Showing posts with label 03-Leading in Times of Change and Complexity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 03-Leading in Times of Change and Complexity. Show all posts

Mar 23, 2011

Looking leadership of my organization according to Fullan’s five components

By Emma

Nowadays, as the development of technology and the improvement of life quality, relevant industries have to catch up the continuously change of people’s demand. There is a proverb, Survival of the fittest or perish. Yes, the world is becoming more and more cruel, if keeping rigid, one may be washed out. So innovation or reform is a vital condition for life-long living. But even one realized innovation importance, it may not be easy to carry out, because many internal and external factors need to be considered as well. All in all, leadership in this moment and future is the key point.

Moral purpose: In my father’s company, most managers have realized the necessary of change, not only product improvement, but also management system development. But the boss in this company is a well-meaning but ineffectual person, he has contributed himself most in the beginning, now, he just wanted to keep doing the old products not making much change. By the way, the boss doesn’t know much about management skill, and manage the company all by feeling and experience. But the fellow managers have much passion on change, especially management system due to it has a lot of space for development.

Understanding change: the boss knows if the company wants to further develop, he should do something change. Such as multiple products(not limit or circle itself in certain area, considering about other products or other industry). But only fellow managers strongly supporting is not enough, the boss is a final decision maker(it is still a traditional and small private company, every decision should be made by the boss).

Relationship building: although the relationship between boss and fellow managers are quite good, it can not change the right owner of decision. Our ancestor said the power of public is huge, two brains are much better than one. If the boss still keeps rigid, the company would stop operating much quicker. Why doesn’t he discuss or listen to others’ opinion often? I can not figure out.

Knowledge creation and sharing: In this organization, there is a learning room which providing knowledge sharing and correcting. Every week, mangers in different departments hold meetings or give lectures or make conclusion on the product quality or something else about work..

Coherence making: Leaders need “energy, enthusiasm and hopefulness” to help make people “feel that even difficult problems can be tackled productively. Every company has confronted hard time, I remembered last year, my father’s company almost stopped producing 5 months due to the main client(Chang Jiang corporation) was re-organizing. It made most employees have nothing to do. But fortunately, 80% of employees didn’t choose leave. Besides, department managers continuous encouraged their workers and still paid the basic salary and give some subsidy to them. The whole company was facing the big problem together which made me impressive.

Leading in Times of Change and Complexity

by Corrine


Leading in times of change and complexity just like playing an adventure game full of uncertainties and risks; but of course, leading is much more serious and leader only aims at winning the game.

Leaders should have to know:
  • What factors contribute to the change?
  • How well do you understand why the change is occurring?
  • Did you initiate the change?
  • How to initiate the change?
  • Do you have any input in the change?

During the leading process, leaders have to:

1) Review goals and history
2) Clarify priorities
3) Identify strengths, weaknesses, and limits
4) Acknowledge mistakes
5) Willing to improve
6) Have plan(s) for improvement
7) Scenario planning
8) Predict outcomes
9) Carry out necessary pilot test/testing
10) Have continuous review and assessment

...... All responsibilities do not necessarily lie on only one leader, distributed leadership may be required to enhance outcomes and share accountability.

Feb 16, 2011

Reflection on Fullan’s framework for leadership

By Fay,Emma,Mia and Rainbow
From Fullan, M. (2001) Leading in a Culture of Change: Being Effective in Complex Times, It stated the five components of leadership which are the key factors to foster change:
1 Moral purpose
That is ,social responsibility to others and the environment
Acting with the intention of making a positive difference in the lives of employees, customers, and society as a whole)
2 Understanding change
        -having innovative ideas and understanding the change process are not the same thing.
        -Leader can manage the process of change
3 Improving relationships (Relationship building)
        -The single factor common to successful change is that relationship improves.
        -If relationship improve, schools get better. If relationships remain the same or get worse, ground is lost.
4. Knowledge creation and sharing
         -Creation and sharing knowledge is central to effective leadership
         -The cultural change principal is the lead learner in the school and modals
         -Lifelong learning by sharing what she or he has read lately.
5 Coherence making
        -Avoid overload and fragmentation. Appreciate diverse ideas but achieve policy alignment. Focus on student learning in reform but aware of outside world ideas which help to further the vision of school
        -Two concepts relate to coherence-making
               -Self –organization concerns new patterns of relationship and action resulted from the new interactions and ideas
               -Strange attractors involve experiences or forces that attract the energies and commitment of employees. They are strange as they are not predictable.
There are other factors mentioned in Fullan, M. (2002). The Change Leader, Educational Leadership, May 2002, pp. 16-21.
6 Leadership and sustainability
7 Developing the social environment
8 Learning in context
        -Learning from each other on the job.
9 Cultivating leaders at many levels.
        -School need many leaders at different levels
10 Enhancing the teaching professional
         -Reduce teacher workload, foster increased teacher ownership,
         -principal leaders should work to transform teachers’ working conditions.
Leaders=> (Organization with moral purpose, understanding change, relationship building , knowledge creation and sharing, coherence making + Hope, energy, enthusiasm)=> member (commitment (external and internal) => result more good things happen, fewer bad things happen

