Leaders See the Faces
I had the privilege this week to accompany our Hoosier Academies families to Washington D.C. It was a great trip and I loved getting to know our families and students we serve better. As you probably know I have spent a great deal of time in our nation’s capital and every time I am there I learn something new to reflect on. This time was no exception. When visiting the exhibit dedicated to women, Women in Military Service For America Memorial, at Arlington Cementary I was struck by how personal the exhibit was. It is very well done. You actually get to know the women that have served our country personally – it was humanized. This made it so much more powerful experience. I knew these women’s stories when I was done. 
Then, later that day our group went to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This museum is a very intense experience that starts with you being given a card with information about an actual victim of the Holocaust. You are to reflect on this person as you move through the museum. Believe me, it becomes very personal! The individual I was given was, Iosif Rivkin. Here is his story: He was born in 1891 in Minsk, Belorussia. Iosif was born to a Jewish family in the Belorussian capital of Minsk. He fought with the Tsarist troops in World War I and was taken prisoner by the Germans. When he returned to Minsk after the war, he began working in a state-owned factory building furniture, an occupation in which a number of his relatives also made a living.
By the early 1930’s Iosif was married and had three daughters. They lived in central Minsk. By the late 1930’s Minsk was filled with Polish refugees fleeing the German invasion. On June 27, 1941, the invading Germans reached Minsk. The Rivkens’ home was bombed the next day, and they were forced into the street. They slept by the river with numerous other refugees, until German guards threatened to shoot them all. German posters in Minsk declared that the Nazis had come to liberate the Soviet Union from Communism and Jews. In August the Germans set up a ghetto, there Iosif was put to work as a carpenter. When the ghetto was liquidated in October 1943, Iosif and his family were deported. Iosif’s daughter, Berta, escaped from the ghetto before it was liquidated. Iosif and the rest of his family were never heard from again.
As I reflected on his story, I caught myself really having feelings about what had happened to him and his family. Why was I able to do this? Because I was able to see the faces of Iosif and his family. 
Isn’t that an important skill that leaders learn? It is important for us to tell the stories so that those we lead understand the faces, the values, the mission, and the vision. I really believe in the value of telling stories as a leader, but had not really thought about the exercise of seeing the faces myself. Not to me mention telling the story so those we lead see the faces. This was such a powerful lesson. I really believe that our great leaders that we celebrated while in Washington D.C., like Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy all were able to see the faces of all those Americans they served. After reflection, I really believe it was their ability to see the faces of the people that gave them there wisdom. 
I am so glad I had this revolation and then was able to spend time on the trip getting to know a cross section of the Hoosier Academies families I serve. As the leader of a very large statewide school system that serves students in every county in the state of Indiana, it is very important that I am able to see the faces of those we serve. Are you taking time to see the faces and truly understanding those you lead?
Leading Together By Working Together
We are increasingly moving towards multinational, transnational organizations that are held together by two factors: control of mission and strategy, and enough people who know and trust each other. Distributed leadership and a flattened hierarchies are key to accomplishing this. In this week’s lesson on Peter Drucker, and example of how the Coca Cola Argentina division had to make a decision that was right for helping the people of Argentina, but not good for the bottom line of the company based in Atlanta Georgia (Maciariello, 2014). Coca Cola understood that performance measures for foreign subsidiaries should be adapted to local political and economic realities.
As leaders we must learn to balance having a bold vision with what to do next. We must also learn to lead together by working together. Everyone in the organization must understand the values, objectives, and expectations of the organization. This is why it is important to build a team that is competent. Empowerment without competence is chaos. Wherever you sit in the organization, there is many times a tendency to wait for others to lead. We need to create an environment where everyone in our organizations can lead from where they sit.
Trust-based relationships must replace command and control mechanisms as coordinating mechanisms. This will allow effective leaders time to perform important duties. We must create enough autonomy for our teams to meet the local realities they face. Maciariello (2014) closed this week’s lesson by posing a great question that we all, as leaders, need to answer. Does your organization have resilient trust networks, that allow individuals to transfer information to and from one another?
Reference
Maciariello, J. A. (2014). A year with Peter Drucker: 52 weeks of coaching for leadership effectiveness. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
The Leadership Bottleneck!
