The People that make it happen

We have had an intense few days; we read about school closures (for children of 12 years old and under) in the newspapers on a Friday evening, and then received formal notification from the authorities on Saturday - to implement on Monday. With different instructions and arrangements for infants, juniors, middle and high school, it has not been easy to align the 5600 families in our community - but everyone has sprung into action and things have gone remarkably smoothly.

So I have been thinking about what makes this possible; thinking about the present pressures and also the needs of the future (see last week's post); and what these both rest on. This can give us an important reminder and focus (hint: look at the title of this post).

Terrific support from the community is hugely important; here's one of many emails we got late on Friday night/early Saturday morning (thank you Sulata):

A very big hug and gratitude for all that you all are doing.  We cannot imagine how difficult this is for all of you.  Just attaching something I was reading the other day that helped me:  “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.  And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.” (Albert Camus)

Community care and appreciation makes such a difference; it allows us to step back from critical immediate tasks and logistics; knowing we are seen and cared for as humans connects us in solidarity with the people we serve, as humans and equals rather than as pieces in a commercial transaction.

source

This is a welcome reminder about what is really important across every single industry, across every single sector of the economy. It's so obvious that it's easy to overlook - the fact that for every industry, it's the people that make the difference; and in this case it's the people that have reacted to sudden unexpected news.  John Gardner gets to the heart of the matter:

Is it not obvious that human talent and energy are crucial to the flourishing of any society? Surprisingly, it is not at all obvious. We have all seen those gleaming projections of the society of the future that feature an endless array of technological marvels and never mention human talent and energy. It is as though the technology invented itself.

Looking at the impressive physical structures that humans create— great cities, for example—one can gain the impression that there is a lot more to civilization than the humans who make it up. But there isn’t. A little maybe, but not a lot. The dance doesn’t exist without the dancer.  

The surest guarantors of our future are individuals and the ideas they have in their heads, including the values, intellectual, moral, and social, that they convey to young people coming along. Fortunately, that is an immensely significant resource.

This is at once both blindingly obvious but also immensely profound. None of our endeavors happen without the right people - but it's so easy to forget that when we pay attention to all systems, policies, processes, protocols, buildings and spreadsheets - as we have been doing in intense detail this past week as we have been moving to home based learning across half the school.  

Obviously, we must have in mind all the necessary plans, appraisals of better and worse approaches to take, aspirations for the future we want. But none of this will matter if we do not attract, recruit and retain the most capable and highly motivated people.  Recent events, and watching my brilliant (I do not use the word lightly) colleagues in action,  and as the fundamental value proposition of living far from home is very much in question, this is very sharply to the front of my mind. 

There should be nothing remotely surprising in what I have written here, but it needs to be an active choice to ensure our attention remains on the people in the organisation who make the magic happen. 

All well and good. So what does that mean in practice?  

We want to attract the most outstanding teachers. So we will foreground our Mission as we want values-driven people; we will remove systemic barriers such as first-language requirements to increase the diversity of our candidate pool; we will explicitly implement anti-bias and recruitment practices; we will seek to diversify our staff body to reflect that our of community; we will examine our benefits so that we remain very attractive in an increasingly competitive environment; we will show flexibility and compassion for those in need; we will be inclusive in consultation (recognising that this requires vulnerability and risk, and the presumption of positive intent) and transparent in decision-making.

We want to develop and grow all our people so that they all leave saying (as some currently do) “I learnt more in my years here than I did in the rest of my career”; we will retain professional learning as an expectation and a right, not a privilege or reward for individuals; we will assign all teachers a mentor and offer coaching training for all our teachers so they can also all be mentors; we will review and recognise development through each contract; we will run annual tiered leadership courses open to all, not just leaders; we will support postgraduate study.

We will continue focus on our culture, foregrounding our values.   We'll seek to reinforce the spirit of active listening to understand (pausing, paraphrasing and asking mediative questions); we are co-creating community agreements to reinforce the culture we want; we will de-personalise differences by pointing to data; most of all, we will be kind and open and vulnerable.

A tall order; and we are not there yet; not likely will we ever be, fully. But we will persevere, as our people deserve no less.



Reference

Gardner J (1993) On Leadership The Free Press