surface area of the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative.

The Professional Networked Learning Collaborative is not as agile as a single individual or even a small grade level or department Professional Learning Community. But it has a greater knowledge mass and greater knowledge mass is advantageous because in the words of Peter Drucker, “Mass enables the organization to put to work a great many more kinds of knowledge and skill that could possibly be combined in any one person or small group.”

More knowledge and skill brought to bear to increase student achievement is the power of knowledge mass.

The ability to leverage the surface area of the networked collaborative and the mass of its knowledge on to a specific topic or problem is the level of cognitive concentration. The number of minds applied to any given topic, question, or problem. The level of cognitive concentration is what allows the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative to be so effective in solving student learning issues, creativity, and problem solving. More minds working on a single problem generates higher levels of potential solutions.

Collaborative Focus =              _____Problem or Question to be solved or answered______
                                        Cognitive Concentration = (Network Surface Area x Mass of Knowledge)

The power of the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative is the power of collaborative focus. A power that can be described through a formula dividing a problem or question with cognitive concentration, the product of network surface area and mass of knowledge. This is the formula for the next evolution of collaboration and teams in education in the form of a Professional Networked Learning Collaborative.

A Glimpse At What The Professional Networked Learning Collaborative Could Be- Enterprise 2.0 Knowledge Management

A look into how Enterprise 2.0 Knowledge Management could be leveraged in a Professional Networked Learning Collaborative.

I define the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative as, "“Educators working together in the ongoing purpose of increasing student learning and achievement while sharing physical space, virtual space, or both simultaneously."

An essential element of the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative is K.W.O.K

Technology allows teams to connect to islands of expertise located in any geographic location. Technology allows teams to archive their learning and share with others. The sum result is that technology allows the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative to “Know What Others Know” (K.W.O.K.).  Knowing what others know and sharing what you have learned is what I refer to as Wisdom Stewardship. Technology makes it easy for educators and schools to be good stewards of available wisdom and to know what others know.

These excellent SlideShare presentations give a glimpse into what the PNLC could be in education.

The Wikipedia Myth - Enterprise 2.0 Knowledge Management

View more documents from T-Systems Multimedia Solutions.

Enterprise 2.0 Knowledge Management - People at the Center

View more documents from T-Systems Multimedia Solutions.

Enterprise 2.0 Knowledge Management - Getting started

View more documents from T-Systems Multimedia Solutions.

Professional Learning Communities Overcome Collaboration Barriers Through Unifying Goals

In a series of posts based on Berkley and INSEAD professor Morten T. Hansen, book Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid The Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results, I described the four major barriers to collaboration that Professional Learning Communities and schools face.

“The Transfer Barrier” concerns people who are unable to transfer knowledge easily from person to person, from team to team, from school to school, or from district to district.

“The Search Barrier” concerns people who are looking for information and people, and but are not able to find them easily.

"The Not-Invented-Here Barrier"
“…the not-invented-here barrier, which arises when people are not willing to reach beyond their own units to input and collaborate.”

"The Hoarding Barrier"
“Unlike the not-invented-here barrier, where people do not want to ask others for input, the hoarding barrier concerns people in the opposite role: those who might provide help but do not offer it.”

Hansen offers some advice on how to overcome these barriers to collaboration. One way to overcome these barriers to collaboration is to unify people through unifying goals.

Creating a unifying goal is not as straightforward or easy as it sounds. When President Kennedy stated the goal of landing a man on the room and bringing him back safely, others in his administration suggested the goal should be preeminence in space. One goal sounded all encompassing, while the other was very limited, focused, and specific. One seemed tangible while the other was a concept. How often have you seen goals that seem so overarching that they don’t connect with your day-to-day experience? Hansen explains that unifying goals must do four things.

The Goal Must Create A Common Fate
“A unifying goal has power only is all relevant groups need to pull together to make it a reality.”