“The bottleneck is at the head of the bottle,” so the old saying goes. In other words, no business or organization is likely to be better than, or perform better than, its top management and leadership. As a management innovator, Peter Drucker built off of the existing knowledge of others to create and integrate missing knowledge into the organization. He called this practice “integration” (Maciariello, 2014). Top management and leadership is responsible for creating and for maintaining the spirit of the organization, which includes values, standards of conduct, and standards of quality.
So, the first task in designing and assessing an organization is the presence of an effective top management and leadership team with a strong spirit of performance. Close behind in importance is a program for developing talent to fill open management positions. Most call this the building of a bench. This athletic team analogy is appropriate. Study any successful athletic team and you will find a strong bench of players ready to perform at a moments notice. This year’s NCAA Tournament has given us many examples. Not the least of which would be Kentucky who just had their 38th season win defeating Notre Dame last night. I had the opportunity to watch this Kentucky team play in person during the tournament and it doesn’t matter who is on the floor for them – they are all great. We can certainly learn from them as we build our teams.
This building of a bench is very important to employee engagement. One of the things I am working very hard on for the school I now serve is a leadership academy for building our talent bench. We are going to take a group of our talented teacher leaders each year and put them through a program that will be individualized for their specific needs and interests. We are in the planning stages of this and I am sure I will blog about this in the future. In the meantime I will share a picture of a screenshot of some notes from a meeting about this, just this week.
In any major institution, such as a school corporation, the finding, developing, and proving out of leaders of tomorrow is an essential job to which the best leaders must give fully of their time and attention. Maciariello (2014) asked some great questions in this week’s reading:
- Is your organization preparing future leaders by giving significant responsibility and authority to lower level executives?
- What has been the organization’s track record of finding successors for key positions inside versus outside?
These are certainly questions I will want to use as guides as we develop our bench. How about you?
Reference
Maciariello, J. A. (2014). A year with Peter Drucker: 52 weeks of coaching for leadership effectiveness. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
Leading Beyond The Walls
This 12th week reading in A Year With Peter Drucker (Maciariello, 2014) may have resonated with me more than any yet. Drucker was a fan and student of the Federalist Papers. As a student of Patrick Henry you all know I am a believer in state’s rights and the 10th Ammendment to our nation’s constitution which reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” I believe Drucker took the last part of that Ammendment very seriously. We as leaders have a responsibility to provide leadership and be involved in government and civic organizations.
Drucker argued that while each organization should fulfill its primary mission, it should seek to “lead beyond borders.” (Maciariello, 2014). We, as leaders are responsible for our institutions and be concentrated and focused on them, but Drucker believed we must be focused on the community as a whole. In his first year as governor of California, Ronald Reagan used 200 top CEOs, as volunteers on sabbaticals from their companies, to solve the budget crisis. Reagan said, “For every problem their are 10 people waiting to volunteer if someone could give them the lead and show them where they can be useful.” We, as leaders, need to also be seeking areas where we can provide insight and be useful.
Leadership and management of businesses was where Drucker began, but his first love, I believe, was the management of nonbusinesses like hospitals, churches, and schools. He was very involved with social sector management and leadership, particuarly with non-profits. He found these interesting because it is very difficult to define what the results should be. How do you define the results of a school, for instance? This is a very important question that I believe is yet to be answered. Drucker would have said it is my responsibility, as a school leader, to lead beyond the walls of my school and help to solve this question. I also believe it is very important to be involved civically and be an agent of social change. Drucker defined civic responsibility as: “giving to the community in the pursuit of one’s own interest or of one’s own task.” (Maciariello, 2014, p. 100)
Results are more difficult to define for social sector organizations, like schools, than for business organizations. This is because the social sector institutions are involved in changing lives of individuals for the better. Results must be more than merely good intentions, but must also be tailored to fit the organization. We must be acutely aware of the importance of defining results in terms of our own mission and effectively manage the fulfillment of that mission. This is why I believe schools should have a role in determining the accountability metrics of their individual school. Each school will be stronger the more clearly it defines its objectives. Organizations are more effective the more yardsticks and measurements there are against which the performance can be appraised. Our product we are producing in schools is a changed human being. We are human change agents. Our product is a child that learns.
Some questions for pondering from this week’s lesson are:
- What needs are your organization meeting as a part of your primary mission?
- How effective and efficient are you in carrying out your mission?
- How effective are you at changing lives for good?
- Are you leading beyond the borders of your organization/business?
- Are you mentoring other leaders or managers?
