An Innovation-Seeking Leader Understands the Nature of Innovation

According to creative destruction (Schumpeter, 1939), technical progress involves two activities: process innovation and product innovation.  The relationship between innovation and productivity may differ in relation to diverse markets and industrial sectors (Castellacci & Zheng, 2010).  Thus, an innovative leader understands that while technical progress is part of innovation, the practice of innovation involves more than technology alone. 

Schumpeter (1939) advocated that innovation could be found in either production of new types of goods, changes in the properties of existing goods, or the introduction of new methods of production.  Such changes could be the result of new scientific discoveries, opening of new markets, the use of new sources of raw materials and intermediate goods, and new organization of production.  Herein let’s explore the leader’s role in identifying emerging trends, harnessing opportunities, and leveraging organizational capabilities to optimize innovations.  We will also do well to critically review leadership methods for mitigating individual as well as organizational resistance

Innovation could take many forms or formulations provided business value has been created.  Business value can be found through either incremental improvement to existing services and products, the development of new services and products, or through reduction of costs related to the process of production.  While technical progress is associated with changes in the best practices of production, technical efficiency growth involves improvements in the organization’s ability to make increasingly efficient use of already existing techniques (Castellacci & Zheng, 2010).   

In part, sustained success relies upon how effectively an organization’s leadership can “anticipate change, demonstrate authentic leadership, maximize the power of their talent, and embrace social responsibility” (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2007, p. 22).  To optimize these abilities an effective leader must hone skills that will promote “agility, authenticity, connectivity to their talent, and sustainability” (p. 23).  This requires a leadership development strategy aligned with and supportive of the leadership strategy (Pasmore, 2013).  A well-conceived and aligned “leadership development strategy will return benefits at the individual, team, and organizational level” (Pasmore, 2013, p. 22).

An innovation-seeking leader should seek to establish an effective collaborative culture that supports organizational learning, continuous improvement, and sustained change.  Senge (1990) identified five primary disciplines of a learning organization.  These include: systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, and team learning (Senge, 1990).

A leader embracing organizational learning encourages professional learning communities (PLC).  The leader understands this requires a commitment to establishing a clear, shared vision, developing a collaborative culture focusing on learning, engaging in collective inquiry, remaining action oriented, committing to continuous improvement, and remaining results oriented (Dufour et al., 2015).  Efforts to change organizational viewpoints must be holistically cultural and not merely structural.  Sustained improvements become possible only when the revised culture successfully embeds “the assumptions, beliefs, values, expectations, and habits that constitute the norm for that organization” (Dufour et al., 2015, p. 90).

To leverage organizational capabilities while creating new demand and exploring potential markets, leaders must be ever more cognizant of the important roles and required capabilities and experiences required to optimize effectiveness.  This pursuit must far exceed global, virtual, generational, political, or national contexts.  As discussed in the January and February 2019 blogposts, the GLOBE Project (House, et al., 2004) demonstrated effective leadership covers diverse contexts ranging from issues of culture, ethics, societal values, gender, trust, learning communities, incorporating global, virtual, and generational issues. 

An innovation-seeking leader understands the selected organizational structure needs to consider more than reporting lines.  This is true regardless if the organization adopts a traditional structure, which is based on functional division and departments; a functional structure, which functionally classifies people based on the function performed in their professional life or within the organization; a divisional structure, which groups employees based on the organization’s products, markets and geographical locations; or a matrix structure, which combines the product and function systemic structure.  The organizational structure must be designed to optimize innovation based on consideration of factors that include: “flexibility, adaptability” (Beinhocker, 2007), the “size of the organization” (McKinney, Steglich & Stever-Zeitlin, 2002), “the degree of flatness required” (Boehm & Phipps, 1996), and even “the role of virtual organizations in today's world” (Blomeyer, 2002). 

A four-step balanced scorecard process was designed by Kaplan and Norton (1992).  Any selected evaluation process ideally establishes a structure ensuring strategic change planning will positively impact the organization’s capability for innovation.  Strategic change planning first identifies where the organization wants to be in the future and then determines how it will achieve established objectives and goals. 

