Harvest, filter, deliver.
Three words I never thought was one of the best options to building leadership for implementing the Common Core (CCSS). But now I'm sure of how this could be a game-changer.
What if we studied our leaders so we could identify their leadership style and then based our professional development based on similar leaders' successful strategies? What if we didn't assume that there was one right way to roll these new practices out?
- Harvest to find out what kinds of leaders you have and what they do to be successful.
- Filter information and education based on the best matching you have for everyone based on their leadership style. The old adage of not asking a round peg to fit in a square hole. Get really smart about knowing that it will take a diversity of approaches to make CCSS work in all the schools around the country.
- Deliver. Now that you know what kind of leader you have in a school, deliver information that is compatible with their leadership style. Give them the strategies that they already possess the skills to help their faculties make these standards work in their schools.
Does it mean that you might have more than one style of strategies working at the same time? I think it does. You are asking people to continue to work in ways that already make sense to them as both the leader and as the followers. We all know one of the biggest hurdles to reforms is providing people with the comfort zone to change. I think about it like a big marching band. No one thinks that every member does the same thing or you'd never get cool looking formations like this one. The band is divided up into small squads that each have a leader who makes sure they arrive on their mark at the appointed place and playing their individual music. Think about this. Everyone has their own part of the song and the picture. The trumpets are led by their best trumpeter in learning their musical part. And the squad leaders may have 4 people that all play their instrument but they may have other kinds of instruments. It makes no difference as long as they continue on the choreographed path...the picture will emerge. Don't you love it when it seems like the band is all scrambled up and suddenly you see what's going to form?
Implementing CCSS can be just like that. It takes finding a way to be individual while remaining true to the song and the formations. I think this podcast offers a way to do this.
Listening to the Harvard Business Review IdeaCast is one of my favorite things to do. Recently they had a podcast entitled, "Can an Algorithm Teach Leadership". The main idea of this podcast was that we need to take a tip from all the businesses that have learned to identify the person they are interacting with and then deliver customized information to them. Harvest, filter and deliver were the three words that stuck in my head after listening to the podcast.
Just like the marching band we can learn our routes and our music....be a part of bigger organization.
Picture was taken by http://www.flickr.com/photos/mat_the_w/13508805/ and is used here under the CC Attribution License.
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