LEADING THROUGH LISTENING

This is that time of year where people in many schools are looking at each other and saying, "Weren't we just saying yesterday that March is such a long month and how are we going to get through it?" And then here we are, at the end of the longest month of the school year and on the doorstep of April, which hypothetically marks the beginning of the end. April is to the school year as coming around the last bend is to horse racing. In schools, we are in the thick of scheduling for secondary schools, budget planning for next year, recruiting potential vacancies, State testing is on our doorstep, and none of that mentions the myriad of activities that are going to occur in the coming weeks within our schools that everyone is busy planning for now. The NCAA calls it March Madness because of the unpredictability of each individual game; schools experience March madness simply because there is always something going on as we move into the home stretch of the school year and i...

In the past few weeks, I've been doing a lot of reading about organization leadership and innovation. Almost every educational text that speaks about leadership in our current literature references the rise and sustained success of Apple, one of the world's foremost innovators of technology. In today's society, you almost have to be living under a rock to have not heard of Apple or to even understand what a difference they have made on the world of technology and how we live our lives. However, I would argue that many may not understand just how they were able to create such success. Every book that I have read that references Apple didn't go into much detail on this topic either. They talked about taking chances and risks that other companies weren't willing to take. Personal computers, digital music, and revolutionizing the phone industry (not the cell phone). That is until recently when I came across literature that explained WHY Apple became so successful to b...