As part of my own professional growth, I will like to share about a book I had read during this Semester entitled: “Great By Choice” by Jim Collins. I am interested in reading his book as I find part of Collin’s work looks deeply on the behaviors of leaders. As I read the book, I came to realize that one of the advantages of examining how multiple leaders exhibit these behaviors is that I become clearer of how then to characterize and describe the leadership behavior skills, and that such behavior skills become distinctive in my own endeavors.
In his work, Collin collected and examined data sets of companies that achieved spectacular results over 15 years while operating in an unstable environment and yet providing returns at least 10 times greater than others in the same industry which he called as “10Xer”. The main theme of the book is that the ability of any company not merely survives, but to thrive in the face of extreme conditions, depends on the quality of decisions its leadership makes. Uncertainty, chaos and luck are constraints, which great leaders understand that cannot be controlled, only to manage. Interestingly, in 10Xer companies, “the best leaders were not the biggest risk takers or the most visionary or the most creative”. The research boils down to three core behaviors: 1) fanatic discipline 2) empirical creativity 3) productive paranoia. The first type of behavior mentioned is fanatic discipline which referred to consistency in action – with mental interdependence and ability to remain consistent in the face of pressures. The second type of behavior identified is empirical creativity which relies primarily on analysis over actions which gave them a level of confidence that allowed bold moves and bound their risk. The third type of behavior is termed as productive paranoia which referred to leaders staying highly attuned to threats and changes in their environment even when all is going well.
Forefront of my thinking is the importance of such behavior(s) of a leader as how leaders behave via members of a group will endeavor facilitating our students’ learning. Of the three core behaviors, I am currently working on two of these behaviors namely being more empirical and disciplined, while the third behavior of being productive paranoia may not be a good starting point for beginning middle managers because I am still attuning to the role. Below is an illustration of what I see the behavior of “being more empirical” mean for teaching and learning.
Being more empirical uses processes (relying upon direct observation, practical experimentation and direct engagement with tangible evidence) which are close to my own activities – my keenness on the use of data to facilitate change. I believe that, as an outcome of the use of data, teachers will become more confident and use such data to guide their teaching and learning instructions. I also believe that I have a responsibility to use the data wisely and to consider a variety of data and to assist the teachers to use the data to better learning of our students. Deciding what to pay attention to, determining meaningful learning that will facilitate discussion with teachers to me is an important task. The concept of “Fire bullets, then cannonballs” – where the bullet is a low risk, low cost, low distraction test that ascertain an opportunity and the cannonballs are riskier, more costly initiatives – is obvious and yet profound that has gotten me to think about my data gathering process in the new light.
How to shoot bullet? A question we may have in our minds. It helps to make a list as I endeavor to categorize “bullet” and below are some examples I have come out with.
1. Getting students’/teachers’ responses before the implementation of Sec 4 Night PTM programs
2. The ICT time during staff time promoting the use of ICT to all teachers
3. Use teaching principles as my teaching pedagogy – “make students think”
4. Changing the primary medium from text to video in ICT programs and gauge how the students response
I hope by shooting such bullets, it would enabled me to pay attention to, determine meaningful learning that puts me the in path to introducing exciting and impact initiatives for my students learning.
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