A unifying goal must unite all the teachers or all the Professional Learning Communities. Creating a goal that puts the pressure on one team or grade level is not unifying. For example the goal of raising the 4th grade writing assessments results, or 5th grade science scores put all the pressure on one grade level and does not unify the entire school.

“The greatest benefit of a common-fate goal is that it elevates the aspirations of people to something bigger than parochial group goals.”

When was the last time your school or district created a goal and raised your aspirations to “something bigger?”  Maybe raising test scores is aspiring, maybe not. Whatever the goal, it should require all to look ahead to something great.

The Goal Must Be Simple And Concrete
“Kennedy’s moon goal is so memorable—so captivating—precisely because it is simple and concrete.”

A goal like, “Prepare all students for college” isn’t exactly specific and concrete. Which college? What type of college? Equally vague is “prepare all students for the global workplace.” What does that mean?

Don’t make it wordy. Keep it simple. Stay away from clutter.

“Clutter is used to hide and hedge. Simplicity means stripping away clutter. One simple phrase (‘land a man on the moon’) beats many long sentences.”

“But there is a problem with simplicity. Most leaders, when they try to be simple, turn out vague and abstract goals, not concrete ones”

“Leaders who state a simple and concrete goal will do better, because people will know what it means. It is not open to interpretation. It also is measurable: worlds like premier, preeminence, and superior are open to many interpretations and hard to measure. In contrast, ‘bringing him back safely to Earth’ is measurable. Did the astronauts come back safely? Yes, they did. Check.”

The Goal Must Stir Passion
“Powerful and unifying goals stir passion and inspire. They appeal to people’s hearts and not only their minds.”

Raising test scores has never appealed to my heart, but maybe it appeals to yours. Sadly, I haven’t had a goal as an educator that that every appealed to my heart. Staying “fiscally solvent” or “increasing API scores” just doesn’t get me up in the morning.

“Unifying goals need not appeal to a higher purpose (such as helping humankind) or noble pursuits (landing a man on the moon) to be inspiring. Leaders who appeal to high performance and excellence can also stir passion among people.”

The Goal Must Put Competition on the Outside
“Few things unite people better than having a common enemy.”

“Many executives blunder by stoking competition among employees—for example, by instilling rivalry between salespeople. In a special issue devoted to competition, Business Week wrote, ‘Everyone likes to win. Beneath all the talk about teamwork and balance, all the books on being kind and cultivating emotional intelligence, people still crave to be the best.’ The problem with this argument is that teamwork and ‘being the best’ are seen as mutually exclusive. But they are not. People can still crave to win, be the best, but they can do so as part of a team that wins against an outside competitor. They unite in competing against an external force.”

Schools and grade levels should not be in competition. The point here is that there are external forces (NCLB, Race To The Top, public perception) that can be used to motivate the staff to unite against. The goal is focus energy toward the external force and not at each other at school.


Creating unifying goals while balancing the need for individual educators to create their own individual goals is the key to creating powerful Professional Learning Communities and schools.

Communities of Practice: Conversations To Collaboration

Communities of Practice: Conversations To Collaboration

View more presentations from Steve Dale.

Overcoming “The Transfer Barrier” In Professional Learning Communities

This is the fourth in a series of four posts about barriers to collaboration in Professional Leaning Communities.

According to Berkley and INSEAD professor Morten T. Hansen, author of Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid The Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results, “The Transfer Barrier” concerns people who are unable to transfer knowledge easily from person to person, from team to team, from school to school, or from district to district.

“People run into problems in transferring expertise, know-how, and technologies when people from different units do not know how to work together. This transfer problem is not about motivations but about abilities: people can be highly motivated to work together, but they find it difficult to do so.”

The transfer problem is commonly manifested in three different ways.

1. Tacit Knowledge
“This type of knowledge makes transfer hard. Tacit knowledge refers to information that is hard to articulate orally—in writing, in manuals, in equations, and in software code.”

