Leading in a Culture of Change
Michael Fullan: Jossey-Bass San Francisco 2001
Link to the Publisher
Jossey-Bass Education Publications
G. K. Chesterton:
“The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, or even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait. Not a bad mantra for leaders in complex times.
Pg. 2
Deep and sustained reform depends on many of us, not just on the very few who are destined to be extraordinary
Pg. 4
. . . there may be inevitable evolutionary reasons why moral purpose will become more and more prominent and that, in any case, to be effective in complex times, leaders must be guided by moral purpose.
Pg. 5
. . we have found that the single factor common to every successful change initiative is that relationships improve. . . .Thus leaders must be consummate relationship builders with diverse people and groups – especially with people different than themselves.
Pg. 11
The conclusion, then, is that leaders will increase their effectiveness if they continually work on the five components of leadership – if they pursue moral purpose, understand the change process, develop relationships, foster knowledge building, and strive for coherence – with energy, enthusiasm, and hopefulness.
Pg. 14
Authentic leaders anchor their practice in ideas, values and commitments, exhibit distinctive qualities of style and substance, and can be trusted to be morally diligent in advancing the enterprise they lead. Authentic leaders, in other words, display character, and character is the defining characteristic of authentic leadership. Sergiovanni (1999, p.17)
Pg. 27
The message of this chapter is that moral purpose is worthwhile on just about every meaningful criterion; it may not become activated on its own accord, but it is there in nascent form to be cultivated and activated. I have argued elsewhere that moral purpose has a tendency to become stronger as humankind evolves (Fullan, 1999). Thus, in evolutionary terms, moral purpose has a predestined tendency to surface. Effective leaders exploit this tendency and make moral purpose a natural ally. Although moral purpose is natural, it will flourish only if leaders cultivate it.
Pg. 28
. . . Bolman and Deal (2000, p.185) predict that “culture and core values will be increasingly recognized as the vital social glue that infuses an organization with passion and purpose. Workers will increasingly demand more than a paycheck. They’ll want to know the higher calling or enabling purpose of their work.”
The most fundamental conclusion of this chapter is that moral purpose and sustained performance of organizations are mutually dependent.
Pg. 39
Trouble arises because the “soft’ stuff is really the hard stuff, and no one can really “engineer” it (Pascale, Millemann, and Gioga 2000 p.12)
Pg. 46
Leading in a culture of change is about unlocking the mysteries of living organizations.
Pg. 52
“Actually, most people want to be part of their organization; they want to know the organization’s purpose; they want to make a difference. When the individual soul is connected to the organization, people become connected to something deeper – the desire to contribute to a larger purpose, to feel they are part of a greater whole, a web of connection” (from Lewin and Regine The Soul at Work 2000 p.27)
Pg. 55
What separates effective from ineffective leaders, conclude Kouzes and Posner, is how much they ” really care about the people [they] lead”
Pg. 63
. . . leaders in a culture of change require a quality that all long-term effective leaders have – the capacity to resist a focus on short term gains at the expense of the deeper reform where gains are steady but not necessarily dramatic.
Pg. 70
Where the world is heading (or, more accurately, where it needs to head) makes business and schools less different than they have been in the past. Both need to be, and are, increasingly concerned with moral purpose and good ideas if they are to be successful and sustainable organizations. In other words, the laws of nature and the new laws of sustainable human organizations (corporations and public schools alike) are on the same evolutionary path.
Pg. 72
Goleman (1998) has identified five main emotional competency sets (with several subdivisions), which he divides into the domains of personal and social competence (adapted from table 1, pp. 26-27):
- Personal competence
Self-awareness (knowing one’s internal state, preferences, resources, and intuitions)
Self-regulation (managing one’s internal states, impulses, and resources)
- Social competence
Motivation (emotional tendencies that guide or facilitate reaching goals)
Empathy (awareness of others’ feelings, needs, and concerns)
Social skills (adeptness at inducing desirable responses from others)
Pg. 92
It is one of life’s great ironies: schools are in the business of teaching and learning, yet they are terrible at learning from each other. If they ever discover how to do this, their future is assured. (Mind you, they are not helped by an oppressive hierarchy that bombards them with multiple colliding demands.)
Pg. 99
If they [schools] weren’t so well protected by having nearly a monopoly, and if they weren’t so essential to the future of democracy, they would be long gone.
Pg. 105
School systems, in any case, would be well advised to name knowledge sharing as a core value – to label it explicitly, which they do not now do – and to begin the work on the barriers and procedures to dramatically increase its use.
Pg. 108
The basis of the new mind-set for leading in a culture of change is the realization that “the world is not chaotic; it is complex” (Pascale, Millemann, & Gioja, 2000, p.6). The theory is best summarized in terms of four principles of a “living system,” which business and schools certainly are (Pascale et al., p.6; emphasis in the original):
- Equilibrium is a precursor to death. When a living system is in a state of equilibrium, it is less responsive to changes occurring around it. This places it at maximum risk.
- In the face of threat, or when galvanized by a compelling opportunity, living things move toward the edge of chaos. This condition evokes higher levels of mutation and experimentation, and fresh new solutions are more likely to be found.
- When this excitation takes place, the components of living systems self-organize and new forms and repertoires emerge from the turmoil.
- Living systems cannot be directed along a linear path. Unforeseen consequences are inevitable. The challenge is to disturb them in a manner that approximates the desired outcome.
Pg. 110 (lost in the woods, g.b.)
Hatch further states, “As a result, rather than contributing to substantial improvements, adopting improvement programs may also add to the endless cycle of initiatives that seem to sap the strength and sprit of schools and their communities” (p.4). In a survey of schools in districts in California and Texas, Hatch (2000) reports that 66 percent of schools were engaged with three or more improvement programs, 22 percent with six or more; and in one district, 19 percent of the schools “were working with nine or more different improvement programs simultaneously” (p.9).
The result, according to one associate superintendent, is that “frustration and anger at the school level have never been higher.”
Pg. 115
I like the superintendent in Susan Moore Johnson’s study [1996] who said, “Ten years ago if I’d had a vision they would have locked me up and now I can’t get a job without one.”
Pg. 117
Perhaps it is time to reassure those who are uneasy with the proposition that allowing, even fostering, disturbances is a responsible thing to do in perilous times. (I hope you have been persuaded to abandon the have-a-great-vision-and-implement-it strategy.)
Pg. 121
The lessons for developing leaders in a culture of change are more tortoise-like than hare-like because they involve slow learning in context over time.
Pg. 122
“Recent scientific evidence shows convincingly that the more patient, less deliberate modes are particularly suited to making sense of situations that are intricate, shadowy or ill defined” (p.3).
Pg. 125 (In the field g.b.)
“What’s missing in this view [focusing on talented individuals] is any recognition that improvement is more of a function of learning to do the right thing in the setting where you work than it is of what you know when you start to do the work.” Elmore (2000)
Pg. 132
For the individual, the explicit value to be internalized is the responsibility for sharing what you know. For the organization (or for leadership if you like), the obligation is to remove barriers to sharing, create mechanisms for sharing, and reward those who do share. Leadership creates the conditions for individual and organizational development to merge.
Pg. 134
When Henry Mintzberg was asked in a recent interview what organizations have to do to ensure success over the next ten years, he responded: “They’ve got to build a strong core of people who really care about the place and who have ideas.
Pg. 137 (concluding paragraph)
Ultimately, your leadership in a culture of change will be judged as effective or ineffective not by who you are as a leader but by what leadership you produce in others. Tortoises, start your engines! (italics in original)