Should the Owner of an Education Business Have a Learning Culture?

According to Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson “Failure and fault are virtually inseparable in most households, organisations, and cultures. Every child learns at some point that admitting failure means taking the blame. That is why so few organisations have shifted to a culture of psychological safety in which the rewards of learning from failure can be fully realised. A culture that makes it safe to admit and report on failure can—and in some organisational contexts must—coexist with high standards for performance”. No individual or organisation is perfect; in fact, there is a myriad of research about the dangers of perfectionism. What role should our schools and their governing body play in living and role modelling the right culture? Tolerating unavoidable failures in complex systems and intelligent failures at the forefront of knowledge will not promote mediocrity according to Professor Edmondson. She believes tolerance is essential for any organisation that wishes to extract the knowledge such failures provide. But failure is still inherently emotionally charged; getting an organisation to accept it takes leadership.

Creating and reinforcing the right culture starts at the top. The right culture, as quoted by Peter Drucker when he said: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”, is critical to an organisation’s success and sustainability. Organisations that create a strong culture for their employees internally reap the rewards of this culture externally. An organisation’s culture, whether positive or negative, quickly becomes recognisable outside of an organisation, as we’ve seen with many examples in the news.

Only leaders can create and reinforce a culture that counteracts the blame game and makes people feel both comfortable with and responsible for raising and learning from failures or issues. Leaders must insist their organisations develop a clear understanding of what happened—not of “who did it”—when things go wrong. This requires consistently reporting failures, small and large; systematically analysing them; and proactively searching for opportunities to experiment. Imagine how much time and money would have been saved by the Presbyterian and Methodist Schools Association (PMSA) in legal fees, consultancy costs, PR spin doctors and payouts over the past eighteen months (and much longer) if this approach was adopted.

To be clear, these funds come from the school fees parents pay. If you are looking around your school and the buildings are looking tired and in desperate need of maintenance or the resources your child needs are not available or are scarce think of what this money could have been spent on. It’s a bit like the State Government spending half a million dollars to change the name of the Children’s Hospital while there is a code yellow at multiple hospitals due to a shortage of beds and staff.

So back to the question at hand; should the owner of an education business have a learning culture?

What do you think? I would think they should absolutely be leading from the top. It should be the core of their culture. No student walks into each year of schooling knowing everything and not making mistakes. This is part of learning. The Oxford dictionary defines learning as “The acquisition of knowledge or skills through study, experience, or being taught”. Anyone who is a parent at one of the schools will have surely seen the dedication of the teaching staff in continual learning. It is also fair to say that the events that have lead us to become involved, and maintain our focus on ensuring true change is effected, have stemmed from not any one of the four schools but the PMSA itself and in particular the PMSA Council and each 2017 Councillor of which the majority still sit on the Council.

What learnings have been taken by each of them and the collective? What accountability has been taken? What has been changed to ensure these failures are not repeated? Beyond flashy videos and statements of actions that will supposedly be taken at some unknown point in the future (heaven forbid you should set a date actions must be completed by) what has changed? Some re-branding and what appears to be the Deloitte report being implemented despite promises it would not be; does that sound like the right culture; does it sound like anything has changed?