Teaching has a great deal of tacit knowledge. Many people can be taught to write a lesson plan, but to teach that lesson plan effectively requires tacit knowledge of instructional pace, classroom management, checking for understanding strategies, and many other things that make teaching an art.

English Language Learners often lack the tacit knowledge of the language they are learning. Knowing vocabulary or the rules of grammar does not mean one is able to “speak the language.” There is a great deal of tacit knowledge required to truly speak a language.

“It takes time to learn and master tacit knowledge.”

According to Hansen, “Several studies demonstrate the challenges of transferring tacit knowledge. It’s easier to collaborate when people deal in straightforward, well documented, technical knowledge…”

Professional Learning Communities may have a great deal of tacit knowledge that to outsiders is not known. Articulation between differing departments, grade levels, and schools can be hampered when all involved do not share the same tacit knowledge. Differing levels of knowledge and varying ways in which curriculum, strategies, how to use data, common assessments, etc are implemented can hamper collaboration if all members do not share the same tacit knowledge of these things.

It is one thing to know what a common assessment is or types of student data available, it is something entirely different to understand the nuance of how to create common assessment, when to use them for greatest effect, how to interpret results, and how to respond.

2. No Common Frame
“People who do not know each other have no common frame—an understanding of each other’s working habits, subtle ways of articulating something, a liking of each other, and an appreciation for each other’s moods.”

This commonly happens when Professional Learning Communities bring new members on to the team. Especially if team members have been working with each other for a length of time. Members naturally have an understanding of each other’s habits, moods, communication styles, and unwritten expectations. New members will struggle due to not having a common frame with the rest of the team.

Professional Learning Communities should anticipate the “no common frame” issue and take steps to mitigate it, so as not to hamper collaboration.

3. Weak Ties
“People find it hard to transfer knowledge when they don’t know each other well (a weak tie). They need strong ties—relationships where people talk often and have a close working association. Weak ties create havoc when people need to transfer tacit knowledge.”

In other words, Professional Learning Communities need to be “communities” A place where people feel like they are welcome. PLC members should be open, sharing, and communicative. Creating strong ties creates community.

Professional Learning Communities experience the transfer barrier because what we know is hard to share and explain, or we don’t how to work with each other, or simply don’t really know each other. PLCs need to overcome these issues by understanding that there is much knowledge they posses that isn’t always clear to those we are collaborating with. We need to expose our tacit knowledge and anticipate what other may not know. Further, PLCs must expose their unwritten habits and subtleties to new member to create common frames from which to collaborate. Finally, PLC must become true communities by creating strong ties through close working relationships.

Parts 1-3

Part 1: Overcoming the "Not-Invented-Here" Barrier in Professional Learning Communities

Part 2: Overcoming the “Hoarding” Barrier in Professional Learning Communities

Part 3: Overcoming “The Search Barrier” in Professional Learning Communities

Overcoming “The Search Barrier” in Professional Learning Communities

This is the third in a series of four posts about barriers to collaboration in Professional Leaning Communities.

According to Berkley and INSEAD professor Morten T. Hansen, author of Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid The Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results, “The Search Barrier” concerns people who are looking for information and people, and but are not able to find them easily.

“Many companies are familiar with the adage, ‘If only we knew what we know.’ By that they mean that somewhere in the company, someone knows the answer to a problem, but the rub is that one who has the problem cannot locate the one who has the answer. That’s the search barrier…. the search barrier concerns the inability to find information and people in the company.”

Schools are becoming no different. As the increasing need for meeting state and federal accountability standards combines with increasing shifts toward more technology, transparency, and complexity, members of Professional Learning Communities are being asked to solve problems of student learning, manage data information systems, and leverage the knowledge and expertise of many who are outside of the team. As these trends continue, the search barrier is going to become more of a problem that teams will need to confront.

According to Hansen, the search barrier manifests itself in four typical ways.

