By Rosabeth Moss Kanter, rkanter@hbs.edu.
Numbers, numbers, numbers. Is that what preoccupies public schools systems today - test scores, promotion percentages, dropout rates, and other performance statistics?
Don't get me wrong. I'm all in favor of measures, metrics, and feedback. I consider them among the essential tools for guiding organizations to ever higher levels of achievement. But as school systems work to comply with standards-based reforms, they are in danger of being taken over by accountants, not leaders.
That would miss an important part of what drives high performance: the people. Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics, became famous for his reliance on software programs and statistical analysis to manage performance on the baseball field. But he told me that he also devotes time to learning about his players' personal lives - talking to one about music, another about his college - and then mentions these interests to restore motivation when they struggle with the game. "Their self-esteem is part of the equation," he said.
Leaders give their people the confidence to work hard, to improve, to struggle through difficulties, knowing that they have the support to produce high achievements. Teachers must build the confidence of their students, school principals the confidence of their teachers, higher administrators the confidence of their principals. Leaders deliver confidence by espousing high standards in their messages, exemplifying these standards in the conduct they model, and establishing formal mechanisms to provide a structure for acting on those standards. Consider these examples from my research.
Espouse: the power of message.
Leaders articulate standards, values, and visions. They give pep talks. Their messages can incite to action when that is appropriate, or they can calm and soothe people to prevent them from panicking. Pep talks are empty without evidence, so let's call this "grounded optimism" - positive expectations based on specific facts that justify the optimism. In the strong cultures that develop in winning streaks, leaders' messages are internalized and echo throughout the system. One new school principal jumped in during the middle of the school year and introduced himself by crafting a new mission statement reflecting a set of values for how the school would run, which was then debated and reshaped by teacher groups who made it their own. It became a reminder of aspirations and a reference point for decisions.
Exemplify: the power of models. Leaders serve as role models, leading through the power of personal example. "I don't believe as a leader you can ever expect anybody to do things you are not willing to do yourself," said a successful coach of a professional sports team. The leaders I see in winning streaks and turnarounds try to embody the kinds of accountable, collaborative behavior they seek in others. Certainly the personal example of truth and reconciliation, inclusion, and empowerment set by Nelson Mandela, the first democratically-elected president of South Africa, reflects one of the most remarkable and admirable personal journeys of the twentieth century. In a different country and different way, Akin Ongor, CEO of Garanti Bank in Turkey, was an inspiring business role model with courage, and compassion - offering to resign when he discovered that the bank had lost $14 million due to a junior manager's mistake that control systems had not caught because he said he "shared the mistake," or mobilizing the bank's employees to help in the aftermath of an earthquake in Turkey.
Establish: the power of formal mechanisms. Leaders create processes, routines, and structures. They lead not just through person-to-person conversations, but also through formal structures and programs, the mechanics of organizations. A high school principal turned around the performance of a failing inner city school by setting up a variety of new structures and decision-making vehicles, including teacher teams that became planning groups for various areas - technology, after-school, college admissions, parent involvement. High-performing teams are not a force of nature; they are a product of professionalism embedded in organizational routines.
Coaches of successful college sports teams have many systematic ways to forge their players into victory machines that just keep winning -routines for practices, assessment tools and review sessions, leadership seminars, meeting schedules, a yearly calendar of activities including off-season events. Teams change composition each year, but structures and processes remain.
Call this the ME side of leadership - how to use yourself to support high performance in others, through the messages you espouse, the models you exemplify, and the mechanisms you establish.
For example:
Talk about mission and values, engage others in dialogue about high aspirations, and show your confidence that they can live up to them.
Use your own behavior to demonstrate values and standards in action.
Model what you want others to do.
Develop new structures, schedules, ongoing processes, or roles for people, that will make success more likely, by removing barriers and opening opportunities. Leaders deliver confidence to make high performance possible. Accountants just keep score.
--Rosabeth Moss Kanter holds a chaired professorship at Harvard Business School. She is the author of 16 books, including her newest bestseller, Confidence: How Winning Streaks & Losing Streaks Begin & End, published by Crown. Find her frameworks for leadership in public education at www.reinventingeducation.org. © Copyright 2005 by Rosabeth Moss Kanter. All rights reserved.
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