Employees respond well to encouragement, reinforcement, support, and coaching (Stober, 2008).  Leaders wisely seeking to inspire innovation mitigate conflict between staff goals, the organization’s mission, and the leader’s expectations and desire to lead rather than merely manage (McGregor, 1960).  Inspiring, transformational leaders possess high emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1998; Goleman, Boyatzis & McKee, 2002).  Such a leader exhibits an inclination to work with individuals to enlarge the “in group” rather than segregating the “out group members” (Northouse, 2009, p. 155).  As a result, staff may begin exhibiting higher self-efficacy, more creativity, and greater innovation as they experience empowerment, self-fulfillment, and intrinsic motivation (McGregor, 1960).

Effective leaders desiring to create an innovative organizational culture understands the existence of a natural resistance to change from individuals and cultures within the organization (Kan & Parry, 2004).  Organizational politics have the potential to facilitate or confound the process of leadership.  Reinforcing his argument that an unconscious conspiracy exists in contemporary society that prevents leaders from taking charge and making changes regardless of their original vision, Bennis (1989) contended organizational and social forces are working to prevent change.  The culture of innovation is optimized when the leader uses tactics that create a learning organization.  Creation of a culture sustaining the learning organization both engages and empowers employees. 

Tichy (2006) believes the best thing a leader can do is be a teacher and develop other leaders while the organization keeps winning.  Bettinger (2006) discovered a strong, direct correlation between developmental opportunities revealed by the 360 process and an individual’s personality or behavioral profile.  To be truly effective, best practice for a 360-degree evaluation process suggest focusing upon specific leadership behaviors that the organization confirms as relevant to its values, culture, and success.  The process must also include professional development planning and continuous reinforcement 

Individual motivation impacts whether an initiative is learned, valued, or sustained.  Intrinsically driven learning correlates to higher self-efficacy, which identifies the expectation for success in an activity or in performing a task.  High self-efficacy is linked to outcome and efficacy expectations.  Outcome expectations include belief that particular actions lead to particular outcomes.  Efficacy expectations include the belief that requisite knowledge or skills to achieve an outcome are readily available or already present (Bohlin, Durwin, & Reese-Weber, 2008).  By contrast, self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985) requires three innate needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.  The beliefs underpinning efficacy theories demand professional development and on-going education be part of the organization’s innovation-seeking culture. 

By utilizing the disciplines outlined by Senge (1990), facilitating the learning of its workers, and making transformation part of a continuous improvement process, an innovation-seeking organization exhibits the essential cultural features of a learning organization.  This mitigates the fallacy that staff already possess all the necessary skills for success.  The leader recognizes ongoing competency-building must be part of the organizational culture.

Additionally, an innovation-seeking leader knows a holistic and systematic approach is required for determining how organizations are structured.  As a result of effective utilization of evaluations such as the balanced scorecard (Kaplan & Norton, 1992) and development processes such as 360 degree leadership (Bettinger, 2006), the best possible organizational structure can be developed.  Ideally, an optimal organizational structure will align with strategic change planning to ensure positive impact upon the organization’s capability for innovation.  

To Cite:

Anderson, C.J. (March 31, 2019) An innovation-seeking leader understands the nature

of innovation  [Web log post] Retrieved from http://www.ucan-cja.blogspot.com/

References

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Castellacci, F., & Zheng, J. (2010). Technological regimes, Schumpeterian patterns of innovation

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Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A. (2002). Primal leadership: Realizing the power of emotional Intelligence. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

House, R. J., Hanges, P. J., Javidan, M., Dorfman, P. W., & Gupta, V., Ed. (2004). Culture,

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Kan, M., & Parry, K. (2004). Identifying paradox: A grounded theory of leadership in

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The McKinsey Quarterly (2), 122-133.

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Servant Leadership and Invitational Theory and Practice

Servant-leaders are value-led and character-driven.  These qualities are typically exhibited by "increased service to others; a holistic approach to work; promoting a sense of community; and the sharing of power in decision making" (Greenleaf, 1997, p. 4).  Proponents of servant leadership emphasize collaboration and integrity, whereby communication and persuasion skills become extremely important (Smith, Montagno, & Kuzmenko, 2004).  These skills are certainly the result of intellectual skills and experiential opportunities.