Reference
Maciariello, J. A. (2014). A year with Peter Drucker: 52 weeks of coaching for leadership effectiveness. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
Stretching The Vessel of the Mind
It is hard to think about the brain and learning without reflecting on Albert Einstein. Reading Walter Isaacson’s book, Einstein, causes one to think about whether every individual has the ability to develop and use his or her brain in the way Einstein did. From an educator’sperspective I found it amazing that Einstein always believed that he had no special talent – he was just as he said, “passionately curious.” This points to the important fact that we have atremendous obligation to help our students develop and find their curiosity. Einstein posited the brain was wired and set up as it was, but we all have the ability to develop the mind (Isaacson,2008). This reinforces the belief that every student can learn. It is important for us to develop and create minds that question. Individuals with intuition and imagination are crucial to our future.
So, how do we develop a student mind that is curious, questions, and has imagination? If learning was as simple as pouring the pitcher of knowledge into the empty vessel of a student’s brain then all education would require was a person to speak didactically on a subject, and students would listen and gain the knowledge themselves. Unfortunately, learning takes a lot more than merely listening to an authority speak, regardless of his expertise and reliability.
There are two types of learning: informational and transformational. The first type (informational) is that which we use as a lower level form of learning. We are just gaining new information. During the learning process this informational learning is placed in short term, or what is also known as immediate memory. Immediate memory acts as a temporary site whereinput is briefly stored until the brain decides whether to erase the memory as unimportant or toprocess the memory. To use the metaphor of the pitcher of knowledge filling the empty vessel used earlier, informational learning will only fill our vessels so full.
We then need the second type of learning, transformational, in order to stretch our learning (Mezirow, 2000). The unique quality of human beings is our ability to think flexibly about new situations, comparing them intelligently to all past experiences, and then to do something that is uniquely appropriate, bringing about desired objectives (Taylor, 2007). When educators facilitate this type of learning the brain is stimulated to put the information learned into working memory where processing of the information begins. In order to engage the working memory the students must begin to work with and actively use the information learned. By engaging the working memory by using the learned knowledge the long term memory then creates meaning enabling the student to make sense of the material. Ron Ritchhart promotes thinking through the use of “thinking routines” (Ritchhart, Church, & Morrison, 2011). These routines then help teachers to establish a classroom culture that supports thinking (Ritchhart, 2014). Relating lessons to real-life situations, and being enthusiastic creates meaning for the students. We must know our learners’ backgrounds so that we can relate to the student’s past learning and allow the learner to understand and make sense of the material being presented.
Transformational learning provides us with new ways of thinking (Taylor, 2007). This can actually change the form of the metaphorical vessel of the mind. In fact this new stretch, and.extending of thinking actually gives more room in the vessel of the mind for greater and more magnificent thinking. Creating lessons using real-world contexts that the student can beenthusiastic about and make sense of immediately can do this. Think about the student who says to their teacher: ”I was confused before you started…now I am confused at a higher level.” This is not to say that educators should teach by confusing students, but students do need to be appropriately confused. In order to achieve this stretching of the vessel of the brain, teachers must facilitate learning is such a way as to use all parts of the students brain by including reading, writing, verbal processing and images in lessons and other modes of learning. Because the mind is tethered to what our bodies are doing and the senses being used, educators must be cognizant of making sure that our students’ bodies and brains are in sync.
Many educators believe it is important to teach students to think. These same educators teach thinking (reasoning skills and problem solving skills) skills, which are important, but if we want students to use these skills we will need to do more than just teach the skills. Research shows that motivation, values, cultural context, and alertness to opportunity are factors important to developing intellectual behaviors (Boix-Mansilla & Jackson, 2011). These factors make up thinking dispositions, which are important characteristics of good thinkers. To become educated and worthwhile citizens, our students must learn a wide range of skills. Brain research must continue to be linked to facilitation of learning. We must use what we know about the brain to effectively engage students so they are motivated, creative, and understand the relevance to their personal lives.
References
Boix-Mansilla, V., & Jackson, A. (2011). Educating for global competency: Preparing our youth to engage the world. New York: Asia Society.
Fischer, K, & Immordino-Yang, M.H. (2008). he Jossey-Bass reader on the brain and learning. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.
Isaacson, W. (2008). instein: His life and universe. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.
