The return of school often marks the end of summer (though technically the fall equinox begins at 10:21 a.m. on September 22). As we look ahead to a new school year, I want to look back at one of my favorite summer activities – reading.
This summer, I read a number of interesting books and articles, including several that will benefit Questar III and our work. This includes literature that focused on:
- Organizational health and how to develop a framework that maximizes human potential and aligns an organization around a common set of principles
- Millennials and how to better tap into the potential of our changing workforce, and
- Resiliency and how non-cognitive skills impact the academic success of students.
These titles – which I will preview below – will be available to Questar III and district staff as part of our afterschool book study series. This professional development opportunity is specifically designed to promote learning and dialogue across our organization and region.
The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business by Patrick Lencioni
This book was recommended by our colleague, Dr. Mike Cook, the executive director of ESSDACK, a BOCES-like organization based in Kansas.
The book provides a foundational construct – or framework – for conducting business in a different way. After reading the book, our executive leadership team decided to move forward with this approach – moving from creating a strategic plan to building a healthy organization based on Lencioni’s framework.
Lencioni argues that the seminal difference between successful organizations and mediocre ones has little to do with what they know and how smart they are. It has more to do with how healthy they are.
The Advantage outlines the four disciplines an organization needs to increase its organizational health. These are:
- Building a cohesive leadership team
- Creating clarity
- Over-communicating clarity and
- Reinforcing clarity
One of Lencioni’s quotes particularly resonated with me. On page 193, he writes about the wide-ranging and profound impact organizational health has on our lives:
“The impact of organizational health goes far beyond the walls of a company, extending to customers and vendors, even to spouses and children. It sends people to work in the morning with clarity, hope, and anticipation and brings them home at night with a greater sense of accomplishment, contribution, and self-esteem. The impact of this is as important as it is impossible to measure.”
This impact is embodied in Questar III’s new framework for success, The Leading Edge. Please visit https://old.questar.org/about_us/the_leading_edge.php to learn more.
When Millennials Take Over: Preparing for the Ridiculously Optimistic Future of Business by Jamie Notter and Maddie Grant
This book looks closer at the cohort born between 1980 and 2000 known as the Millennials. This generation is poised to become the largest generation in the workforce as more Baby Boomers and Generation X’ers look to retire.
Notter and Grant look at this as an “accident of history” and detail the role that Millennials play in “shining a light on the capacities” that will drive business changes moving forward.
In particular, the book details a “new normal” in which social media has shifted the balance of power towards individuals. In response, Notter and Grant suggest four important changes that organizations should embrace:
- Digital: organizations should embrace technology and the mindset that will free up employees to innovate and be proactive.
- Clear: organizations should share more to increase the speed and quality of decisions.
- Fluid: organizations should empower employees at all levels to take ownership and lead change.
- Fast: organizations should anticipate customer demands, identify and solve problems faster, and leap ahead of the competition.
As I mentioned at Orientation Day, the only constant today is change. Notter and Grant argue that these four capacities are the key to navigating and thriving in a complex, uncertain and ever-changing world.
While public education is not always known for the speed in which it operates, this is where The Leading Edge framework supports Questar III’s efforts to expand these capacities and serve our districts and students.
I recommended this book to other leaders as it provides an overview of new management practices that have taken shape (and will continue to shape us in the years to come).
How Kids Learn Resiliency by Paul Tough
This article, which appears in the June 2016 edition of The Atlantic, is an adaptation of Tough’s recent book, Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why.
Tough looks at research showing that personal qualities like perseverance, self-control, and conscientiousness play a critical role in children’s success. He also encourages adults – from parents and teachers to policymakers and philanthropists – to think differently about childhood challenges.
I enjoyed this article because it addresses a growing problem in our schools – childhood poverty. Tough argues that we need to focus on creating environments, both at home and at school, which allow qualities like grit and self-control to flourish (rather than trying to teach students these skills).
I also enjoyed this article because it connected with other titles our leadership team read (and books previously offered as part of our book study series). This includes Mindset by Carol Dweck and Opening Minds by Peter Johnston. Tough’s work, like that of Dweck and Johnston, demonstrates our significant role in shaping our students, from their sense of self to their social-emotional development.
In his book Opening Minds, Peter Johnston demonstrates how a single word can change how students respond to us. He says words have the power to open minds or to close them. His book documents how Carol Dweck’s concepts of a growth and fixed mindsets can be encouraged or discouraged in classrooms.
I encourage our colleagues across the region to consider attending one of our book studies – to build a community of learners and reflect on the discussion with others. In doing so, we will break down walls and ideas alike. Together, we will “change lives, realize dreams and do together what can’t be done alone.”