Since a servant leader invests himself or herself in enabling others, in helping them be and do their best (Hall, 1991), then decision-making processes involving most of the stakeholders will typically result in consensus-building.  As a result, a servant leader's motivation can be directed more at the personal growth of the follower.  The servant leader's success can then be determined by the extent to which the follower moves toward self-actualization (Maslow, 1970).  Therefore, what differentiates servant-leaders is their deep desire to pursue a preferred future from “the basis of humility, empathy, compassion, and commitment to ethical behavior” (Lad & Luechauer, 1998, p. 64).  This would not be possible without the intellectual and experiential components of leadership being evident.

The three basic assumptions of servant leadership are the servant leader is responsible for the followers, is responsible towards society and the disadvantaged, and the person who wants to help others does this best by leading them.  Listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to growth of people, and building community are essential attributes of the servant leader (Spear, 2002). 

Sendjaya and Sarros (2002) found the conceptual relationships and complementary roles between servant-hood and leadership had been studied from the perspectives of scholars and practitioners (Bass, 1999; Bowman, 1997; Buchen, 1998; Chappel, 2000; Choi & Mai-Dalton, 1998; De Pree, 1989; Fading, Stone, & Winston, 1999; Graham, 1991; Pollard, 1997; Russel, 2000; Senge, 1990, 1995; Spears, 1995).  The primary motivation for the servant-leader is to serve first rather than to lead (Greenleaf, 1977).  In most organizations, leadership is ascribed to people who hold management positions and are capable of giving orders to other members of the organization (Senge, 1990).  As a result of the primary desire to serve, the servant-leader wants to help his or her followers "grow healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, and more likely themselves to become servants" (Greenleaf, 1977, pp 13-14).  While the desire to serve is the primary motivation of the servant-leader, the aspiration to lead is based on conscious choice to ensure other people's highest-priority needs are being served (Greenleaf, 1977).

Servant leaders do not find service and leadership to be dichotomous.  Rather, they believe the concepts are so intertwined that they can be used interchangeably because, to them, leadership is about providing a service (Koshal, 2005).  Since leadership does not exist in the absence of service then, according to Koshal, service delivery is only possible through leaders that model it.  Therefore, from the perspective of the servant leader the tenet of service adheres to key principles of servant leadership.  Leaders who lead an organization by focusing on their followers are servants first, whereby his or her followers are the primary concern and the organizational concerns are peripheral.  Servant leaders serve and lead with “(a) altruism, (b) empower followers, (c) act with humility, (d) exhibit love, (e) lead with service, (f) are trusting, and (g) are visionary to their followers” (Patterson, 2003, p. 5).

Based on previous research, conceptual and empirical gaps exist between servant leadership and charismatic leadership theory (Tucker, 1968).  While charismatic leadership has been systematically studied and developed into a rigorously tested theory, at the dawn of the 21^st century servant leadership continued to be considered a movement rather than a tested theory.  Therefore, empirical studies on servant leadership and related models continue to be needed Bass (1999).

Spencer (2006) proposed a hybrid model of servant-leadership oriented toward empowerment for achieving the organization's objectives (para. 22).  Spencer believed trust and emotional intelligence must play a major role.  Invitational education, as explicated by Purkey and Siegel (2013), is a model based on, a collection of assumptions seeking to explain phenomena by providing a means.  Invitational Theory and Practice provides the structure to guide today’s leaders through complex times (Burns & Martin, 2010). 

Invitational Theory and Practice, which is grounded in social justice and high emotional intelligence (EI), should be reflected in school leaders that focus upon issues of social inclusion, mutual respect, care, equity, and justice.  Leaders exhibiting such transformative social justice would consider the impact of race, class, gender, and disability.  Thus, invitational leaders promoting social justice would address historically marginalized groups and conditions within schools that impact student learning.

The four areas of inviting: “Inviting Oneself Personally, Inviting Oneself Professionally, Inviting Others Personally, and Inviting Others Professionally” (Schmidt, 2007, p. 16) provide useful structures for explaining Invitational Theory and Practice through understandable language with useable concepts (Purkey & Novak, 2016; Purkey, Schmidt, & Novak, 2010; Purkey & Siegel, 2013; Steyn, 2005).  As noted by research throughout the Journal of Invitational Theory and Practice, servant leaders would feel Invitational Theory and Practice naturally aligns with their mindset.  The result would be inviting practices in all areas of school functioning that thereby encourages people, practices, policies, and processes to be intentional, caring, optimistic, respectful, and trusting (I-CORT) in any place where optimal teaching and learning is desired (Anderson, 2017).

