Flight 2020: lessons for the management of schools.

Although I’ve never asked, I’d imagine that any frequent flier such as an international educator would have no fear of flying with the plane in autopilot. Cruising at 38,000 feet with no doubt about the safety of the aircraft and marvelling at the science behind it all, a frequent flier knows there is very little chance that anything will go wrong. Bumps? A slight change in the wind. Juddering at take-off and landing? All part of the experience. They’ve done this many times before, and autopilot is to frequent fliers as traffic calming measures are to road users.

International Schools (IS) and their principals are comparable to planes and their pilot; yet whereas the pilot has to have the skills to manage each stage of the flight, the IS principal isn’t expected to manage each stage of the IS development. Founding principals who enjoy the challenges related to starting a school won’t always enjoy continuing the flight through its autopilot stage: once the school is up and running, the challenges they enjoy fade. Those who remain in the cockpit from the beginning tend to have been those in the co-pilot seat form the beginning, whether the pilot has been the board of the founding principal. Educators joining an IS team whilst it’s cruising in its market niche are usually judged by their peers on their ability to meld into the predictability of an operation that can and should remain in autopilot. On the other hand, new principals joining ISs are usually judged on whether or not they are able to keep their hands off the autopilot.

There are bumps along the flight path of an IS, but generally nothing that needs to disturb the accepted flow. Only the recent trend to pass accreditation has presented noticeable turbulence, which whatever the outcome of the inspection, is often followed by the IS’s rapid return to the familiar ways of its operation under autopilot. The global pandemic of COVID-19, however, has rocked the plane hard enough to drop the oxygen-masks. Those ISs still in the early stages of flight, shortly after take-off, have seemed to have coped with the turbulence better than those ISs who are long-established. Why? Because those managers in the former schools are still in the challenging take-off stage, navigating anticipated bumps, whereas those in autopilot have been less able to adjust to managing the inertia.

IGE’s Executive Team have managed schools through all stages of their life cycle (flights!) and operations. Our processes of mentoring each other, and challenging our individual perspectives, means that we always lead the in-school teams in optimising the operations of ISs to their potential. The works of Christensen[1], Finkelstein[2], and Edmondson[3] make essential reading for managers and school owners wishing to have their own thinking challenged as to how we prepare to achieve the best, avoid turbulence, and manage the bumps effectively.

If you’d like to know how we can work with you to grow your school, get in touch. With IGE piloting the school, you can rest assured that the expert management skills and knowledge you require are being deployed to continually grow your school.

[1] The Innovators Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail; Clayton M. Christensen

[2] Why Smart Executives Fail; Sydney Finkelstein

[3] The Fearless Organization; Amy C. Edmondson