What we pass off as innovative in schools amuses me at times. We tend to think that just because we are doing something different than before then it is innovative or ground-breaking. It’s not. I would argue that, more often than not, most of what we consider innovative is merely different when compared to how education has done things in the past. And, to be honest, education is a glacially-paced, slow-changing context, so that is a very low comparison bar over which to jump.
The future requires organizations to be agile. Organizations must be nimble, flexible, and scalable if they are gong to adapt to moving targets. The future will require any successful organization to be able to pivot and self-organize quickly, yet maintain their long-term strategic direction. Think of the world 2030 - a decade away from now. In order to prepare for some of the things that we know will be true then, we know schools have to start planning for that change now. The famous hockey star Wayne Gretzky always said:
“I don’t skate to where the puck is; I skate to where it is going.”
—Wayne Gretzky
Overt the years, we’ve learned that agility might be the largest missing ingredient in the education sector. Structural barriers to change — faculty culture, governance, parental pressure, capacity and size of facilities, traditional outcomes, costs — all drive schools to make incremental and modest changes. Once we do, we tend to claim that these are indeed truly innovative adaptations, when, in reality, they are modest changes in a static educational environment.
The require of agility gets right down to the very purpose of education. My favorite quote in education is from the progressive educator Francis Parker who birthed the progressive education movement, as well as a few schools which we are grateful to count among our clients.
“The work of the school is determined by the needs of society.”
—Francis Parker
Last month, the movie theatre company AMC announced they were going to move into the video streaming sector. While I don’t know much about the movie industry, I know enough to know that they are really late to the party. If you have been to a movie theatre in recent years, you also know the same. They have really struggled to fill very expensive, empty seats when everything else is moving online. Sound familiar? How did they not see this coming? Every family in America has a Netflix, Prime Video, or Apple+ account. How were they this slow to adjust?
As an industry, we need to move where the puck is going. We have to think more entrepreneurial and have a higher bar of expectation for ourselves. We have learned that we are just not agile. And, I would place agility among the highest organizational attributes needed for sustainability in the future.
If we are not at least agile, we will cease to be.