To Cite:

Anderson, C.J. (February 27, 2019) Servant leadership and invitational theory and practice

             [Web log post] Retrieved from http://www.ucan-cja.blogspot.com/

References:

Anderson, C. J. (2017). Examining demonstrated emotional intelligence and

            perceptions of inviting schools. Journal of Invitational Theory and Practice,

23, 35-61.

Burns, G., & Martin, B. N. (2010). Examination of the effectiveness of male and female

educational leaders who made use of the invitational leadership style of leadership.

Journal of Invitational Theory & Practice, 16, 29-55.

Egley, R. (2003). Invitational leadership: Does it make a difference? Journal of Invitational

Theory & Practice, 9, 57-70.

Egley, R. J., & Jones, B. D. (2005). Can accountability be inviting? an assessment of

administrators' professionally and personally inviting behaviors. Journal of Invitational

Theory & Practice, 11, 71-84.

Greenleaf, R.K. (1977). Servant Leadership: A journey into the nature of legitimate power 

           and  greatness. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist PressGreenleaf, R. K. 1997. The servant as leader.

Indianapolis, IN: The Greenleaf Center (30).

Koshal, J.O., (2005). Servant leadership theory: Application of the construct of service in the

            context of Kenyan leaders and managers. Regent University: Servant Leadership

            Research Roundtable. Retrieved February 27, 2019 from

http://gradworks.umi.com/31/88/3188226.html

Lad, L. J. & Luechauer, D. 1998. "On the path to servant-leadership." In L. Spears Insights on

            leadership: Service, spirit, and servant leadership. New York, NY: John Wiley

Purkey, W. W., & Novak, J. M. (1996). Inviting school success: A self-concept approach

            to teaching, learning, and democratic practice (3rd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth

            Publishing Company. Retrieved from:    http://invitationaleducation.net/featuredbooks.html

Purkey, W. W., &; Novak, J. M. (2016). Fundamentals of invitational education. (2^nd Ed)

            International Alliance for Invitational Education. Retrieved from:

http://invitationaleducation.net/product/category/books

Purkey, W. W., Schmidt, J. J., & Novak, J. M. (2010). From conflict to conciliation: How

            to defuse difficult situations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. ISBN:

            9787452212104

Purkey, W. W., & Siegel, B. L. (2013). Becoming an invitational leader: A new approach           to

professional and personal success. Atlanta, GA: Humanics. Retrieved from:

http://invitationaleducation.net/featuredbooks.html

Schmidt, J. J. (2004). Diversity and invitational theory and practice. Journal of Invitational

        Theory & Practice, 10, 27-46.

Schmidt, J. J. (2007). Elements of diversity in invitational practice and research. Journal of

        Invitational Theory & Practice, 13, 16-23.

Sendjaya, S., & Sarros, J. C. (2002). Servant leadership: Its origin, development, and application

            in organizations. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 9(2), 57-64.

Senge, P. M. (1990, Fall). The leader's new work: building learning organizations, Sloan

            Management Review, 32(1), 7-24.

Spears, L. C., & Lawrence , M. (Eds.). (2002). Focus on leadership: Servant leadership for the

            21st century. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Spencer, J. L. (2007). The new frontier of servant leadership. Paper presented at the Servant

Leadership Research Roundtable, Regent University, School of Leadership Studies.

Retrieved May 5, 2012 from

http://regent.edu/acad/global/publications/sl_proceedings/2007/spencer.pdf

Stanley, P. H., Juhnke, G. A., & Purkey, W. W. (2004). Using an invitational theory of practice

to create safe and successful schools. Journal of Counseling & Development, 82(3), 302-309.

Steyn, G. M. (2005). Exploring factors that influence the effective implementation of

        professional development programmes on invitational education. Journal of Invitational

        Theory & Practice, 11, 7-34.

The Impact of Cultural Diversity upon Organizational Outcomes and Group Productivity

The Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) project analyzed and explored previous studies on cultural patterns before developing a single program measuring the extent of global cultural differences.  The mixed methods study utilized 170 researchers and agents to collect data from 17,000 middle managers from 951 organizations within 62 different countries (House, et al., 2004).  The sampling procedure ensured adequate representation of all major regions of the world.