1. Company Size
“The bigger the company, the greater the search problem.”

Obviously, not every school or district is going to face this issue. But, many schools and districts are so large that one hardly knows all the staff and finding who has the information, knowledge, expertise, or data to help Professional Learning Communities solve problems is a challenge.

2. Physical Distance
“Companies that are spread across cities, regions, countries, and continents have bigger search problems than those that reside in one place. People prefer to interact with others who are close by.”

Many school districts cover many cities and regions. Making a trip to the district office for some is often quite a trek. Some school campuses are immense is size. We naturally like to interact and work with people who are near us. If it takes a great deal of time and effort to go to the district office to find support, or we would rather not walk all the way across campus, we will limit those whom we can collaborate with and the expertise from which we can draw from.

3. Information Overload
The trend of data-driven instruction has resulted in students taking a multitude of grade level, district, and state assessment. This data is aggregated into data management systems such as Data Director or Edusoft. Combine this with other student data such as attendance, demographic info, etc and the result is a massive amount of available data on students. Teachers are awash in data and struggling to cope with it all.

All this data creates a paradox. “In a rush to help people get the information they need, companies have put in place databases, intranets, and knowledge-management systems, but these have created their own problem: too much information.”

Professional Learning Communities must struggle with the “Total vs. Useful Ratio” of data.

“Information overload makes search harder because of information noise—the ratio of the total amount of information available to the amount of useful information. Information systems, including knowledge-management systems, increase the noise ratio by making too much information available, and that complicates the search for the right type of knowledge or person.”

Professional Learning Communities have enough to accomplish without having to swim
through a mountain of data. What is needed is not all the data or information available, but the right data or information. That is why common formative assessments in the classroom are so useful. It is real time and focused on the current needs of the current students.

4. Poverty of Networks
How many steps does the average teacher have to go through to find someone who has the expertise or knowledge they require? For some very well connected teachers, those types who seem to know everybody, it might not be more than one or two. But teachers who are new to the district, new to a school, or new to a department, it might require that they go through three or four people before they find the person with the expertise of knowledge that they require.

“It may be a small world for a few well-connected people, but it’s a big world for many others, and that’s a formidable barrier to search.”

Professional Learning Communities offer a bit of a remedy in that members can begin tapping into each other’s connections when searching for expertise, information, and data. With the advent of social media and the resulting ability to create Personal Learning Networks, searching can become easier and wider as PLC members share and tap into their Personal Learning Networks. This shift toward a technological element that creates “virtual members” or “useful outsiders” is at the heart of the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative model. It is a model designed to overcome the barriers of size, distance, and poverty of networks.


K.W.O.K. Knowing what others know is a term that I use when talking about the power of the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative to harness networks and groups through technology to bring a greater amount of knowledge and expertise to the team. Be it a PNLC or a PLC, overcoming the search barrier is going to become an increasingly larger issue as the educational landscape becomes more diverse, more transparent, more accountable, the need to being able to find the right information or the right expert to help PLC or PNLCs meet the needs of their students is going to increase.

Professional Learning Communities and the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative are going to have to adopt networking and data analysis into their core competencies to be able to overcome the search barrier to collaboration.

Part 1: Overcoming the "Not-Invented-Here" Barrier in Professional Learning Communities

Part 2: Overcoming the “Hoarding” Barrier in Professional Learning Communities.

Overcoming the “Hoarding” Barrier in Professional Learning Communities

This is the second in a series of four posts about barriers to collaboration in Professional Leaning Communities.

Some Professional Learning Communities struggle with team members who do not share ideas, do not share knowledge, do not share data, and seemingly do anything they can not to participate or cooperate with the rest of their team members. They are “hoarders.”

I previously addressed this barrier to collaboration in my post “A Hoarding Culture vs. A Sharing Culture.” In a hoarding culture, teachers and schools keep their expertise, their knowledge, their ideas, and their innovations to themselves.

