Category: post 3.1

(Our Equipo Directivo with spouses and my family in Curitiba, Brazil)

Hi Layla!

Thank you very much for bringing in your experience with adult education. During last years Spring semester, I took a class with Dr. Castellon on adult education and it was very enriching. Have you taken the ldrs 627? If not, you will definitely enjoy it.

By the way, you cited a personal communication with two people from China. Did they talk in any way or fashion about how adults in China might perceive short-term and long-term gains differently than Westerners since our sources are from the West? Just wonder. I spend a lot of time talking to co-workers about how they perceive things while reading books and articles about leadership.

I appreciate you giving me new tips for how adults see things differently than teenagers. Thanks for pointing out that you see long-term and short-term gains less of a balance than an issue of convincing people of long-term gains. In Paraguay, during the meetings with our leadership team people might not object against certain ideas but then I have to go and observe their routines the following weeks to see if they were convinced. Paraguayans will less frequently speak out and enter into a discussion about strategies. At the moment, they might say yes but then latter will continue to do it the old way. So, observing and continuing to talk about new strategies is necessary.

I also appreciate your idea of creating a collective mental model. This will help me working with my leadership team (equipo directivo).

Blessings,

Response to Organization and Systems Thinking from Kamal Badesha

Thank you, Kamal, for giving me a glimpse into your work and what it means to work in health.

Before going into the questions you pose at the end, I would like to highlight some comments you made in your post. Having a shared vision and making sure co-workers own this common vision, I believe, is always a challenge. More so for big institutions. Lepsinger (2010) mentions in the first chapter of his book of the troubling gap between vision and strategy. He goes on to share that one crucial element is to make sure that the employees feel like they exist, they need to feel respected and feel that their viewpoint matter (p.14). If my staff feels they are essential for the institutions, they will also be more willing to own the vision. Another observation Lepsinger (2010) makes is that the leader and the employees should not have two sets of values (p.17). As a principal, I need to make sure that I do not give myself certain freedoms that I would not allow my employees to do. Employees need to feel that they are just as important as their leader.

You also mentioned the challenge to communicate. I believe that improving communication has been a goal of mine every year since I started. We never communicate enough. Culturally communication in Paraguay is difficult. People do not always trust, and people think that it is better not to tell everyone what is going on. One has to fight against culture as well. Although we have worked at establishing protocols in how, when, and where to communicate, my secretaries occasionally still forget to inform everyone what has happened and what is going on in our school.

Regarding one of your questions about being heard. I remember when I was a teacher that we would complain and say that the principal did not listen to us and we felt distant from the administration. Although I related well to administrators, I did not think they took the time to listen to teachers. Now, as a principal, I wonder if my staff would say the same thing. I want to hear them. I have also attended different teacher roundtable discussions to make sure that people realize that I care. This year I have interviewed every single staff member mid-year to hear them. Is this enough? Probably I can still apply other strategies as well.

Recognizing staff members is probably the most challenging topic in our school. I acknowledge staff individually as I talk to them and we mention something publicly when they receive a prize or an award. Since we are a non-profit Christian school, I cannot recognize staff members with an increase in pay. There is always a lot of cultural mistrust, and it would also be very difficult to explain our reasoning why someone gets paid more than others. I would agree when Galbraith (2014) who says that the recognition system is probably underused and should be used more frequently than is the actual practice (p.51). I still need to work in finding creative ways to reward people who are doing excellent work.

Blessings,

Reference:

Galbraith, J. R. (2014) Designing Organizations: strategy, structure, and process at the business unit and enterprise levels. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Lepsinger  R. (2010) Closing the Execution Gap. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Hughes, Beatty, and Dinwood (2014) and Paraguayan Culture

The Equipo Directivo (Leadership Team) is the top management team that has the role to guide and lead our school, Colegio Johannes Gutenberg Campo 9. I, as a principal, work with this team weekly as we meet and discuss all school events and activities and as we plan future direction for our institution. The equipo directivo is composed of the principal (me), the campus pastor, the business administrator, my secretary, two teacher coordinators, and our social worker. It is not always an easy group to work with since we have inherited our position in the team through formal position. Hughes, Beatty, and Dinwood (2014) mention that one of the reasons such top management teams might have difficulty working as a team is because the right mix of skills is often absent; instead, members are chosen based on their formal position (p. 201). Every member of the equipo directivo was hired for our job and then told by the board to work together as a Strategic Leadership Team (SLT).

