Mulling over Amazon’s ‘Single Thread Leadership’, which I’d thought to base this article on, I googled 'Amazon+leadership' having forgotten the name but not the acronym, and the top result was a link to 'Amazon's Leadership Principles'.[i] Naturally, I read them, interested in identifying how they might be applied to international school (IS) management, and as you’d expect there are takeaways. There are also some I thought best to leave with Amazon.
The principle to adopt that caught my attention related to Amazon’s leaders. Though ‘right a lot’ (a hope we all have of leaders), Amazon’s leaders ’seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their (own and the company’s) beliefs’. Challenging their own practice, as well as questioning the continuing appeal of a product is something effective companies do. Under the impetus of Covid-19 many ISs have found themselves having to consider how the established market they relied upon has changed, how they now staff their schools, and how they rebuild their market to carry them into 2021-22 and beyond.
Sydney Finkelstein in his book ‘Why Smart Executives Fail’, cites a company that has set up a group to create and argue for ideas that challenge the company’s self-perceived wisdom, engrained habits, and faith in its own products’ durability. They also test rivals’ innovations to see the potential impact on their own business. But it’s not just at leadership level that questions can be asked that may improve what the IS or business does. In ‘The Fearless Organization’, Amy C. Edmondson gives examples from industry to show how the creation of psychological safety in the workplace (employees being able to raise points without censure) by leaders develops a positive working environment, with benefits that include improved systems and talented staff retention.
On the other hand, there is one Amazon principle I can’t envisage utilising in an IS context. This is based upon pushing forward with ideas, practices, or products that are not readily accepted, in the dogged assumption that they eventually will be and the leaders will be proven right. This principle states that 'As (sic) we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time', which is the antithesis of the predictability and continuity that stakeholders expect from schools. Clayton M. Christensen’s 'The Innovators Dilemma' gives examples of companies that have developed ‘disruptive technologies’ that pushed aside seemingly unassailable existing technologies and products, replacing that technology along with the companies that continued stick by them to the end. Amazon's cashless stores may be one of those products which are ‘misunderstood’.
Being misunderstood as a school, however, will not be seen as innovative, but as disruptive in a negative way. Parents choose a school, because they are figuratively, and in the case of ISs literally, buying into a known quantity. An established curriculum, the path to university, childhood friendships, and in international schools, the fluency of another language to have a greater edge in a competitive globalised world. We can see how the brand image of tradition, dependability, and consistency is being capitalised upon by Britain’s public schools in their development of satellite schools overseas, as they recognise that being understood, not misunderstood, is what matters to schools’ stakeholders.
If you’d like to enquire as to the principles that IGE would manage your international school by, email us at this link.