Mezirow, J. (2000). Learning as transformation: Critical perspectives on a theory in progress. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Ritchhart, R. (2014). Creating Cutlures of Thinking: The 8 forces we must master to truly transform our schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Ritchhart, R., Church, M., & Morrison, K. (2011). Making thinking visible: How to promote engagement, understanding, and independence for all learners. San Francsico: Jossey-Bass.
Taylor, E. W. (2007). An update of transformative learning theory: a critical review of the empirical research (1999-2005). International Journal of Lifelong Education, 26 (2), 173-191.
Effective Leaders Make Effective Decisions
“Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.” ~ Peter Drucker
Drucker was confident that people could be taught to be effective executives (managers), but wasn’t as sure we could teach other to be leaders. Interesting, however, in the week 11 reading in Maciariello’s (2014) book he talked about how Drucker believed the climate in the organization needed to be right for leaders to develop and emerge. “Nothing better prepares the ground for such leadership than a spirit of management that confirms in the day-to-day practices of the organization strict principles of conduct and responsibility, high standards of performance, and respect for individuals and their work (Drucker in Maciariello, 2014, p. 79).” I wrote in the margin of the book, “So if the operations and processes are in place and being executed effectively, then leaders can grow and emerge.” I really do believe this is true. I have a saying I use in school turnaround and transformation and that is: “We need to become a REAL SCHOOL.”
The question you will ask next is, “What is a REAL SCHOOL?” My answer is quite simple: “A real school is one that has its operations and processes in place and being managed by an effective individual and team to make sure that the normal day to day activities (eg. Safety procedures, student handbook components, discipline, financial processes in the case of a school) are being carried out efficiently and effectively. I was very blessed to have just such a person in my first turnaround school. Don Burton was our Assistant Principal of Operations. Let me tell you, without him the school would have never come off the “F” list. He was the operations manager dream of a lifetime. The great part about Don was he managed the operations flawlessly and implemented our processes with the best interest of our students and staff in mind.
Mr. Burton’s awesome abilities and work ethic then allowed the teachers to teach and me to do the numerous activities as a building leader: establishing a vision, defining the mission, making sure that resources are applied to the right tasks, making effective decisions, implementing and following up on these decisions, taking criticism, keeping track of and navigating the legislative and governmental affairs, and working diligently to maintain a functioning board of directors. Imagine trying to do this in a disfuctional organization. Believe me this is not an easy task, nor did we have it perfect, but Don had us in a great place. There is a reason why schools fail, and one of the commonalities of the schools that need to be turned around is the disfuctionality and lack of the right operational practices to make it a “real school.” I’m sure you could tie common operations and practices that would make businesses and organizations “real businesses” and “real organizations.” I am positive education is not alone in this.
Again, I cannot say enough how much credit for our success goes to Don Burton. He enabled the day to day operations to go smoothly which then allowed me, and him, to grow as leaders. This truly allowed the environment to be right for leadership growth. Don certainly grew, as he now is leading a middle school in Arizona as a principal. I consider Don a dear friend and I always said we never had to schedule time, we were always catching up before or after school or on the weekends. It was just such a natural relationship. Therefore, I really think Peter Drucker’s belief that teaching someone to be a leader is very hard, if possible at all, is warranted. More importantly, however, is the lesson he has taught us that if the operations, processes, and day to day activities of the organization are highly functioning, the leader has the chance to learn and grow. In other words, the conditions must be right for growth.
I believe this point is even driven home further when we look at one of the most important attributes of leading effectively – effective decision making. Making effective decisions depends on the definition of the problem being faced and thus the appropriate conditions that have to be met for the decision to be effective. Drucker taught us that these are always the two critical issues in decision making (Maciariello, 2014). It would very hard to define or know the appropriate conditions for a decision to be effective in a disfunctional organization, operationally. I know that without the sound operational practices Don instilled in our school that I would not have been able to make the decisions I was able to, of which many turned out to be the right and effective decision.
So, as you look at growing leaders and great schools, businesses, and organizations, look first to what your definition of a “REAL” school, business, or organization is. Then make sure you’ve got the right team to manage the operations effectively.
Reference
Maciariello, J. A. (2014). A year with Peter Drucker: 52 weeks of coaching for leadership effectiveness. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers
Why Pi?
On this special Pi Day, 3.14.15, I thought it would be appropriate to ask the question I always love to ask, Why? Why Pi? Why Pi Day? Why all the fuss? No number is more famous than pi. But why, exactly?