Develop and articulate ideas for describing leading change in an organisation

A case of leading change in Heep Woh co-educational secondary school in Hong Kong

By Corrine, Fay,Emma,Mia and Rainbow

School background and vision

Heep Woh is a Christian subsidized co-educational secondary school. The school was founded in 1911 in Guangzhou. The present school premises commenced operation in 1970. In the 2005-2006 academic year, the school had 29 classes and about 1200 students from age 11 to 20. English is the medium of instruction for most subjects. The school aims to provide an open, fair, happy and harmonious learning environment to the students as well as a sharing culture for professional development and self-enhancement among teachers. 

The aim of school education
(1)Educating students to become well-informed and good-mannered
(2)Equipping students with knowledge and self-learning skills
(3)Providing a pleasant environment for students to learn to respect, help and live with other people
(4)Developing students into healthy, thinking, civic-minded and responsible citizens

Change of communication model

In order to provide a platform for students to extend their learning after school; broaden students’ learning experiences and encourage students to have an inquiring mind; cultivate appropriate attitudes in the use of ICT; enhance the discussion of academic issues between teachers and students, the school proposed a suggestion ‘building school forums’.

The name of the project is ‘ Four Dimensions forum’ and was designed as a four-year project starting from September 2005. It included a Student-Teacher forum (S-T), a Teacher-Teacher forum (T-T), a Teacher-School forum (T-S), a Parent-School forum (P-S) and an Alumni-School forum (A-S).


The steps of implementation

In the 2005-2006 academic year, a student-teacher forum was set up in three subject areas which included Mathematics, Chemistry and Technology.

In the 2006-2007 academic year, the focus would be on teacher level sharing. A teacher-teacher forum and a teacher-school forum would be set up in the first term and second term respectively to encourage a sharing culture and enhance professional development between teachers as well as communication with the school administration.

In the 2007-2009 academic year the focus will be on setting up the Parent-School forum (P-S) and an Alumni-School forum (A-S), which helps in strengthening the communication between parent and alumni.

Achievement

Impact on students:

(1)More easy to seek help
Students reflected that the discussion forum provided a channel for them to ask questions and to seek help after school which helped to solve some of their learning problems.

(2)Increased interest in learning
Students also reported that when browsing the questions in the forum, it broaden their perspectives and increased their interest in learning that subject.

(3)A more active role for the learner
Teachers found that students who took a more active role in the discussion forum benefited more and their learning gain was quite obvious.

(4)Ways of promoting the discussion forum
Students also gave some constructive suggestions for promoting the discussion forum, such as setting up an e-mail notification for the identified topics of interest, using a scoring system or rewarding system to encourage students’ participation and organizing an e-forum activity week to promote using the discussion forum in learning and teaching.

Impact on teachers

(1)Changing role of the teacher
The three innovation teachers reflected that they were just the facilitators, not the giver of answers. As mentioned by the Mathematics teacher,

In the lesson, I encourage my students to post questions on the forum and to exchange ideas. When the students posted questions, I will not answer them immediately. I will allow students to discuss on their own first. Finally, if the problem still has not been solved, I’ll give them some hints”

(2)Stimulate teaching
Teachers told us that sometimes the questions posted by the students would stimulate their teaching. As one teacher said,

When I go through the questions, sometimes I see ones that I have never thought of before. Students are very creative and we also learn more in this process. There is professional growth for us at the same time.”

Impact on school

(1)Use IT in a practical way
In the Principal’s opinion, the delivery of information by means of the school webpage was a major achievement in terms of ICT use at the school level in the 2005-2006 academic year.

(2)Sustainability and scalability
The teacher-students discussion forum will continue in the coming academic year in the three subjects. In addition, the second forum, the teacher-teacher forum’, will also be started.