Despite the reliable sampling procedure, Hofstede (2006) criticized the GLOBE study for using such a large number of researchers, which adversely influences the consistency of approach.  He also found the GLOBE study United States-centric.  Lastly, Hofstede felt the GLOBE study was an ethnocentric study in nature while his earlier research (1980) was a decentered study.

Results from the GLOBE study validated Hofstede’s (1980) cultural dimensions while adding two additional dimensions: performance orientation and humane orientation.  These dimensions were included based on the belief that a performance-oriented society values and rewards performance, emphasizes results rather than people, and are concerned with individual achievement and excellence.  In a highly humane society, individuals are rewarded for being fair, altruistic, caring, kind and benevolent.  Addition of these two dimensions also addressed the concern with Hofstede’s research, which did not include long-term as well as ethical dimensions (Fang, 2003).  Compared to Hofstede’s research, the GLOBE study utilized the dimension “Gender Egalitarianism” rather than Masculinity compared to Femininity. 

The GLOBE program developed nine dimensions, which formed the independent variables for the study.  The nine cultural dimensions included: Uncertainty Avoidance, Power Distance, Gender Egalitarianism, Assertiveness, Future Orientation, Institutional Collectivism, In-Group Collectivism, Performance Orientation, and Humane Orientation (House, et al., 2004).  Results of the GLOBE project demonstrate the indirect influence of national culture upon leadership behaviors as reflected by societal expectancies. 

GLOBE results suggest an effective leader consistently utilizes leadership approaches best aligned to his or her followers’ cultural expectations.  Therefore, leaders acting in accord with societal expectations are most effective.  GLOBE results identify charismatic and value-based leadership as universally effective leadership approaches.  By contrast, GLOBE results identify participative leadership approaches as culturally sensitive.  By identifying superior compared to inferior organizational leaders in relation to the extent that their behaviors either exceeds or fails to meet their societal expectations, the GLOBE project increases understanding of the relationships between organizational behavior, cultural expectations, and successful leadership. 

As reported by Collins and Powell (2004), seminal work by Collins (2001), distinguished leaders by analyzing a paradoxical blend of genuine personal humility and intense professional will.  For example, Collins differentiated a leader exhibiting modesty and unwavering resolve from the leader that is shy and courteous yet fearless.  Based on a five-year study, Collins identified Level Five Leaders that transformed their good companies to great companies, achieving extraordinary results, and building great organizations without overt publicity.  As exhibited by the results of cultural assessment tools (Hofstede, 1980; House et al, 2004), societal cultural diversity can directly influence whether a transformational or transactional leadership approach would be most effective. 

With Level Five as the hierarchy, Collins developed a model predicated on transformational and transactional leadership behaviors.  Leaders whose style corresponds to Levels One–Four could be successful but they fail to elevate an organization to excellence.  A Level One leader relates to being a capable individual.  A Level Two leader is oriented toward teams and achieving group objectives.  The Level Three leader exhibits a transactional leadership approach (Vera, et al., 2004).  The Level Four leader exhibits transformational approaches.  Transactional leaders seek to guide followers toward established goals by clarifying objectives and task requirements.  Transformational leaders inspire followers to pursue an explicated, motivating vision, are concerned about followers’ well-being, and encourages innovation and creativity (Bass & Avolio, 1990, 1994, 1995, 2000). 

A Level Five leader is a clock builder rather than a time teller (Collins & Powell, 2004).  Their ability to identify great successors exhibits the difference.  Therefore, a Level Five leader exhibits unwavering resolve to build their companies for future success rather than being mainly concerned about the present.  When meeting or exceeding organizational objectives, the Level Five leader credits followers for successes while accepting personal responsibility for poor results.

Hogan and Hogan (2001) suggest this behavior is partly attributable to the Level Five leader’s personality.  In relation to their communication style, Level Five leaders and his or her followers are considered egalitarian rather than superior (Collins, 2001).  The Level Five leader surrounds himself or herself with followers who are confident but not self-centered (Collins, 2005).  Such humility is conceptualized as three-dimensional: self-awareness, openness, and acceptance of something greater than self (Morris et al., 2005).  