Defined as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, pi, or in symbol form, π, seems a simple enough concept. But it turns out to be an “irrational number,” meaning its exact value is inherently unknowable. Ancient mathematicians apparently found the concept of irrationality completely maddening. It struck them as an affront to the omniscience of God, for how could the Almighty know everything if numbers exist that are inherently unknowable? Pi (π) is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It doesn’t matter how big or small the circle is – the ratio stays the same. Properties like this that stay the same when you change other attributes are called constants.
The symbol pi has only been used in a mathematical sense since the mid-18th century. For those of you who weren’t in Greek life in college, π is the Greek symbol for the letter “p.” Oh, to go back to fraternity life!!! It was taken from the Greek word for “perimeter.”
Historically, Pi Day was started by Larry Shaw, a physicist who started celebrating Pi Day at the San Francisco Exploratorium in 1988. It was his idea to celebrate the day by eating pies and marching around circular spaces. In 2009 House Resolution 224 of the first session of the U.S. 111th Congress was passed, designating every March 14 as a day to encourage “schools and educators to observe the day with appropriate activities that teach students about Pi and engage them about the study of mathematics.” Wouldn’t Albert Einstein be proud?
Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. — Albert Einstein
Speaking of Albert Einstein. March 14 is not only easy to remember, it has the added bonus of being the birthday of Albert Einstein, born in 1879 in Ulm, Germany. Happy 136th birthday, Albert! Einstein did not discover Pi, but he shares his birthday with Pi Day. Einstein’s life in science and mathematics started early, with him writing his first scientific paper when he was only a teenager. In 1905, Einstein published several influential works, tackling such topics as relativity and introducing his most famous equation on mass and energy E=mc2. And, in 1921, he earned the Nobel Prize in physics.
No one is really sure who should be credited with discovering Pi. The Babylonians estimated pi to be about 25/8 (3.125), while the Egyptians estimated it to be about 256/81 (roughly 3.16). The Ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse (287-212 BC) is largely considered to be the first to calculate an accurate estimation of the value of Pi. It is also interesting that an approximation of Pi is used in the Bible. The approximate ratio for Pi appears in the Bible in 1 Kings 7:23:
“And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.”
Until Every Child Is Well
I was struck this week while at Harvard University by the story of Boston Children’s Hospital’s vision/mission: Until Every Child Is Well. Really, I guess it would be more of an anthem, as Sally Hogshead would call it. What an anthem it is, though! Think about how simple and abstract “Until Every Child Is Well” is. In my studies this week I was reminded how important it is to make sure that our vision, or anthem, is broad enough to enable us to change as the world changes. What a simple, yet powerful statement Boston Children’s Hospital has made. Who could argue with, “Until Every Child Is Well?”
If we were to write it the way Joseph Michelli taught me, using the word “Wowful,” it would be “Wowful Child Wellness.” Regardless, both statements allow for cutting edge theories of action and strategery. I was also reminded this week of the 1942 Harvard MBA graduate, John Fisher, who was the CEO of Muncie, Indiana company Ball Corporation (you probably know them for Ball Jars). He worked for the company starting in 1941 and was CEO from 1970 to 1981. After World War II the glass jar business was booming, but later Fisher purchased and developed an aerospace business. Everyone thought he was crazy, but it led to the development of the plastic water bottle. I’ll bet you would agree that was a pretty savvy move. When asked about the shift from glass at a Harvard reunion, he stated that their vision had nothing to do with just glass, it was, “we want to be the best container company.” Again, simple, broad, abstract, and agnostic. John Fisher had learned well from his Harvard MBA. He learned you must exploit your present capabilities, but you must at the same time explore. We must learn about the future quicker than anyone else.
So, since my personal wow statement is “Delivering Wowful Educational Leadership” and my anthem is “Energetic Change Agent,” I set out reflect on what these two statements should be for my school; given my learning this week. Remember the goal is to be simple, broad, abstract, and agnostic. Let’s define agnostic. The dictionary defines agnostic as: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality is unknown and probably unknowable; broadly one who is not committed to believing in anything being for sure. Think about that for removing all barriers of thinking things will stay status quo or need to be done the same way.
