Dr. Scott McLeod (Dangerously Irrelevant) shares a quote from Seth Godin that is right on the money in describing our schools today:

People are just begging to be told what to do. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the biggest one is: “If you tell me what to do, the responsibility for the outcome is yours, not mine. I’m safe.“
Source: Seth Godin

If there’s no such thing as 21st Century Learning and skills–as some have asserted–then some might argue that there’s no such thing as 21st Century Leadership…there’s just leadership which envisions what the right thing is, and management that gets the right things done (to some quotes that include the Blue Skunk, Doug Johnson). And, to be blunt, we have more of “Tell me what to do so I’ll be safe” in school leadership than we need.

Some might argue–after watching this video Ms. Durff posted–that Michelle Rhee (New York Chancellor) is terrible, and since I’m not there, I’ll withhold judgement. However, she makes some fascinating points about conflict-averse principals that should be considered from a “risk-averse” perspective.

Scott McLeod points out that schools strongly emphasize compliance in the name of order and discipline. And, it’s no surprise that such top-down control is also reflected in the lack of leadership and control that school district administrators–at both the District and campuses–have to adhere to.

We’ve all seen the diagram of little arrows encased within a large arrow. When the arrows move in different directions, the large arrow doesn’t move. It reminds of me Finding Nemo movie when Dory, the absent-minded fish, gets caught in a net and Nemo helps all the grouper fish swim down:

Dory is caught, along with a school of grouper, in a fishing net. Despite Marlin’s worries, Nemo swims to help the fish, including Dory, escape using a trick taught to him by Gill and the other aquarium fish.

Getting others to swim in the right direction is tough work, but it’s made tougher when some say you can’t do things because it’s against the rules…rules that inhibit teaching, learning and leading at a time when communication, creativity have to be team sports involving online collaboration.

What happens when these kinds of polices and procedures–which maintain the status quo and help network technicians do their job, usurping the role of instruction for the role of tech-maintenance–become de facto?

And, what happens when someone decides to break those rules…deliberately? Robert Quinn in Deep Change shares that a leader has to break the rules to be a leader.

A colleague once told me about a group of executives in a large state government who were interested in leadership training. They were particularly interest in teaching transformational leadership. They wanted to develop public administrators who would take initiative, who would make deep change in their organizations. . .Their analysis revealed a number of cases of people who had made dramatic transformations within their various organizations.

Eventually, they decided to make a video about some of these transformational leaders. Two years later, it was a nationwide model. Teams went out to interview the leaders. They returned with bad news. The video could not be made. In every single case, the transformational leader had, at least once, broken a state law. To transform the ineffective organization into an effective one, required forms were not turned in, regulations were ignored and directives were violated. Does this mean that to be a transformational leader and make deep change in an organization, one has to break the law? No. It does always require, however, that someone must take significant risks.

Quinn goes on to point out that organization and change aren’t complementary…they don’t go together. Continuing with organization, locking things down into regular patterns push an organization into decay and stagnation. The only way forward is to learn something new, or die.

Our school districts are facing these same problems. As new tools become available, and these are not adopted because it’s easier to use the old technology rather than the new, transformational leaders must take risks.

By example–and what inspired this post–I offer you Brian Crosby’s tweeted remarks about using GoogleApps for Education in his classroom…without school district approval or knowledge.

Brian twittered:

bcrosby @mguhlin I’m probably switching to G Apps in my classroom- planned on it for awhile. My district is a whole other issue.

I tweeted at Brian:

@bcrosby how can you switch to Gapps without your district’s approval and support? isn’t that a bit…rogue? I mean, from THEIR P.O.V.? (POV=Point of View)

His response was as follows:

@mguhlin 1) I wouldn’t be the 1st. 2) Do 1st ask for forgiveness later. 3) Rogue? Me? When we started Skyping, IT thought Skype was blocked.

then followed by:

@mguhlin When we used wiki’s IT thought they were blocked. Blogs too. Hard to block award winning projects after the fact.

“Hard to block award winning projects after the fact.” And, he’s right. His work with Celeste and Skype is world-renown, and the wiki work is award winning! The question that must be asked, though, is how many teachers will become transformational leaders and break school district rules?

And what are the rules for becoming a rule breaker? As Bud Hunt asks below…

@bcrosby @mguhlin What other rules and policies are okay to ignore?

The answer is deceptively simple–you break the rules when your organization needs to “creatively meet the needs that exist in the present organizational environment” (Quinn, Deep Change).

Uh, so what are those needs in K-12 schools today? Wouldn’t the needs make ANYTHING allowable? And, in committing anything, that is where one incurs risk.

My Advice? Go ahead and rebel. Ask for forgiveness. There are clear needs that must be met and if your status quo isn’t getting it done, then THINK and DO what you do differently.

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure