{"id":391,"date":"2009-03-15T14:27:46","date_gmt":"2009-03-15T22:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/?p=391"},"modified":"2009-05-14T11:39:32","modified_gmt":"2009-05-14T19:39:32","slug":"navigating-through-troubled-waters%e2%80%a6-in-uncharted-territory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/?p=391","title":{"rendered":"Navigating through Troubled Waters\u2026 in Uncharted Territory"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’ve already checked out the WHAT<\/a>, WHY<\/a>, and HOW<\/a> of this site on the Homepage you’ve been forewarned about its reliance on metaphors as a jumping-off place for communicating. Here, I’m going to single out one in particular — The Leader as Convoy Commander<\/strong> — because of its significance not only for this site\u2019s learning journey, but also for its short- and long- term significance in understanding the social and economic journey we\u2019re all on today\u2026 and in particular the different leadership role President Obama appears to be playing.<\/p>\n

\u2022\tTo first explore two dimensions of the metaphoric scope and nature of that role
\n1. Total System Management: The Leader as Convoy Commander<\/a> \u2013 as re- written in 1994.
\n2. And then to bring it down-to-earth and up-to-date, The Convoy Revisited<\/a>: How did it Steer and Develop its capacity at the same time? captures some of the learnings and questions generated by observing the actual 10 year journey of an 194 school “convoy” called the Montgomery County, MD Public School System.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Then, using that Convoy leadership metaphor as a template, reflect on your current thoughts and feelings as you read and hear the news and commentary each day about the new administration\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n

Note how frequently you hear policymakers and others fearfully calling for caution because we\u2019re heading into “uncharted territory” and navigating through “troubled waters.”\u00a0 And praising the President after his 4\/15\/09 speech on the economy for clearly describing “where we are” and “where we want to go.”\u00a0 While at the same time, others who want clear “plans” and “policies” don’t understand the underlying common “navigational” process being used to develop those outcomes. Or Conservative commentator and former Republican White House speech-writer Peggy Noonan who was wowed by his “in-the-moment thoughtfulness<\/em>” as he responds to unanticipated questions<\/p>\n

Does the Convoy leadership metaphor offer any clues to why Obama seems to be responding to systemic problems with strategies whose scope and nature seem to some as too large and too long? And actions that seem out-of-the box of conventional political practice?\u00a0 If you are interested in what kind of mental map could support that type of thinking, then you might want to check out Mapping the Natural Territory<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here is some background that may add helpful context for your reading and responses.<\/p>\n

***********
\nBefore I was hired by the American Association of School Administrators (AASA) as their Associate Executive Director for Instructional Leadership and Technology, its Director asked me to submit an essay on how I thought those two areas related. I framed what I wrote metaphorically as The Leader as Convoy Commander<\/strong>. It subsequently appeared as “The Superintendent as Convoy Commander: Through Stormy Seas with Trust and Technology<\/em>” (The School Administrator, Dec. 1987.) And was presented to the Third National Governor’s Conference — PARTNERS for QUALITY — Minneapolis, MN, April 19, 1994.<\/p>\n

That metaphoric way of understanding system leadership has stayed with me ever since and is particularly appropriate today as school and government leaders are being told they must “navigate through troubled waters.” And that\u2019s not the only reason.<\/p>\n

Over three decades ago, in 1972, Russell L. Ackoff suggested that we were entering into a new age of organizational management that would be as fundamentally different from the machine age as the Renaissance was from the Middle Ages.<\/p>\n

In anticipating the everything-seems-to-influence-everything-else<\/em> world of today, he noted that<\/p>\n

“\u2026all the apparent problems that management confronts are manifestations of these four (problems) or some combination of them.”<\/p>\n

\u2022\tFirst, how do you deal with sets of problems interactively<\/em>, not independently?<\/p>\n

\u2022\tSecond, how do you design organizations which will learn and adapt<\/em> more effectively, under conditions of increasingly rapid change<\/em>?<\/p>\n

\u2022\tThird, how do you manage organizations so as to better serve the purposes of their parts<\/em> and, in so doing, serve the organization more effectively?<\/p>\n

\u2022\tFourth, how do you better manage so as to serve the purposes of the society of which the organization is a part<\/em> and, in so doing, better serve the purposes of the organization?<\/p>\n

Russell L. Ackoff, April 20, 1972, Fordyce House<\/p>\n

In the three decades since that statement, new management ideas from theorists such as Senge, Drucker, Deming, Wheatley and Covey have attempted to address each of those problems.<\/p>\n

For example, Senge’s systems thinking<\/em> aims at understanding the first; his concept of learning organizations<\/em> as well as Wheatley’s ideas on dealing with chaos as a natural condition respond to the second.<\/p>\n

Both Deming and Covey have attempted to deal with the third; and Drucker’s concept of public-private social partnerships relate to the fourth, and has become a focused concern under the flag of re-inventing<\/em> society’s organizations and communities.<\/p>\n

But this increased understanding has yet to crystallize into coherent approaches of a scope necessary to address the interrelatedness of today’s problems where it matters most — in today’s schools<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

What would it take to address Ackoff’s four problems through a singular, coherent, interdependent approach to schooling? And could it be in time? Can you imagine how long it would take for practitioners to gain sufficient experience with that process to bring it to accepted wisdom? Impossible?<\/strong><\/p>\n

But what if we already knew how to do it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then we might not need new theories, or extensive practice. If, under certain conditions, we already could<\/em> and do<\/em> operate that way, then all that would be necessary would be to determine whether those conditions now existed, and where\u2026 and then start there.<\/p>\n

If you would like to consider the possibility that we may already know more than we think we do<\/em> about managing complete school systems effectively as they face dynamically changing conditions, please join us on this site in exploring the meanings the Convoy leadership metaphor may have for the systemic leadership of schools and other organizations through today’s<\/em> “troubled waters.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’ve already checked out the WHAT, WHY, and HOW of this site on the Homepage you’ve been forewarned about its reliance on metaphors as a jumping-off place for communicating. Here, I’m going to single out one in particular — The Leader as Convoy Commander — because of its significance not only for this site\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=391"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":441,"href":"https:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions\/441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}