Exploring organizations in education, business, and sport that perform

beyond expectations (PBE)

Beyond Expectations

An international research project conducted jointly by Boston College & Institute of

Education, University of London

Research StaffCo-directors:

• Andy Hargreaves, Boston College

• Alma Harris, London Institute of Education

UK Team Alan Boyle Kathryn GhentJanet Goodall

US Team Alex Gurn Lori McEwen Michelle Reich Corrie Stone-Johnson

Research Questions• What characteristics make organizations of different

types successful and sustainable, far beyond expectations?

• How does sustainability in leadership and change manifest itself in education, compared to other professional sectors?

• What are the implications for schools and school leaders?

PBE Criteria

• Consecutive – Relation to past performance

• Contextual – Relation to available resources

• Comparative – Relation to peers

• Ethical

Leadership & Performance in Three Sectors

School Heads, Asst HeadsTeachers, TA's

StudentsAdministrative Staff

9 SitesPrimary & Secondary

LEA's

EducationUK

CEOsVP's, DirectorsMid-managersFront line staff

5 SitesMedium to large companies

BusinessUK, USA, & Italy

Directors, ManagersCoaches

Consultants

4 SitesProfessional & amateur

sports teams

SportUK, Australia, & Ireland

School Heads, Asst HeadsTeachers, TA's

StudentsAdministrative Staff

9 SitesPrimary & Secondary

LEA's

EducationUK

CEOsVP's, DirectorsMid-managersFront line staff

5 SitesMedium to large companies

BusinessUK, USA, & Italy

Directors, ManagersCoaches

Consultants

4 SitesProfessional & amateur

sports teams

SportUK, Australia, & Ireland

“My job as CEO is not to make business decisions - It’s to push

managers to be leaders.”

Fiat

SHOEbuy.com

Cricket Australia

Tower Hamlets

Walsall

1. Destinations and Departures

F1: The Fantastic Dream

F1: The Fantastic Dream

Organizations that perform beyond expectations aspire to and articulate an improbable, collectively held fantasy or dream that is bolder and more challenging than a plan or even a vision. Martin Luther King had a dream, not a strategic plan - still less a set of key performance indicators.

F2: The Fear

F2: The Fear

The experience of success is often heightened by the emotional memory of a previous failure, or the fear of one that lays in wait. Organizations that perform above expectations often confront failure, humiliation, ridicule and even extinction in a way that galvanizes their commitment to change. An improbable dream begets an apparently impossible challenge.

F3: The Fight

F3: The Fight

The impossible dream and improbable challenge of surmounting failure or avoiding extinction produce a response of fight to overcome or avoid obstacles, instead of flight to avoid them.

F4: Fundamental Futures

F4: Fundamental Futures

Long-standing organizations that exceed expectations (compared to new organizations like Internet firms) create an inspiring future by connecting cutting edge futures to a classic and honorable past. They bond change and tradition; they connect the destination to the origin.

2. Progress and Pathways

F5: Firm Foundations

F5: Firm Foundations

The seemingly sudden and meteoric success of high profile leadership is often underpinned by years of foundation-building by mundane leaders and unsung heroes to halt previous decline, develop better business models, build new relationships and create new infrastructures of financial, physical and human resources.

F6: Fortitude

F6: Fortitude

Going against the flow sometimes requires immense acts of personal courage, strength or fortitude. It calls on leaders to dig deep, to summon something within themselves they may never have realized they had.

F7: CounterFlow

F7: CounterFlow

PBE leaders of organizations that perform expectations are prepared to run against the mainstream, and to move ahead not by going with the flow but against or around it. These leaders are courageous, creative and counterintuitive.

F8: Fast and fair tracking

F8: Fast and fair tracking

Organizations that perform above expectations mark, monitor and manage their progress towards success. They use indicators and targets of progress and performance that are personally meaningful, publicly shared and demonstrably fair measures of what leaders and followers are trying to achieve.

F9: Feasible growth

F9: Feasible growth

Beyond the swift actions necessary to counter any initial crisis, organizations that perform beyond expectations do not try to expand as quickly as possible and take off too fast. They are built on sustainable growth.

3. Culture and Collaboration

F10: High Fidelity

F10: High Fidelity

Leaders who perform beyond expectations keep people with them. Many of our organizations excelled and even turned themselves around, with long-standing staff members who had worked there for decades.

F11: Fraternity

F11: Fraternity

Organizations that PBE engage with and support communities that have importance for them: the communities of origin from which they recruit their talent, the communities of practice of those who work for them, and the communities of support, of customers, clients or fans, where they are often physically located.

F12: Flair, Flow & Flexibility

F12: Flair, Flow & Flexibility

It is not just teams and teamwork that keep these organizations aloft; it is the vibrant nature of the teamwork itself. Organizations that perform beyond expectations have cultures of creativity and risk-taking. They allow and encourage workers to have freedom and flexibility to innovate and play.

F13: Fallibility

Organizations that perform beyond expectations and their leaders do not get too big for their boots. They are confident but not overconfident. They make and acknowledge mistakes and they expect those they lead to make mistakes also.

F14: Friendly rivalry

F14: Friendly rivalry

Collaboration and competition are often seen as opposites. The gene is either selfish or cooperative. Competition makes us succeed to survive or be superior while cooperation harnesses our capacities to succeed together. Leaders that perform beyond expectations go beyond these ideological oppositions and creatively combine collaboration with competition.

4. Drive & Direction

F15: Fusion leadership

F15: Fusion leadership

Leading an organization beyond expectations necessitates a blend of leadership styles or approaches that are sometimes thought of as polar opposites: charismatic and diffuse; autocratic and shared; top down and distributed - defying the professed dichotomies that often define the field.

1: The Fallacy of Speed

2: The Fallacy of Replacement

3: The Fallacy of Numbers

4: The Fallacy of Prescription

5: The Fallacy of Competition

Five Fallacies of Leadership & Change

Facing the Fallacies

These fallacies of leadership, turnaround, standardisation, competition and results have led to transplantations into education of principles and practices from business and sport that do not reflect how the higher performers in those sectors actually operate.

48

“People of accomplishment

rarely sat back and let

things happen to them.

They went out and happened

to things.”

-Leonardo Da Vinci

49

“Without stones, there is no arch.” – Marco Polo