There is something in our affinity for the institution of education that makes it seem immutable and timeless. Schools that have been part of our lives will always be there. New schools will rise as communities grow, but it seems unfair or tragic when schools disappear as communities wane. Yet the reality is that the [...]
In his new book, Technology vs Humanity, futurist Gerd Leonhard explores the really big changes that are driving fundamental shifts in how we all lead our lives, and may, within our own lifetimes, challenge the very paradigm of what it means to be human. These shifts will have tremendous impact on the role and relevance [...]
What is it that REALLY keeps independent school leaders up at night? For much of 2017 and early 2018 I was collecting feedback on a series of simple, provocative, open-ended prompts from independent school heads, senior administrators, and trustees. I have just published some results in Independent School Magazine. Check it out; I think you [...]
Following the lead of my new friend, Seth Godin, short blogs are better. This picture really is worth 1,000 words. Schools that are increasingly faced with the challenge that their students can and might select another school to attend, must develop, communicate, and deliver a winning value proposition or face loss of enrollment, and the [...]
As we get ready to launch a new learning year, let’s laser-focus on a very simple reality: Schools, like every other organization that lives in a competitive marketplace, have just two “keys to sustainable success” according to strategy guru Michael Porter: good strategy and highly effective operational systems. Operational effectiveness means that your school is [...]
In another sign that the era of traditional five-year school strategic plans are dead, take a look at the approach led by head of school Ned Murray and this team at Episcopal Day School in Augusta, GA. It is simple, clean, and generates action items based on aspirations and big questions, rather than the backward-looking distillation [...]
Over the weekend I got to facilitate a board meeting at The Forman School in Connecticut. In planning the session, head of school Adam Man challenged me to mold my remarks and create active learning for the trustees around four big questions. I had not thought of our challenges in exactly this way before, and [...]
What can a 15-year-old autistic boy from Iceland teach us about leadership? Last week videos went viral of a 28-foot-long model of the Titanic, designed and built out of 65,000 Lego blocks by teenager Brynjar Karl Birgisson. It is a remarkable feat of design, engineering, three-dimensional vision, and perseverance. But what I want to dig [...]
Education is a mirror of societal interactions. For millennia, knowledge and information have been vastly more "push" than "pull". The big ideas of a few rulers, politicians, philosophers, celebrities, scientists, artists, authors, and the like have molded the evolution of human thought and action. In logarithmic terms, the 10 have led the 100,000, or perhaps [...]
Penguins, icebergs, and organizational change, all in a one-hour read. What's not to love? John Kotter knows as much about change management as anyone in the world. I am embarrassed to say that I had not read Kotter until about two years ago, but perhaps that was actually good. I had to develop my own [...]