According to Berkley and INSEAD professor Morten T. Hansen, author of Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid The Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results, “Unlike the not-invented-here barrier, where people do not want to ask others for input, the hoarding barrier concerns people in the opposite role: those who might provide help but do not offer it.”

Professional Learning Communities and Professional Networked Learning Collaboratives are built to share. Not only should members be asking for help, members should be constantly sharing and offering their help, ideas, strategies, knowledge, and expertise. This is why we call them communities or collaboratives.

According to Hansen, the “hoarding” barrier is manifested in four typical ways.

1. Competition
“Competition inside a company undermines people’s willingness to collaborate.”

Schools that put individuals teachers against one another in a competition for resources, for status, or for test scores are creating a culture of competition and creating a barrier to collaboration. When teachers, schools, or districts believe they are in competition with others, then they are going to hoard their ideas, creativity, innovation, data, research, knowledge, expertise, and wisdom.

All students suffer when educators compete against each other. Professional Learning Communities and Professional Networked Learning Collaboratives leverage their ability to increase student achievement on their abilities to collaborate. Competition prevents this. Competition has no place amongst our schools and our teachers.

2. Narrow Incentives
“When people are rewarded only for how well they do their jobs, they tend to focus attention on their jobs exclusively.”

Teachers or schools that are only acknowledged or esteemed for high-test scores unwittingly sabotage their ability to further raise student achievement through greater collaboration. If it is only about the test score, if a single score for a single test is how teachers will be judged and evaluated, they natural result is that they will turn inward and focus on themselves and “hoard” their best from the rest of the group.

It is absolutely essential that Professional Learning Communities, Professional Networked Learning Collaboratives, and administrators reward and judge each other on sharing and collaborating, rather than a narrow test score.

3. Being Too Busy
“Paradoxically, the emphasis on performance management over the past decade has created what Harvard Professor Leslie Perlow calls a ‘time famine’ at work.”

Every single educator I know is suffering from time famine. Educators are being asked to teach more standards the same amount of time or even less time. Educators always feel behind in the classroom and then have the added burden of outside meetings, trainings, etc. Time famine is running rampant.

“As people are pressured to perform, they feel that they don’t have the time to help others; reasonable requests for help are seen as burdens that put them behind in their own work. So people are faced with a trade-off—to do their own work (but not help others), or to help others (but get less work done).”

The current economic crisis has forced many schools and districts into layoffs and reductions of support staff, district staff, etc, but the work still needs to be completed. The pressure to keep up and complete just one’s job responsibilities is increased when those you work with and depend on are laid off or transferred.

Time saving measures need to be pursued vigorously. Further, instruction time and collaboration time need to guarded jealously. It will take creative thinking and innovative solutions, but time famine must be defeated to increase collaboration time.

4. Fear of Losing Power
If knowledge is power, then the one with the knowledge has the power. And those with power are often loath to give it up.

“…why share that knowledge with others and thereby make oneself less powerful and ultimately redundant? If people fear they will become less powerful and less valuable to the organization by spreading their wisdom, they will be inclined to hoard it.”

Professional Learning Communities and Professional Networked Learning Collaboratives must overcome the collaboration barrier of the fear of losing power by ensuring that all members are empowered through access to data, information, knowledge, expertise, and wisdom. Empowered teams do not fear losing power, but rather feel empowered when their share their knowledge. Sharing is empowering, hoarding is disempowering. When PLCs or PNLCs share, they overcome the fear disempowerment. They empower collaboration and reap its rewards.


Professional Learning Communities and Professional Networked Learning Collaborative must overcome the “hoarding” barrier and create a culture of sharing. Sharers know that their fellow teachers, their fellow principals, and their fellow schools should benefit, can benefit, and will benefit from their knowledge, ideas, creativity, and information. Sharers get a “reward” out of helping others benefit from what they know. Sharers attempt to overcome silos by sharing with others so that the entire school or school district can benefit.

