Stephen Lehmann

Thinking Circles

Sat, 4 Oct 2008 11:48:50 +0700

Think – Act – Reflect – Think The circle of thought that leads to school improvement. A reflective model such this is a great way to tackle school improvement as it imitates the very process that we expect from students. Students, teachers, administrators all using the same model to improve learning sounds ideal to me.

Students ponder, “What can I change that will result in me being more successful, and how can I measure if I have been successful?”

Teachers ponder together in a collaborative team. “What learning focused goal can we make that will improve our student’s learning, and how will we know if we have been successful?”

Administrators ponder, “What whole school improvement projects can we undertake that will result in an improvement in student learning and how will we measure our success?”

Think – focus on learning, not on teaching.
Act – Was our learning initiative successful and how were we able to measure the learning?
Reflect – Let’s look at the data to see what influence our actions had on learning. Should we continue with the same goal and plan another action step? Were we successful and so we should develop a new goal? Do we need to create a new goal because we learned that we were not able to influence learning with this goal?

The thinking circle is a research-based model to school improvement that uses data to influence learning. What do you think? Is it worth a try?

The Invisible Manager

Sat, 5 Jul 2008 13:43:05 +0700

You’re a good manager, people like you and you work hard to make things run smoothly. You may even consider yourself to be essential. You know you’re essential because things don’t run smoothly without you. People are always asking you questions. When something works people point to you. All, this is really good for your self-esteem. You’ve made yourself indispensable. Trouble is you shouldn’t be listening to the audience cheering, but quickly trying to find out where you went wrong. There is only one phrase that brings terror to my ears, and that is, “Stephen I don’t know how we’ll ever survive without you.” Sure it sounds good, but it really should be a warning bell that sounds loudly and resonantly in your ear. At this stage you need to apply a filter. Are they talking about your vision for the future, or are they saying that your past implementations wont work without you?
When you started planning for what was then the future, and is now the past, you set goals that you knew would help bring the organization closer to its vision. You worked out how your plan would work for your company, invisibly in the background. You had critical friends and groups who you used as a touchstone, just to make sure you stayed on track. No-one would ever know that what you had done was to spread your new initiative, quietly and carefully through the organization., allowing you to reach that critical point, where the scales would fall in your favor, and victory would be yours. Another successful project completed. The problem is that victory would never and should never be yours.
Victory is not a personal thing. It is not yours. It belongs to that fantastic, new initiative and not to you. You have to place yourself in the background. Let the victory belong to the initiative and you’ll be a lot closer to making the your initiative a part of the fabric of your company. And that’s the point. A successful initiative, will live, grow and change as organizational needs change. That new initiative has to live a healthy life without you.
And so therefore “The Invisible Manager”. It’s time to give your self-esteem a rest, enjoy your work, see how you add value to the organization and allow the organization to achieve its vision. Remember, a successful initiative should be able to live without you.

Removing the Barriers

Sat, 24 May 2008 13:44:14 +0700

Need to implement something? You’ve just found an exciting opportunity. Remember, that when you’ve finished, the only thing that counts, is whether you’ve turned this opportunity into a window through which your organization, your customers, your colleagues can move forward confidently towards a vision, or whether you’ve just created another crash.

Remember it’’s not about you! Wow it’s so exhilarating when an opportunity presents itself. You know this will be exciting. Well, the first thing to remember is that it’s not about you! Yes this is your job, and yes, you found the opportunity. Yes it will be a success, but, it may also be the last thing you ever get to implement. When you find an opportunity don’t think about you, think about your customers, clients and colleagues. Think about your audience, as this is not about you, this is all about them.

Understanding your audience and their skill set, their readiness level, and their needs is paramount to being successful. Ok, let’s think about an implementation you did really well. The first thing you realize is that you only get one opportunity. There are no second chances, no second bites of the apple, because by the time you get back to that second chance, the apple will probably be rotten. People are fairly unforgiving, if you are going to do something that wastes their time, makes them look bad, or creates a feeling of lack of self confidence because they trusted you, then you better think again if you think you’ll be seeing them again any time soon. I mean they are not like your dog or my two cats. They do have a perspective that is wider than the smile on your face. And most of them have a memory that lasts back longer than the past week too.

So if it’s all about them, how do you know what they are thinking? One thing to remember is that you are in charge of the implementation, but they are in control of whether you are successful. They have more power than you, not less. Yes you do have a vision of how this will look, but they have knowledge of their present day to day life to which you have to marry your vision, Make sure you understand their skill level, understand their perceived needs, and understand the vision of the organization. Do you understand how your “great idea” will create a seamless link between the organizational vision and the customers day to day life. If you can understand this link, if you can act on strengthening this golden triangle between your “great idea”, the customer on the ground, and the organizational vision, if you make this your real goal, then you will be successful.