Book Review: Leading in a Culture of Change by Michael Fullan

This week's review is on Leading in a Culture of Change by Michael Fullan and the accompanying workbook.

Michael Fullan offers a focused work on what leadership in schools and districts demands and how to support that growth. While lacking many of the in-depth ideas and strategies as other leadership or principal-focused books do, Fullan's overall message is an important for those seeking to build collective capacity for leadership.

Fullan's goal is three-fold (vi): "how leaders can focus on certain key change themes that will allow them to lead effectively under messy conditions...how leaders foster leadership in others...how we can produce more 'leaders of leaders.'" Essentially the book seeks to assist leaders in their ability to recognize their mission amidst uncertainty, form leaders, and foster replacements. Interestingly, Fullan does more with the first goal than the latter two.

The book flows from recognizing the current moment to aspects of Fullan's conception of leadership, ending with a summing/forward-looking chapter entitled "The Hare and the Tortoise." His introduction reiterates one of his themes: "Charismatic leaders inadvertently often do more harm than good because...they provide episodic improvement followed by frustrated or despondent dependency...they are role models who can never be emulated" (1). This is the inherent challenge of school leadership - there are great principals out there, but enough for every school. So how can we form good principals?

There may be an interesting philosophical question of whether Fullan's claims are true in the sense that we can raise the baseline of principals with training, support, mentoring, et al. to the extent that the candidate pool is full. At the same point, can such methods lead to great principals? Or is there a special sauce that leads to greatness? This debate (Steve Jobs vs Tim Cook being a classic business example) is not addressed but certainly worth further investigation and rumination.

Leadership, for Fullan, lies in understanding that for schools "leadership and management...overlap and you need both qualities" (2), with leadership enabling people to "confront problems that have never yet been successfully addressed (3). Leaders build commitment internally and externally, "triggered by management policies and practices...and from energies internal to human beings" (8). This exposition of what leadership is leads to a focus on moral purpose.

The moral purpose of a leader (drawing from Sergiovanni) lies in anchoring "their practice in ideas, values, and commitments...in other words, character" (14). Leaders are driven by both egoistic and altruistic ideas, but still moving forward with purpose. Fullan does not delve into the purpose and mission of schools here; so this idea is not linked with a broader sense of leadership in schools. Purpose makes leadership effective and "mobilizes many people to tackle tough problems, be held accountable by measured and debatable indicators of success, and be ultimately assessed by the extent to which is awakens people's intrinsic commitment" (20). With this sense of moral purpose, leaders are better equipped to be in a culture of change.

This culture of change consists of a dichotomy of "nonlinearity" and "great potential" (31). Fullan presents and critiques several models of change (Kotter; Beer, Eisenstat, and Spector; Hamel), concluding that "change cannot be managed. It can be understood and perhaps led, but it cannot be controlled" (33). This claim is also not deeply investigated or defended, but recognizes the complexity of change in schools where personalities, stakeholders, and hierarchies mix with initiatives in a more difficult way, at times, than business. Fallon develops a rough sketch of change and then interweaves it with a discussion of Goleman's leadership styles.

There are some counter-intuitive ideas in this section. Resistance can improve implementation by building trust, feedback loops, and moral purpose within the context of relationships. The building of leadership components is more effective than a change management system due to its steadiness in complex times. [A claim which gets to the heart of the nature of leadership - whether it can be taught, and if not, how lacking systems around the path forward is a good thing]. Fullan repeatedly points to the need of differing strategies as a necessity for the current climate.

Chapter Four points to a key theme of his work: the need to build and strengthen relationships. A key tenant of any leadership book; Fullan does not offer anything particularly insightful here, and other guides which focus on different elements of relationship (trust, communication, EQ, et al) might be more helpful. Leaders should "walk their talk" and show weakness, rely on intuition, manage with tough empathy, and reveal their differences (55). Here Fullan struggles to differentiate how these qualities can be truly inculcated as he struggles to differentiate between his "charismatic" leaders and those he feels school need. The presented case studies follow a charismatic leader but claim to show systemic leadership growth. A revisiting of the organizations down the line would validate Fullan's claim.

A key point of this chapter is increasing capacity - something that good and great leaders do. Drawing on work by Newmann et al.: "teacher knowledge, skills, and dispositions; professional community; program coherence; technical resources; and principal leadership" (64). This professional community must reinforce good practices rather than "bad or ineffective practices. This is why close relationships are not ends in themselves" (67). Fullan ends the relationship section with a discussion of EQ.

Chapter Five focuses on Knowledge Building - clearly rooted in a concept of PLCs - where there is the "sharing [of] best practices within an organization" (79). Echoing my concerns with leadership, a difficulty here is the divide between explicit and tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is "highly personal and hard to formalize, making it difficult to communicate or share with others" (80). This can be overcome by linking such knowledge with mission in a true "culture of care" (82). In one of the case studies, this is highlighted by incorporating such vulnerability, sharing, and replicating as being a part of the evaluative process (84-86). Several examples of knowledge sharing are presented for review; again, an in-depth study or implementation guide would be helpful for leaders wanting more.

Chapter Six echoes back to the focus on moral purpose by focusing on the creative churn that the current moment inhabits; where leaders and institutions rely on coherence. Here leaders "provide the vision and are the context setters. But the actual solutions about how best to meet the challenges of the moment...have to be made by the people closest to the action" (111). Coherence is then made through "lateral accountability" where there is strong and positive peer pressure. In addition a strong sorting process focused on measurable success aligned to mission and a shared commitment in a collaborative atmosphere build a positive culture that can overcome disruption and groupthink.

The final chapter provides a summation and a look forward. Here Fullan highlights slow and steady progress rooted in "negative capability" (123) and a focus on building and cultivating leadership within the organization. This multi-levelled system of leadership enables greater flexibility and experimentation resulting in better outcomes. A short chapter, a deeper approach can be found in Fullan's Leadership and Sustainability.

This short book presents a succinct definition of leadership, several case studies, and some actionable insights. It does not present something immediately reproducible or address deeper questions of leadership (and) development. Thus it is an informative overview for those looking at the "leadership problem" in their systems and a jumping off point for addressing those challenges.

 Leading in a Culture of Change by Michael Fullan

Rating: 3/5 Stars

Good For: Those looking to form leaders, especially at the district level.

Best Nugget: Lots of great references to other's leadership-focused work.

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