Also see:

Part 1: Overcoming the "Not-Invented-Here" Barrier In Professional Learning Communities

Overcoming the "Not-Invented-Here" Barrier in Professional Learning Communities

This is the first in a series of four posts about barriers to collaboration in Professional Leaning Communities.

Professional Learning Communities and Professional Networked Learning Collaboratives must confront and overcome for typical barriers to collaboration. According to Berkley and INSEAD professor Morten T. Hansen, author of Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid The Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results, these four barriers to collaboration are common in most organizations. Schools then, would be no different.

The Not-Invented-Here Barrier

“…the not-invented-here barrier, which arises when people are not willing to reach beyond their own units to input and collaborate.”

PLCs and PNLCs need to develop a collaborative culture that is open to ideas from outside of their teams, schools, districts, etc. Typically, the not-invented-here barrier will manifest itself in 4 typical ways.

1. Insular Culture
“People who work together can develop an insular culture. As they spend time with each other to the exclusion of outsiders, they restrict the influx of new viewpoints and reinforce their own beliefs.”

Schools are especially susceptible to this problem. Typically grade level members or subject level members spend a great deal of time together in PLCs. But they also eat lunch together, talk to each other before and after school. There is not the same level of interaction with the rest of the staff and almost zero interaction with teachers from other schools in the district, and near non-existent interaction with teachers from other districts. This creates a very insular culture. Professional Learning Communities should understand this problem and seek proactive ways to break out of these “silos.”

The reason I strongly advocate the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative is because it is built on the premises that information, expertise, knowledge, data, research, superior methods and practices, can be found outside of the typical PLC. The PNLC is designed to network and reach out of the typical PLC “silo” and connect with “useful outsiders” all around the school, district, state, or globe.

It is human nature that the, “…more close-knit a group becomes, the more the members turn inward and close themselves off from the world.”

An insular culture is lacking in cognitive diversity and perspective. PLCs must look for ways such as the PNLC or others, to free themselves from the problem of an insular culture to view ideas from out as a resource to be leveraged. “Not-invented-here” could actually become a reason to embrace a new idea, instead of a reason to ignore a new idea.

2. Status Gap
“If individuals think that they might have higher status than others, they will not reach out to collaborate with those ‘less worthy’ human beings.”

Fortunately, most educators at a school enjoy equal status, with the exception of those that are viewed as unprofessional, lazy, or inept by their peers, and those whom administrators tend to favor.

Occasionally I have discovered that within Professional Learning Communities members begin to feel like their ideas do not have merit. These people tend to feel like they are a lower status than the rest of the group. Consequently, the problem of “Information Cascades” can develop. These members do not feel comfortable to share with the group because of their perceived “lower status.”

Professional Learning Communities must ensure that all members enjoy equal status in the team.

3. Self-Reliance
“When a norm takes hold that says, ‘You should fix your own problem,’ people tend to resist reaching out for input.”

This is absolutely contrary to the purpose of the PLC and the PNLC. The purpose is to help each other solve problems and work together to better student learning. If the students belong to everybody, then so do the problems.

Professional Learning Communities must recognize that many have a deep-seated belief that they need to stay quiet about their problems and struggles so as not to burden others. These beliefs must be rooted out, exposed, and dealt with. No team member can be allowed to believe they must go it own their own because they would be a burden.

Further, the belief that “I know it all and don’t need others help,” is equally damaging. This belief must be confronted and dealt with if the PLC or PNLC is to have a truly collaborative culture.

4. Fear of Revealing Shortcomings
“Reaching out to someone and saying, ‘We’re not doing well in this area and need help,’ can be interpreted by others as failure: ‘These guys are not very good.’ People sometimes fear exposing their weaknesses to others, especially to experts. By asking for input, people expose their vulnerability, allowing others to stand in judgment.”

Judgment, failure, and weakness are very emotional terms. Most educators I know are very capable and very committed, but never the less, at some point, we all need help and we all have something to learn. A strong culture of collaboration does not judge, does not interpret calls for help as signs of failure. To the contrary, strong PLCs and PNLCs need members who are willing to ask for help and feel comfortable doing so because a safe emotional environment has been created in the team.

