Why School Districts Aren’t Innovative

I was lucky enough to open a brand new high school. Part of excitement of the new school was the opportunity to open an Outback Steakhouse inside the campus.

I remember distinctly a meeting where leadership for Outback Steakhouse met school leadership for the first time. The meeting started with both sides sharing how different this opportunity was based upon what both sides had done in the past. Then, the meeting broke into two groups, allowing the Outback folks to discuss the project while school district did the same.

At the end of the breakout meetings, I remember how excited the Outback leadership was about the possibility of building their steakhouse inside a public school. They were almost giddy with anticipation, facing a challenge that was going to build their team and make it even stronger. But then I listened to the school district. They made every excuse possible about how this project was not going to work and tried to convince everyone in the room not to continue with subsequent meetings. They wanted to maintain the status quo, and not rock the boat.

Thankfully, the Outback Steakhouse project was saved by one progressive-thinking school superintendent along with a forward-thinking school board member. Outback was opened, and a restaurant-based work study program still exists at the school, despite the efforts of a traditional school district to kill the idea.

Throughout my career, I notice my school district stifling ideas, either by outside forces (like Outback), or from district employees who didn’t own the right “rank” inside the district.

I recently ran across a Harvard Business Review article, written by Timothy R. Clark, titled “Don’t Let Hierarchy Stifle Innovation.” Clark is the founder and CEO of LeaderFactor, a global leadership consulting and training firm.

In the article, Clark writes,

“In the team sport of innovation, the quality of interaction between teammates regulates the speed of discovery. If a team is healthy, the pattern of exchange will be free-flowing, candid, and energized. If it’s unhealthy, the team will retreat into silence, superficial niceness, or some combination of the two.”

“Much of the know-how required for innovation comes from the bottom of the organization – in other words, from local knowledge. Yet many non-management employees consider innovation outside the scope of their jobs. Even when they want to participate, they don’t because the organization’s tacit norms discourage it. The pressure to execute and remove variance overwhelms the motivation to innovate and introduce variance.”

Clark continues,

“In my research with hundreds of teams during the past decade, I’ve identified a cultural barrier that – perhaps more than any other – stifles innovation in its earliest stage: authority bias. Authority bias is the tendency to overvalue opinions from the top of the hierarchy and undervalue opinions from the bottom, and it eventually turns into exaggerated deference to the chain of command. Organization tend to give the most credibility to ideas, suggestions, or points or view based on source rather than substance. In fact, source becomes a proxy for substance because we reasonably expect more competency as we move up the hierarchy. But this creates natural disincentives for those at the bottom to raise their voices. The greater the power distance, the higher the perceived risk of speaking up. Thus, the grander the perch, the rarer the feedback.”

“Unleashing bottom-up innovation is largely a matter of neutralizing this side effect of hierarchy. But how can organizations create a true idea-meritocracy in which they become more agnostic to title, position, and authority and truly debate issues on their merits? How do they achieve cultural flatness: a condition in which power distance or structure does not restrict collaboration or the flow of information?”

Clark points to six steps leaders can take to neutralize authority bias, embrace cultural flatness, and unleash bottom-up innovation:

1. Grant irrevocable participation rights – Participation rights aren’t decision rights. A strong learning organization keep participation rights wide while limiting decision rights.
2. Practice exploratory inquiry – According to Clark, “The status quo becomes ingrained over time as our thoughts about it harden into dogma and we become attached to it. But the homogenization of thought is the enemy of innovation.”
3. Normalize constructive dissent – Team members must be given explicit permission, and even the obligation, to disagree.
4. Criticize your own ideas and decisions in public – Clark encourages leaders to think out loud with their team and publicly poke holes in their own thinking and behavior.
5. Celebrate dissent and invite more – According to Clark, “The most significant moments of truth in culture formation happen when a team member takes an interpersonal risk ‘on stage.’ In one team I observed, a team member voiced the unpopular opinion that a proposed decision was a bad idea. Creating a wave of cultural flatness, the team leader responded, ‘That’s fantastic. I’m excited to learn why you feel that way.’ Then he listened carefully and solicited more dissenting views.’”
6. Inject empathy – Clark describes empathy as “compassionate curiosity about another person’s journey from data to conclusions.” “Injecting empathy into the discussion can turn confrontation into fruitful collaboration.”

Most school districts don’t know how to practice this type of innovation leadership. Therefore, many great ideas about learning fall into oblivion. Ownership becomes the holy grail. Collaboration is something people talk about but rarely do.

Most of the innovative practices I saw as principal and region superintendent came at levels far below me on the organizational chart. And most of those practices never scaled, despite my team’s encouragement, because of someone else’s power and authority throughout the wider district.

What’s sad is I didn’t know how to stop these types of practices, and I still don’t.

I’ve become convinced that innovation is nearly impossible inside traditional school districts because of authority bias. It’s a big reason why I’m trying to persuade others to create a different type of learning system, one where cultural flatness rules the day.

Til tomorrow. SVB