Running two operating systems in concert. #PLC #ATPLC #Leadership #Strategy

Posted on January 11, 2013 by boadams1

From John Kotter’s article “Accelerate!” in Harvard Business Review, November 2012 –

The existing structures and processes that together form an organization’s operating system need an additional element to address the challenges produced by mounting complexity and rapid change. The solution is a second operating system, devoted to the design and implementation of strategy, that uses an agile, networklike structure and a very different set of processes. The new operating system continually assesses the business, the industry, and the organization, and reacts with greater agility, speed, and creativity than the existing one. It complements rather than overburdens the traditional hierarchy, thus freeing the latter to do what it’s optimized to do. It actually makes enterprises easier to run and accelerates strategic change. This is not an “either or” idea. It’s “both and.” I’m proposing two systems that operate in concert.
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During my fourth year as a middle school principal, in 2006-07, we began to restructure as a professional learning community, implementing the incredible work of Rick and Becky DuFour and Bob Eaker. As we progressed in this restructuring around a different work ethos, we tapped volunteers to co-lead the various departmental learning teams. Together these co-faciliators created the PLC-Facilitators PLC – a kind of meta-team to serve as a guiding coalition for the entire PLC transformation.

We ran two operating systems – an admin team known as the Guidance Committee (hierarchical), as well as the PLC-Facilitators PLC (networked). The Guidance Committee was tremendous at running the logistical operations of the school, just as Kotter describes the strengths of a hierarchical administration. The PLC-Facilitators PLC, and the “solar system” of PLCs throughout the middle school, was tremendous at adeptly navigating – even map making – for the strategic transformations necessary in a learning community being influenced by technology enhancements, brain research, assessment literacies, pedagogical improvements, etc.

Two operating systems may seem counter-intuituve. Yet, it was this practice of running two systems in concert that permitted us to embrace complexity versus trying to manage it.

[HT to Tod Martin for the Kotter article!]

CHANGEd: What if we valued teacher teams as much as sports and music teams? 60-60-60 #5

Posted on March 12, 2012 by boadams1

What if we valued teacher teams as much as sports and music teams? How often does your school football team practice? How often does your band or orchestra rehearse? How often do your teams of teachers rehearse and practice together? Do you even think of your teachers as collectives of teams? School transformation will happen when we commit to rehearsal and practice.

CHANGEd: What if…60-60-60 Project Explained

PLCs, Westminster JH, Randolph, and Learning Together

Posted on February 23, 2012 by boadams1

On Friday, February 17, Jill Gough and Bo Adams worked with The Randolph School faculty to share the story of PLC (Professional Learning Community) development at The Westminster Schools’ Junior High, as well as to facilitate a small piece of Randolph’s continuing, multi-year efforts to transform their school with the PLC ethos. Below, Bo and Jill have embedded the slide deck that they used during the Friday morning keynote. As usual, though, a slide deck cannot capture the rich conversations and invaluable discussions that surround and permeate professional work based on shared experience.

Randolph has been piloting PLCs for two years, and they are making formidable steps to enhance their teacher teaming and learner strategizing. Westminster and Randolph are imagining different ways to stretch time and embed regular teaming. There is no one-size-fits-all structural approach to PLCs, but there are universal ideas and questions that must guide our work:

3 Big Ideas:

Learning is the focus.
Collaboration is the culture.
Results guide our decisions.

4 Key Questions:

What should be learned?
How will we know if “they” have learned?
What will we do if “they” already know it?
What will we do if “they” aren’t learning?

What a privilege and bright spot it is to collaborate among schools and learn with and from each other. Could our institutions and organizations actually stretch the PLC ethos to include more such collaboration among our schools? Could we model being PLCs among schools, like we model forming PLCs among our adult learners?

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