Given the globalization effort at hand, the need for better understanding cultural influences on leadership and organizational practices becomes essential for sustained team success.  As House et al (1998) reminds us, "Situations that leaders and prospective-leaders must face are highly complex, constantly changing, and difficult to interpret.  More than ever before, managers of international firms face fierce and rapidly changing international competition” (p.5).   Time zone diversity is an obvious managerial reality; the sun will never set on this new global organization. 

More than logistics, a thoughtful analysis will need to review the team managers’ diverse societal cultures.  Analysis of results from the Globe program data indicates variance in the new global team’s Uncertainty Avoidance (UA) dimension requires immediate attention.  It must be noted that the UA dimension exhibits much greater variance in the 5-D model results (Hofstede, 1980).  The Uncertainty Avoidance (UA) dimension is the extent to which members of a specific culture feel threatened by ambiguous or unknown situations and as a result created beliefs and institutions designed to avoid risks, threats, ambiguity, or uncertainty.  The GLOBE data identifies UA ratings by managers from Singapore as 5.31 and ratings by managers from Germany as 5.22.  This contrasts sharply with the 3.39 UA ratings by Greek managers and 3.67 UA ratings by Iranian managers.  The 4.15 UA ratings by United States’ managers indicate American society is uncertainty accepting, exhibiting willingness to accept new ideas, innovation, and openness to trying something new.  As uncertainty avoidant societies, Iranian and Greek societies strongly prefer deductive rather than inductive approaches and strongly relying on expertise.  Societies exhibiting high uncertainty avoidance maintain rigid codes of belief and behavior and are intolerant of unorthodox ideas, often exhibiting an emotional need for rules (Hofstede, 2006).  By contrast, while German and Singapore societies may be rated as uncertainty accepting, contradictions with ratings compared to Hofstede 5-D results (1980) indicate the German and Singapore UA results may be related to those societal Power Distance ratings, which identify the extent that less powerful members within a society expect and accept that power is unequally distributed.  Based on exhibited variance noted with GLOBE data results and low correlation to the Hafstede (1980) 5-D data, the Uncertainty Avoidance and Power Distance dimensions ratings for this specific team needs to be further assessed to mitigate potential problems to the global team and adverse influence upon the greater organizational culture. 

Therefore, an effective leader creates a defined culture by optimizing structured organizational learning through the utilization of strategies exhibiting high levels of effectiveness.  The first pursuit in this endeavor is to mitigate learning overload.  Learning overload prevents leaders from helping followers realize progress and achieve stated goals (Reason, 2010).  Citing Kennedy (2006) and Franklin (2005), Reason (2010) further notes, “We can’t alter the brain to hold more information, but we can change our approach to learning in ways that reduce overwhelm and prepare us to deal with institutional challenges more effectively” (p. 99).  Cultural awareness and proactive planning accordingly will mitigate the potential for learning overload and thereby optimize this global team’s success.  

To Cite:

Anderson, C.J. (December 31, 2018) The impact of cultural diversity upon

organizational outcomes and group productivity [Web log post]

Retrieved from http://www.ucan-cja.blogspot.com/

References:

Collins, J. C., & Powell, S. (2004). Spotlight: The characteristics of level 5 leadership.

            Management Decision, (42) 5, 709-716.

Fang, T. (2003). A critique of Hofstede’s fifth national culture dimension”. International Journal

            of Cross Cultural Management, (3) 3.

Hofstede, G. (2006). What did GLOBE really measure? Researchers’ minds versus respondents’

 minds. Journal of International Business Studies, 37, 882-896.

House, R. J., Hanges, P. J., Javidan, M., Dorfman, P. W., & Gupta, V., Ed. (2004). Culture,

            leadership, and organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies. Sage Publications, Inc.:

            Thousand Oaks, CA.

Hui, M. K., Au, K., & Fock, H. (2004). Empowerment effects across cultures. Journal of

            International Business Studies, 35, 46-60.

Javidan, M., House, R. J., Dorfman, P. W., Hanges, P. J., & Sully de Luque, M. (2006)

            Conceptualizing and measuring culture and their consequences: a comparative review of

            GLOBE’s and Hofstede’s approaches. Journal of International Business Studies, 37,

897-914.

