For Board Members Understanding the Adaptability Polarity: Finding the Space Between Drift and Stagnancy

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." – Ferris Bueller

Schools have always been in the business of human change. Young people pass through the school doors for the first time, and by the time they leave at the end of their last school day, they are transformed in myriad ways – intellectually, socially, and physically.

The Paradox of Educational Transformation

Ironically, the same schools that have educated and helped to transform these students have often been monolithic themselves, passing along content from one generation to the next relatively unchanged year after year. At their best, however, they are far more than simply vessels that pass forward content generationally. Truly great schools are not monolithic but mission-centric. When built well, mission statements both preserve what should never change about the school AND challenge it to strive for progress. A great mission statement calls a school to aspiration. Like excellent students, schools are never really finished – they intentionally preserve their beginner's mind, the practice of Zen Buddhism that emphasizes the maintenance of an openness to new ideas. In short, great schools are great because they have never fully arrived.

The Beginner's Mind: What Boards Must Embrace

For a board member of a school to deploy the beginner's mind, adaptability is critical. And…becoming more so with each year. To be additive in the Board's critical generative work, individual members must be willing:

• To challenge their preconceptions.
• To listen to and seek to understand voices that express views that diverge from their own.
• To embody the curiosity that defines the success of a great student.

These are more challenging demands than they may first appear. They are also non-negotiable if boards are to be able to navigate the remarkable challenges queued up down the hallway and knocking loudly at the boardroom door.

The Twin Dangers: Drift and Paralysis

The boards and board members' schools that need most are the ones that recognize the validity of Ferris Bueller's comment–life does "move fast" and we "have to stop and look around" or we "will miss it."

The high speed of change and distraction is dizzying and dangerous for schools, which are charged with being both strategic and human-centric. In the larger culture, we are simplifying complexity into heroes and villains, easy conclusions, and with-us-or-against-us thinking. As a result, boards and board members risk drifting from their most sacred work to support the mission and preserve and extend the financial health of the institution. At the same time and for the same reason, boards and board members risk paralysis at the very moment they may need to take definitive action.

Holding the Tension: Mission Preservation Meets Necessary Adaptation

Effective boards and board members recognize that they must be adaptive; at the same time, they must be mission preservationists. This requires that they understand the nuance of the following statement: to move ever closer to the aspiration and ambition of the school's mission and values, they will have to examine the means by which they seek to achieve them. This will require both adaptation and an ability to know how to thread the space between a) drifting from the school's mission and b) becoming paralyzed by "life moving pretty fast" and failing to "stop and look around."