Leadership:

The Ideas of Michael

Presented by

Fullan
William Allan Kritsonis, PhD
Professor
PhD Program in Educational
Leadership
Prairie View A&M University
Texas A&M University System

EDUL 7043 Organizational

Development and Change

Spring 2013
Leadership Is
1) Strategy of the decade.
2) About the number of other leaders you
cultivate and remain after you leave.
3) A matter of building trust amidst high
expectations.
4) Good succession planning--- not
turnover, but discontinuity of direction
is the problem.
The Change Puzzle
Why Is Change Complex?
Fullan sees complex change as a process
that cannot be understood and handled
simply in terms of cause and effect. Instead
of managing such situations by applying local
fixes, we should go with a developed and
refined process. For those complex changes,
the leader should be committed to certain
values, but uncertain to pathways.
What is Change?
1) New Materials

2) New Behaviors/Practices

3) New Beliefs and Understandings

New Insights
Fullan is a proponent of mentoring. He
believes that mentors gain as much from their
protgs as their protgs do from them.

He believes that thinking outside of the box is

sometimes difficult because of overload and
vulnerability but a new mindset on new
insights can help a person truly lead.
Brain Barriers
1. Failure to See
2. Failure to Move
3. Failure to Finish
Failure to See
The
comprehensiveness
mistake
The I get it mistake
Illuminate the right
thing
Failure to Move
The clearer the new vision,
the more immobilized people
become.
Right Thing Poorly
The clearer the new vision, the easier it
is for people to see all the specific ways
in which they will be incompetent and
look stupid. Many prefer to be
competent at the wrong thing than
incompetent at the right thing.
Failure to Finish
People get tired.
People get lost.
 Ways to Break Through
Barriers
Conceive
Believe
Achieve
Eight Elements of Sustainability

Sustainability
is the capacity of the
system to engage in the complexities of
continuous improvement with values of
deep human purpose (Fullan, 2005).
1. Public service with moral
purpose.
Raise the bar &
close the gap of
student learning
Be respectful
Improve the social
environment
2. Commitment to changing
context at all levels
Mandatory initiatives
such as NCLB only
change a tiny slice
of the context.
In order for
transformational
change to occur, it
must motivate or
give people the
ability to succeed.
3. Lateral capacity building
through networks
Collaboration
rather than
competition
Link the
ineffective
with the
effective
4. Vertical and co-
development relationships.
Vertical relationships
(state/district,
district/school, etc.)
must be
strengthened
through
SUPPORT &
RESOURCES
5. Deep learning
Learn from your actions.
Fail intelligently.
Exchange of ideas fosters
the cohesiveness of a
group.
6. Dual commitment to short-
term and long-term results
Ascertainlong-term
results while
committing to short-
term objectives
7. Cyclical energizing
Sustainability is
cyclical and
continuous.
Energy (physical,
emotional, mental,
spiritual) is required.
Time and ingenuity
are required for the
next breakthrough.
8. The long lever of leadership
Long term impact:
EMPOWER
OTHERS
To
LEAD
 Relationship Building as a
Change Agent
Successful principals reach out to
their parents and community and
work hard to expand the
professional capacity of the
teachers to develop a coherent
professional community.
Professional Learning
Communities
Foster the conditions required for
school growth
Develop a commitment to a mutual
purpose
Shared belief in ongoing common
actions
Develop school capacity
The New Meaning of
Educational Change
Create conditions to
develop the capacity to
learn for individuals and
the organization as a
whole.
Focus on changing the
culture of classrooms
and schools
Emphasize relationship
building and values
Develop Shared Meaning
Alllearning is a continual process of
making meaning
Share and sustain ideas within the
organization
Avoid the imposition of top-down reform
Teacher and schools should be seen as
moral change agents
Make democratic communities possible
Change and the Pedagogy of
Constructivism

Always involve your teachers in the process!

Never innovate the most.
You cant just have the best ideas.
Appreciate the implementation dip.
Involve those that resist you and transform
culture.
Key Players of Change: School
Principals- Teachers- Schools
School Principals- Gatekeeper of change.
Teachers- It depends on what each individual
thinks and does! Teachers skills and
dispositions are important to the success of
the organization.
Schools- Must build professional learning
communities, have program coherence, and
technical resources.
Key Words
Extinction
Moralpurpose
Understanding change
Developing relationships
Knowledge building
Coherence making
Dr. Fullans Beliefs
Leadership, then, is not mobilizing others to
solve problems we already know how to solve,
but to help them confront problems that have
never yet been successfully addressed.
Moral purpose cannot just be stated, it must be
accompanied by strategies for realizing it, and
those strategies are the leadership actions that
energize people to pursue a desired goal.
Leading in a culture of change is judged by
what leadership you produce in others.
Causes of Ineffective Change
Leaders not guided by moral purpose.
Leaders that do not fully understand the change
process, but may have moral purpose.
Leaders that innovate the most and do not improve
relationships.
Leaders who think that it is enough to have the best
ideas.
Leaders who do not appreciate early difficulties when
trying something new.
Leaders who do not redefine resistance as a potential
positive force and never re-culture.
Main Agent of Change in
Schools
The single most important factor ensuring
that all students meet performance goals at
the site level is the leadership of the
principal.
Michael Fullan
Leadership for Change
Engage peoples moral purpose
Build capacity
Understand the change process
Develop cultures for learning
Develop cultures of evaluation
Focus on leadership for change
Foster coherence making
Cultivate tri-level development
On Going Journey to Better
Schools
Reform in schools through cultural change
and school capacity is the key to success
Component 1- teachers knowledge and skills
Component 2- professional community
Component 3- program coherence
Component 4- teacher resources
Component 5- principal leadership
Recommendations for the Future
There must be a moral purpose
Understand the change process
Build relationships
Knowledge building
Coherence making
Summary
Leadership building and knowledge
building will continue to be the twin
buzzwords for the future.