Creating and sustaining thoughtful improvement is a high priority for school leaders. But it can be an elusive goal, especially as schools struggle to strike a balance between longstanding practices and experimentation to fix problems. And resorting to a familiar top-down form of leadership doesn't always yield the desired results. Peter Senge is one of the world’s leading experts on how organizations can develop new ways to communicate and grow. He knows too well the damage that can be done when an organization gets caught up in the "fad cycle" -- where a new idea holds leaders’ imaginations for just a year or two, instead of the five or even 10 years that might be necessary for true reform. Senge believes that, to educate children well, school superintendents and cafeteria workers alike need to scrutinize how they think about their jobs. They must become aware of deeply ingrained assumptions they may not even know they have -- but that can inhibit their performance or blind them to new possibilities. According to Senge, "Only by changing how we think can we
change deeply embedded policies and practices. Only by changing how we
interact can shared visions, shared understandings and new capacities for
coordinated action be established."http://www.aasa.org/publications/sa/2003_05/SengeQ&A.htm