This week’s Five Quick Reads post offers an opportunity to think about collaboration, what it means (in general) and what it means for leaders and for companies.
“Leadership Caffeine—Humility and the Effective Leader” by Art Petty shares how an effective leader “draws upon the ideas, insights and approaches of the best minds on the team.” Collaboration is viewed as a strength, not weakness. Read more.
This Forbes article “8 Tips for Collaborative Leadership” says collaboration is an “essential ingredient” for leaders to be successful and organizations to thrive. Check it out here.
“Purpose is collaboration’s most unacknowledged determinant” says Nayar in the Harvard Business Review article, “A Shared Purpose Drives Collaboration.” Reading the article might seem odd at the start when the author questions “… wondered what makes collaboration seem so… unnatural at work?” and knowing that you and your school/organization/company have purpose. Check it out here.
Here’s a timeless article that shares the fruits of collaborating across organizations. “Platforms for Collaboration” (Stanford Social Innovation Review) shares with leaders how to put “collaboration platforms—exploration, experimentation, and execution… to work for them.” Read here and believe like we do, “some of the brightest ideas… grow in the spaces between organizations…”
“How to evaluate and foster collaboration among employees to win with consistency” is the tagline to this Inc. article’s title, “Your Employees: The Forgotten Element of Workplace Collaboration.” One key point is about creating the right environment; the author writes:
People working in silos will be disconnected from other departments and won’t be aware of how their work fits into the big picture.
We agree with the author and thinks this sometimes happens within a school system across schools and departments. Similarly, we encourage school districts to not be “limited” to its own systems; that is, consider district-level collaborations to learn about leading practices and what’s working well in other districts (see an example of district collaboration here). Check out the article here.
Quick Reads offers us an opportunity to share some of what we’re reading each week. This week we tie it back to a message recently shared on Twitter by Dr. Joann Sternke, Superintendent of the Pewaukee School District which was awarded the Baldrige. Dr. Sternke tweets:
Indeed! Collaborations allow us to “learn so much from and with each other.” We invite you to share the benefits of your experience collaborating across departments or districts.
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Dr. JoAnn Sternke is Superintendent of Pewaukee School District (WI). Prior to earning the 2013 Baldrige Award, Sternke led the school district to receive the state’s highest award, the Wisconsin Forward Award. All schools in the district have an “excellence” distinction. Dr. Sternke will keynote Destination High Performance in Orlando, FL, February 9-10, 2015. Learn more about this invitation only event by emailing Dr. KK Owen, Coach, at Karen.Owen@StuderEducation.com.
Read about Pewaukee School District Baldrige celebration in the official Baldrige blog by Christina Schaefer, April 7, 2014, Celebrating the 2013 Baldrige Award Recipients. Available online here: http://nistbaldrige.blogs.govdelivery.com/2014/04/07/celebrating-the-2013-baldrige-award-recipients/. Learn more about Sternke and Pewaukee School District: In her What’s Right in Education presentation titled “Creating a Culture of Excellence,” Dr. Sternke shared the continuous improvement process that set the stage for Baldrige recognition. Read our What’s Right post highlighting her presentation here. Follow Dr. Sternke on Twitter at @jsternke. For more information about Pewaukee School District check out its website at http://pewaukeeschools.schoolfusion.us/. Follow the school district on Twitter at @PewaukeeSD.
Let us know how you connect with the articles and share with us and WRIE readers what you’re reading.
Our mission at Studer Education is to help education systems achieve measurable results that produce positive outcomes in student achievement, employee engagement, support services, and financial efficiencies and productivity. Our goal is to help school systems provide students with a great place to learn, teachers with a great place to teach, and parents with confidence that their children are getting a great education. Follow us on Twitter at @StuderEducation and visit us online at http://studereducation.com. Studer Education is a division of Studer Group, ranked for the seventh straight year on the Best Small and Medium Workplaces by Great Place to Work® and a recipient of the 2010 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.
Filed under: How to Lead… Tagged: #Team, @IncMagazine, @Stanford, Baldrige, Collaboration, Five Quick Reads, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, HBR, Innovation, Leadership, Sternke, Studer Education 