No one wants to reveal shortcomings, but that is small price to pay if students will benefit in the long run. All educators need to realize that by opening up and confronting their shortcoming, they can strengthen themselves as professionals by learning from our peers and in the case of PNLCs, those in our extended Personal Learning Networks.

While we give many assessments through the year to become very familiar with the shortcomings and needs of our students and make efforts to help them overcome them, we as educators are judged on the results of but a few high stakes tests. Can we afford to wait to overcome our shortcoming until after the fact?


Professional Learning Communities must develop a collaborative culture that overcomes insular cultures and silos, is status neutral, overcomes the tendencies of self-reliance, and eliminates fear and judgment. PLC and PNLC that have done that will be able to overcome the not-invented-here barrier to collaboration.

The "Ambidextrous" Professional Learning Community

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald was describing the integrated approach of concurrent focus that created what I call Ambidextrous Professional Learning Communities.

Ambidextrous Professional Learning Communities have an “integrated” or "ambidextrous" approach to their focus and their function.

Focus:
In a previous post (The Integrated Approach of the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative) I explain that Integrated Approach has a concurrent focus, both internal and external. They focus on developing strong norms, processes for communicating, problem solving, building consensus, etc. This is important, but Professional Learning Communities must recognize that equally important, is a clear understanding of how their work fits into the needs of those outside of the team.

They clearly understand that their work must fit within the greater goals of the school and the district. They are externally focused and internally focused. They do not wait to create and establish internal norms or practices for every aspect of their work, but rather, get on with the work meeting the needs of students, the grade level, department, school, district, and the team together, while simultaneously developing internal processes. They also keep an eye out for trends in technology, new research, and new strategies, and new compliance issues developing outside of the group.

The internal focus develops key group processes, norms, goals, time-lines, etc. The internal focus is what great Professional Learning Communities do to build solid teams. But this is not enough. The must also have the concurrent external focus. They need to understand others' expectations (school or district) constantly update their information about available talent and knowledge in their network of useful outsiders, and be aware of the external situation in which they work. The external focus has at its heart the principles of The Expectations, Network, and Situation. (T.E.N.S.)

Being able to have the concurrent focus of the internal and external approach is to be ambidextrous.

Function
There is a commercial about Tiger Woods that say, “relentless consistency, 50 percent; willingness to change, 50%.” The commercial from the global management consulting firm Accenture sums up perfectly the concurrent focus of function; relentless consistency while at the same time continuously innovating.

Professional Learning Communities must have a strong unwavering and unyielding commitment to use best practices, research based methods, proven strategies, and all practices that are known to make a difference for student learning. Professional Learning Communities must practice “kaizen”, the continual improvement in their work. A strong Professional Learning Community is always seeking to gain a greater depth of understanding of their work and continual practice of those best practices. Their internal focus is to find those critical aspects of their work and apply the best-known methods without exception.

The other concurrent focus of the Professional Learning Community function is to continually innovate. If “kaizen” is getting better at what they do, the term “tenakaizen” is to make something completely different, to innovate. The Professional Learning Community should be continuously learning to do new things in new ways. The only way to even greater results is to find new innovative ideas.

The integrated, or ambidextrous Professional Learning Community demonstrates the ability to have what Roger Martin, dean of Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, call “an opposable mind.”

The “opposable mind” allows a member of a Professional Learning Community to have the, "…predisposition and capacity to hold two diametrically opposing ideas in their heads. And then, without panicking or simply settling for one alternative or the other, they’re able to produce a synthesis that is superior to either opposing idea.”

Have an internal and external focus simultaneously. Have a focus on getting better at what you do, while looking for new ways to do it.

Professional Learning Communities that have “integrative thinking,” will be able to manage con-current focus and prove themselves to be... ambidextrous.