Here’s what I came up with:
Delivering Wowful Learning
Until Every Child Graduates
I would welcome your feedback on these two statements. It would be great to here how you would change them. These statements allow us to change as the world changes to do what the Indiana State Constitution says in Section 8 where it states: Section 1. Knowledge and learning, general diffused throughout a community, being essential to the preservation of a free government; it should be the duty of the General Assembly to encourage, by all suitable means, moral, intellectual scientific, and agricultural improvement; and provide, by law, for a general and uniform system of Common Schools, wherein tuition shall without charge, and equally open to all. It is important to pay particular attention to the statement, “by all suitable means.” We have a constitutional obligation to make our delivery of knowledge and learning to our students distinct and effective. I love the statement, “by all suitable means.” That is simple, broad, and abstract.
Schools have growing alternatives for delivering education. Choices range from presentations and discussions in the classroom to online, blended, and hybrid courses. As facilitators of learning, teachers will increasingly turn the process of teaching and learning into a partnership, with students and teachers constantly learning from each other. Self- learning will be seen as a bonus— and encouraged. Also, think about the online world where the greatest minds are just a click away and readily available. This open access has tremendous possibilities for many of our US underserved populations as well as third world countries. Pretty exciting, don’t you think?
I encourage you to take some time and think about your school or organization vision, mission, and anthem. Does it allow you to be nimble and change as the world changes? Remember: Leaders need to be consistently inconsistent. We have to constantly explore who we are and what we do!
Targeting & Focusing Your Efforts
Think about creating tomorrow by focusing on the “right results” and “changes in trends” rather than on just the current trends affecting your organization. An important question to ask is, “What are the right results for your organization?” Maciariello (2014) posited in Week 8’s lesson that knowing your mission or purpose is essential in choosing from among all available opportunities those that have the highest probability of producing the right results.
I compare this “focusing” to that of sunlight through a magnifying glass to start paper or grass on fire. Peter Drucker said, “Concentrate on the smallest number of activities that will focus on the greatest productivity.” (Maciariello, 2014, p. 62) I have found this to be so true in turning schools around. This is one of the most important lessons I have learned from my postdoctoral professional development at Harvard University. We talk about having too many resources. I know that sounds really weird coming from an educational leader. Too many resources? Yes, if you have not asked yourself, “What am I (or our school or organization) willing to give up?” We should abandon, or not start at all, programs where even great success is unlikely to make a significant difference.
Maciariello (2014) argued that economic results require that staff efforts be concentrated upon the few activities that are capable of producing significant business results. This would be true for schools as well. Knowing who we serve and what makes us distinct allows us to concentrate our resources on a few major opportunities. This also means being prepared to eliminate past programs and best practices that are no longer productive or getting the results needed to move our organizations to the next level. “If leaders are unable to slough off yesterday, to abandon yesterday, they simply will not be able to create tomorrow.” (Maciariello, 2014, p. 63) Without targeting and focusing on the right things we will not be able to exploit our resources strategically for success.
Just like a flashlight focused on an object in the darkness, we must target ourselves on the areas where a little success will have the greatest impact. Don’t forget the key question here: What are the “right results” for our school or organization?
Reference
Maciariello, J. A. (2014). A year with Peter Drucker: 52 weeks of coaching for leadership effectiveness. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
President’s Day With Woodrow Wilson
On this President’s Day I want to reflect on a president who I have always been very intrigued with. Our 28th President was a successful academic who took a different path to the White House than Presidents before and after. Woodrow Wilson attended college at what is now Princeton University, studied law at the University of Virginia, and earned a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Wilson is our only President to have a doctorate. He later taught at Princeton, and became president of the university in 1902. As a scholar he was the leading political scientist of his day. As an academic president, he transformed Princeton into a leading university. Wilson was President of Princeton from 1902-1910.
John Milton Cooper Jr. described Wilson this way in his book Woodrow Wilson: A Biography: “Boldness and thinking big marked Wilson all his life, and those qualities helped make him the only president who rose to the top in two professions entirely removed from public affairs.” Woodrow Wilson’s experience as a transformational leader at Princeton is what I believe prepared him for political office. He was “a dynamic reformer” as Governor of New Jersey from 1910-1912. As President of the United States he led the country into and through World War I.
Leaders like Woodrow Wilson advance the cause because they see what others do not and are willing to move toward that vision. As Wilson said, “I would rather fail in a cause that would ultimately succeed, than succeed in a cause that would ultimately fail.” Such work calls for boldness. Wilson also said, “Do not follow people who stand still.” As we come to the end of President’s Day, let’s think about these questions: Are you moving to transform your organization or cause social change? Where do you need to be more bold?
Byron's Babbles 
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