Hughes et al. (2014) pose several questions for SLT development (p. 213). Hughes et al. (2014) also mention why SLT struggle. I can identify that some members seem to feel the threat of one’s position, there is sometimes a trust issue, and disagreement on the team about key priorities. We, as a group, need to improve on several fronts. There is still much work to do. As a member of the team once said, we have to yet close the circle in our team development, and it is natural that we might still experience a certain amount of difficulties.

More than any of these struggles, I have to add the cultural factors. I would like to mention a few that have played a factor while trying to work as a strategic leadership team. Alfred Neufeld (2006) goes into great length into the fact that Paraguayans are very fatalistic. The people fall easily pray of believing that one cannot change the future, “it is what it is.” Our destiny has been determined already, and we cannot change it. There is a deep feeling of inferiority, much of what happens to us is luck or misfortune, and history will repeat itself, to mention a few.

Much of my job these last few years have been trying to understand the mindset of my team members and trying to build their sense of confidence and ownership of the mission of the school. Besides our weekly meetings, we have also made time for an annual retreat, going out for dinner, traveling together every two years, and encouraging each other. As suggested by Lepsinger (2010) I have also allowed each member to express their point of view and share freely their thoughts and concerns to make them feel like key players in this leadership team (p. 14).

Systems Thinking

I have been fascinated, in the last few years, by the Butterfly effect, which is part of the chaos theory. Senge (2006) mentions that this same theory can be applied to cause and effect where it might take years before one could see the effects of the decisions (as cited in Atha, 2018). One can get quite discouraged in one sense while making decisions today and not seeing the results, on the other hand, one might not realize what effects one small decision today might create in the future. As strategic leaders in our equipo directivo we occasionally fail to see things long-term and fail to reflect on the possibilities. Senge (2006) in a similar note also says that in systems thinking one should not expect immediate results. These are some of the shortcomings that I have encountered in our teamwork.

I would like to add another limiting factor in my team systems, “there is no blame.” We try to find someone or something to blame but do not take complete ownership of what has happened. Some team members are more willing to do so than others. Much of this has to do with the culture. Because of low self-esteem, people are less willing to confess shortcomings.

Currently one of our biggest bottlenecks is that systems cannot be fully perceived with one set of eyes (Atha, 2018). As a leadership team we have worked at finding solutions for problems, but we still fail to involve more people into the process. We still need more sets of eyes. I have gently encouraged members of the team to create more groups to tackle difficulties. For example, we have once a year food and fun fair with students and families. After five years, I wanted to do a more in-depth review of the festival. Members of our equipo directivo thought that we should take a few minutes in our weekly meeting to do the review. In reality, I wanted them to go and schedule evaluation sessions with different groups of parents and different groups of students. Not everyone was very encouraged because it meant more work. I hope that the results will show that it is worth the process when you have more sets of eyes. The results of the process will prove the validity of the process and encourage team members to involve more people in the process, using more sets of eyes.

Formal Groups

Just today we evaluated with our elementary teachers last week´s science fair. One observation I made was that the science teacher heading the fair did the work mostly by herself. We agreed that a formal group should be formed next year and that we should have teachers from elementary school and high school participate in the committee. Galbraith (2014) says that while staffing the group, representatives should be chosen from each affected unit (p. 91).

Galbraith (2014) also mentions the importance of the leader role in these groups (p. 92). Since projects are such an essential part of our school´s education, we will give our high school science teacher the role as a project coordinator and leader of our project-based education. From my experience, especially in Paraguay, it is imperative to have a specific leader in charge. I would not recommend rotating leaders since people would get very confused about who is responsible. The long history of dictatorship in our country has something to do with this need to have a direct leader responsible.

Reference:

Atha, D. (2018). Systems Thinking.  Course Learning Notes. Retrieved from https://create.twu.ca/ldrs501/unit-3-learning-activities/

Galbraith, J. R. (2014). Designing organizations. Jossey-Bass & Pfeiffer Imprints, Wiley,.

Hughes R., Colarelli-Beatty K. & Dinwoodie  D. (2014) Becoming a strategic leader. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Second Edition.

Lepsinger, R. (2010). Closing the execution gap: How great leaders and their companies get results. John Wiley & Sons.

Neufeld, A. (2006). Contra la sagrada resignación. Cristianización y cosmovisiones fatalistas en el Paraguay. Un análisis histórico, cultural y teológico. Asunción.    Editorial El Lector.