Educational Leadership Paradox: Good Management Leads To Failure

Good educational management is the reason the educational system will not succeed and will result in failure. Why?

Because at the same time you or the educational leaders you work with are being praised for your ideas and decision-making, you could be missing the idea or change that will lead to your downfall. You could miss the idea or ideas that will change the very nature of education.

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Clayton M. Christensen details this paradox in detail in his excellent work, The Innovator’s Dilemma. This well known and oft quoted book details the rise and fall of several industries as they struggle with “disruption.”

For example, he cites the computer manufacturer Digital Equipment Company, who at one time was the dominant force in the computer industry, but ended up failing to meet the challenge of “disruptive technologies.”

“In Digital’s case, as in Sears, the very decisions that led to its decline were made at the time it was so widely regarded as being an astutely managed firm. It was praised as a paragon of managerial excellence at the very time it was ignoring the arrival of the desktop computers that besieged it a few years later.”

It seems clear, that the educational system in the United States, once a “paragon of managerial excellence” has for too long ignored the “disruptive” ideas of teaching and learning that are happening outside its walls. While our principals, superintendents, directors, and secretaries of education seek to improve the current model through their managerial ideas they risk the failure of the very schools, districts, and system that they intend to manage back to excellence.

Our educational leaders and managers are highly educated and considered excellent, knowledgeable, and capable. But there is a paradox. It is the decisions that our educational leaders make now that could be creating the circumstances of failure. Christensen’s research clearly demonstrates this fact.

“One theme common to all these failures however is the decisions that lead to failure were made when the leaders in question were widely regarded as among the best companies in the world.”

So a key paradox exists. Education, like any other system or organization is subject to the effects of this paradox.

“…--but that there is something about the way decisions get made in successful organizations that sows the seeds of eventual failure.”

Good management is the problem. Read it again. Good management is the problem. Good management does what is best for the organization based on past history and performance and what is best for the career track of managers.

It is because of this “good management” that schools, districts, and the education system as whole is not going to be able to react to the disruptive ideas occurring outside of the classroom wall and the educational system.

“…principles of disruptive innovation, show that when good companies fail, it often has been because their managers either ignored these principles of chose to fight them.”

If you are an educational leader, and if you are honest with yourself, you are most likely making decisions based on past history, past performance, and past expectations, and factoring in what you need to do to keep your career track headed in the right direction. And, I am sure most of your educational managerial colleagues are doing the same thing.

This is why it won’t work. Our system will fail, because this is not the type of management necessary for dealing with and adapting to the current and coming disruption.

So, what to do?

The Great 8 Catalytic Questions

1. How can you view the “paradox” as a positive? What can you learn from it?

2. What patterns do you see in education’s current direction or environment that can better help you understand the current situation?

3. Do you feel a sense of urgency? How can you turn this urgency into action?

4. How can you combine your experience, position, and authority to address “disruption” and the “paradox” of good management?

5. What might your school, your district, or your system look if you had more authority and control over decision making and resources? What if you had less, what would you do?

6. How might you change the organizational structure or layout of your school or district to meet the needs of “disruption” or the “paradox?”

7.  What further information would you need in your current position or situation? How does the information you don’t have shed light on the situation your school or district faces?

8. How is your past experiences, training, and performance adversely affecting your judgment and perspective on “disruption” and the “paradox?”

Comments

[Charles]

I've been reading a 20-year-old book called Politics, Markets & America's Schools, and a similar point is made within.

The author's believe their research demonstrates the crippling nature of "democratic control" of education (that's a small "d"). The more hands in the air to make decisions and shape policy, the more likely even the strongest organization is to fall into mediocrity.

As you've described management, they would term it bureaucracy, because of the strict nature of the hierarchy. Management isn't open to the ideas of the manage, who in this case are those best trained to execute the mission.

[Rob Jacobs]

Charles, excellent points and information. Bureaucracy exists to defend itself. To defend the status quo. Management can get in trouble when they change or challenge the status quo. Most times, the bureaucracy rises up to defend itself and stomp out the creativity and initiative of managers. Education needs more leaders and entreprenuers.

[Scott McLeod]

Fabulous post! Some folks also may be interested in my K12 Online presentation on this:

http://snipurl.com/dbf92

[Heidi Hass Gable]

Your post makes me think of a story from Stephen Covey:
It's like building a road through the forest.

A good manager is on the ground, with the team, getting them new shovels, making sure they get lunch breaks - doing all the things that ensure the team can build that road as efficiently as possible.

A good leader, however, is up the top of a tree, checking out the lay of the land, and yells out "WRONG FOREST!"

Are we building the road efficiently, but in the wrong forest?
Worth thinking about!

[Robert Jacobs]

Heidi, you rightly point out an interesting aspect to this issue. There is, a Peter Drucker famously pointed out, a difference between managers and leaders. Managers do things right, but leaders do the right things.

As an educational manager I am constantly aware of the types of decisions being made by the managers I work with. Though most of us want to be powerful innovative leaders, the reality is that most of us are making decisions based on legal requirements (federal, state, county, local, etc) what has worked before, what others are doing, and what is best for our careers. Not exactly an environment that is welcoming to disruptive change, innovation, or ideas.