2007 School Volume 1 Number 8 Leadership & Management POLICY • LEADERSHIP • MANAGEMENT • GOVERNANCE for South African Schools In this Issue School Management & Leadership Makeover Like the leadership teams of our readers and subscribers, we are beginning to formulate our plans for the new year and to put in place the structures needed to SM&L Makeover .......................................... 1 ensure that we provide you with a better and more valuable product. The first step in Our plans to improve SM&L in the year ahead. this process has been to establish SM&L as a separate business entity called Ednews (SM&L was previously published by Eduskills). In line with our commitment to providing Leadership Lessons from Jake White ....... 2 our readers with a better product, we are planning to increase the extent of SM&L from We examine how well Jake White and the Springbok team match the profile of good-to- 12 to 16 pages. This will make it possible for us to provide greater coverage of issues of great companies identified by Jim Collins. interest to school leaders and to include not only issues of leadership, management and policy but also those related to governance for which we perceive there to be a Schools making a difference ..................... 4 clear need. The increased extent will also make it possible for us to include some Strategies used by St James RC Primary school to bring about a 38.1% increase in its Grade 3 school-specific advertising which is necessary to SM&L sustainable in the long term. literacy results and a 10.1% increase in its numeracy results. To celebrate our independence we have dressed SM&L up in a new livery. Some of our readers will no doubt recognise the design similarity to Managing Editor Alan Clarke’s The National College of School Leadership ..... 8 recently-published book, The Handbook of School Management. This is deliberate and Leadership programmes offered by the NCSL and lessons learned from programmes that have is done with the permission and support of Kate McCallum, the publisher of the book, worked. who sees SM&L as a complementary publication to The Handbook of School Management and a means of keeping school leaders abreast of new and changing Leadership ................................................. 10 developments in education. For frank and honest feedback about your performance it is best to talk to the man in the SM&L mirror. We advise on the questions that need to obtains its information from a wide range of sources. Some of it comes from be asked. the network of contacts that we have developed through our subscribers and the personal networks that Managing Editor Alan Clarke and Educational Consultant Clive Management: Reviewing your year .......... 12 Roos have built up over their many years of involvement in education. We also scan the Begin your planning for 2008 with a thorough review of the 2007 school year. DoE and PED websites on a regular basis, as well as the websites of the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSAP), the National Association of Preparing for the NSC in 2008 ................ 14 Elementary School Principals (NAESSP), The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Complete our questionnaire and become part of Development (ASCD), the National College of School Leadership (NCSL), and a cooperative approach to preparing for the NSC. Behaviour4Learning to ensure that we remain at the cutting edge of what is happening SAPA News ................................................. 16 in education and are able to provide our readers with the latest and most useful The National Executive Committee of the South education-related material. Other sources of information include material sourced from African Principals’ Association. international foundations with a focus on education such as the International Confederation of Principals (ICP), the Wallace Foundation and the Specialist School Trust. Edulis, the excellent WCED-funded Education library in Bellville which subscribes to wide selection of local and international educational-related journals is another SM&L excellent resource. The Edulis staff normally dispatch those journals with a focus on issues of management and leadership on a circuit which takes them through the offices of most of the senior officials of the WCED. As a result, it is nearly a year after their is published 10 times per year by cover date that these journals become available to those who use the library. We have Ednews. It is editorially and financially managed to persuade the librarians to call us as soon as the new journals are received independent and it not affiliated to any by the library. This makes it possible for us to scan through the content lists and pages organisation. It seeks to provide the for material that may be of interest to readers. The journals include: Educational leaders of South African schools with Leadership, Managing Schools Today, Principal Leadership, Educational Research, current and relevant information on issues of policy, leadership, management and Continued on page 9 governance. SM&L, P.O. Box 2612, CLAREINCH, 7740 • 021 683 2899 • Fax 086 689 5971• E-mail: [email protected] 1 www.ednews.co.za Leadership Lessons from Jake White & the Springbok team Alan Clarke In the aftermath of our wonderful victory in the Rugby World Cup and the euphoria that has followed it, it is interesting to reflect on Jake White’s leadership qualities and the leadership strategies he used in developing his cup-winning team. How well do Jake White and his successful Springbok team match the profile of the good- to-great companies that Jim Collins identifies in his book “Good to Great”? Is Jake a Level 5 leader in terms of the criteria that Collins uses to define Level 5 leadership? Collins identifies two key paradoxical attributes of level 5 leaders: Personal modesty Level 5 leaders are typically modest, they avoid personal Jake White: Level 5 Leadership - Personal Modesty and adulation and are not boastful about their achievements. Professional Will As leaders, they rely more on quiet determination and inspiring standards than charisma to motivate people. success of the organisation rather than claiming it for They measure their success by the achievements of the themselves. organisation they lead rather than by their own There are those that may suggest that Jake White enjoys achievements and they establish a platform that will the limelight and courts controversy but this writer is not promote the future success of the organisation after they convinced that this is true. On the many occasions when have departed. Level 5 leaders take personal he has featured in the news during his nearly four years responsibility for poor results and never blame others or as Springbok Coach it has been for reasons of controversy. external factors for under-performance. By and large, however, these controversies have not been Professional will of his making and have arisen because of issues relating to the transformation of rugby rather than to his coaching Level 5 leaders are characterised by their ability to duties. He is certainly not a charismatic leader; rather he produce superb results and can be identified as catalysts has inspired his team through his long-term vision of what in turning good organisations into great organisations. he believed could be achieved. An example of this is the More than anything else, they are unwavering in their story of how the squad that he gathered together initially determination to do what needs to be done to produce nearly four years ago smiled nervously and rather the best long-term results and to ensure that the sheepishly when he suggested that they were the nucleus organisation they lead endures and remains world class of the team that would win the World Cup in 2007. Yet it for its type. They prefer to give credit to others for the was this vision that was to sustain him and the team through the many difficult challenges that they faced in Jim Collins the years that followed. He certainly showed a great deal of professional will and an unwavering determination to Writers of this newsletter have used the writing of do what needed to be done to achieve that goal. He knew Jim Collins in the past. He operates a management which players he wanted, including his captain, and research laboratory in Boulder, Colorado and is co- backed his decisions and his players through thick and author of “Good to Great: Why some companies make thin. He had a clear idea of the levels of fitness and skill the leap … and others don’t” (HarperBusiness 2001) that he required of each player and set about putting in and co-author with Jerry I. Porras of Built to Last: place the structures and programmes that were needed Successful habits of visionary companies” to achieve these. When South Africa lost 16 - 32 to (HarperBusiness 2002). Both books are worth reading England in their 2004 tour to the UK, he is famously if you are interested in issues of leadership and quoted as saying, “It looked like men against boys at management. Most of the material for this article was times”. By the time the World Cup arrived, Jake’s boys based on “Level 5 Leadership: The Triumph of Humility had grown up - as the English found to their cost. and Fierce Resolve” published in Harvard Business Review: OnPoint. (The Best of HBR 2001, product Collins identifies 6 strategies used by these leaders to 5831). deliver greatness: 2 SM&L, P.O. Box 2612, CLAREINCH, 7740 • 021 683 2899 • Fax 086 689 5971• E-mail: [email protected] www.ednews.co.za this entire period he remained committed to his dream of World-Cup glory. Buildup-breakthrough flywheel The buildup-breakthrough flywheel is about relentlessly pursuing your purpose.