Leung, K. (2006). Editor’s introduction to the exchange between Hofstede and GLOBE.

Journal of International Business Studies, 37, 881.

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Smith, P. B. (2006). When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled: the GLOBE and Hofstede

            projects. Journal of International Business Studies, 37, 915-921.

Considering Educational Change Initiatives: The role of data compared to intuition

Effective facilitators of change initiatives understand the difference between the role of data compared to the role of intuition during the decision-making process.  While data may be misinterpreted, intuition is typically subject to bias.  Therefore, it is important to reconcile the efficacy of the data analysis process rather than depending upon intuition when seeking valid and reliable solutions.     

Effective Schools Research (Lezotte & Snyder, 2011) proved the value of formative assessments when seeking to optimize student learning.  In relation to the evaluation of learning, major differences exist between the purpose and value of standardized summative tests compared to formative assessments.  Standardized summative tests typically are assessments OF learning.  By contrast, formative assessment presents the opportunity to develop assessments FOR learning (Stiggins, 2008).  

Educational leaders, intent on increasing the system’s collective capacity for student achievement, ensure collaborative school teams create common formative assessments.  Dufour et al (2008) cited Reeves’ (2004) belief that when collaboratively created, common formative assessments are the “best practice in assessment” (p.71).  As part of the evaluation process, leaders should emphasize the need for potential solutions to be derived from diverse data analysis grounded in research-based best practices.  By contrast, identification and implementation of changes based on faulty analysis, skewed by bias-laden intuition, could either result in paralysis by analysis or knee jerk reactions.  The goal of assessment proficiency is to allow teachers to collect data based on student learning and then help them to reliably adjust instruction or interventions to optimize the learning for all mission.    

Assessment is how educators can measure or confirm learning.  Based on this simple reality, effective teachers grasp the reality that assessment and learning are two COMPLIMENTARY sides of the education process.  Therefore, diverse assessment data help reflective teachers' creativity, leading to innovative but reliable instruction and interventions.   

The development of common formative assessments through professional learning communities enhance the assessment literacy of involved teachers (Dufour et al., 2008) and mitigate potential bias.  Crucially, collaborative teams outperform individual efforts, therefore, "learning not only occurs in teams but endures" (Schmoker, 1999, p. 12).  Social cognition theory (Vygotsky, 1979) and the emotional tenor of the school (Reason, 2010) are two factors that help a collaborative team exhibit increased levels of innovation and creativity compared to a single teacher operating within a lonely, isolated classroom.  An effective leader does not leave the emotional tenor of a school to chance.  Rather, she or he promotes an emotionally positive climate and collaborative culture that highlights sustained learning as monitored through diverse assessments.   

Researchers believe deep and meaningful professional development results when staff creatively and reliably DO the work rather than either training to do or planning to do the work (Stiggins, 1999; Pfeffer and Sutton, 2000; Fullan, 2001; Dufour et al., 2008).  Therefore, an effective leader enhances the practical application of collaborative assessments and shared data points by ensuring analysis, application, and formation of next steps within an effective professional learning community (PLC) rather than through isolated, autonomous classrooms.  An effective school-based PLC relies on the creation and analysis of collaborative assessments, embraces collective inquiry, commits to continuous improvement, and is results-oriented (Dufour et al., 2008). 

In summary, an effective school’s decision-making processes shape its learning agenda based on the utilization of both formative and summative assessment data analysis.  Common formative assessments are essential (Reeves, 2006) but optimized when developed, implemented, and reviewed through an approach that is systemically engrained by tenets of an effective professional learning community (Schmoker, 2004b; Dufour et al, 2008; Marzano & Waters, 2009).  Unlike summative assessments, common formative assessments increase creativity grounded in defined autonomy (Marzano & Waters, 2009).  Formative and summative assessment data analysis reliably satisfies the correlate of frequent monitoring and adjustment (Lezotte, 1991).  Compared to intuition-fueled beliefs, diverse data analysis based on research, defined autonomy, and effective collaborative practices lead to more informed, reliable solutions that result in sustained success.   

To cite:  

Anderson, C.J. (September 30, 2018) Considering educational change initiatives: The role of data  

compared to intuition. [Web log post] Retrieved from http://www.ucan-cja.blogspot.com/   

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