John West-BurnhamProfessor of Educational leadership

St. Mary’s University College

Community:. . . A tender network of interdependence.Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Our concept of organizations is moving away from the mechanistic creations that flourished in the age of bureaucracy. We have begun to speak in earnest of more fluid organic structures, even of boundaryless organizations. We are beginning to recognize organizations as systems, construing them as “learning organizations” and crediting them with some type of self-renewing capacity. Wheatley M (1992) Leadership and the New Science San Francisco Berrett-Koehler

Living in the left hemisphere

The world of the left hemisphere, dependent on denonative language and abstraction, yields clarity and power to manipulate things that are known, fixed static, isolated, decontextualised, explicit, disembodied, general in nature but ultimately lifeless. McGilchrist I (2009) The Master and his Emissary Yale University Press

Living in the right hemisphere

. . . yields a world of individual, changing, evolving, interconnected, implicit, incarnate, living beings within the context of the lived world, but in the nature of things never fully graspable, always imperfectly known – and to this world it exists in a relationship of care.

If the left brain ruled the world:

Fewer people would find themselves doing work involving contact in the real ‘lived’ world rather than plans, strategies, paperwork, management and bureaucratic procedures. In fact more and more work would come to be overtaken by the meta-process of documenting or justifying what one was doing or supposed to be doing – at the expense of the real job in the real world.

Organization Community

• Competition Collaboration• Hierarchy Networks• Certainty/ linearity Complexity• Top down power Shared authority• Low trust/control High trust/consent• Specialization/boundaries Interdependence• Career structure Personal growth • Efficiency/outcomes Enhanced value• Performance based accountability Moral accountability• Rule-bound Value-driven

150:• The average size of a clan in pre-industrial society.• The average size of a GoreTex factory.• The average size of village in the Domesday survey.• The average size of an English village in the 18th century.• The size of the maniple – the basic unit of the Roman army.• The size of the company – the basic unit of the British army• The Amish split their communities once they exceed 150.• A survey found people sent an average of 68 Christmas cards to

separate households with a combined total of 150 inhabitants.

Dunbar R (2010) How Many Friends Does One Person Need? Faber

Circles of intimacy

Towns confer an identity that grows from a sense of community. That word carries a strange burden, even in the original language. The French word commune was something that was common, in the sense of shared, for common use; it could also mean a community or state.The Latin communio implied fellowship and mutual participation; but it also had a second meaning: to fortify on all sides, to barricade, to entrench.

Radford T (2011) The Address Book – Our Place in the Scheme of Things Fourth Estate

Cooperating is harder than simply sharing, because it involves changing your behavior to synchronize with people who are changing their behavior to synchronize with you. . . Unlike sharing, where the group is mainly an aggregate of of participants, cooperating creates group identity – you know who you are cooperating with.

Shirky C (2009) Here Comes Everybody Penguin

I want to propose a different kind of utopia – one that is both fluid and plural. Instead of a singular village, what about a society in which each of us can belong to an array of different groupings or communities.This embodies two major shifts. One is to do with the number of communities we belong to. The other is that very few of these groups are rooted to one spot.The good life embodies a confident rejection of life in a medieval village and monoculturalism. The good life enshrines voluntarism and choice.Hemming H (2011) Together: How Small Groups Achieve Big Things John Murray

. . . trust represents the social energy, or the “oven’s heat,” necessary for transforming these basic ingredients into comprehensive school change. Absent the social energy provided by trust, improvement initiatives are unlikely to culminate in meaningful change, regardless of their intrinsic merit.Bryk A et al (2010) Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago University of Chicago Press

Community Leadership and Volunteers

1. Volunteers view themselves as highly independent decision makers.

2. Volunteers want frequent opportunities to express their opinions.

3. Volunteers choose to opt into campaigns case by case.

4. Community leaders often use narratives to motivate volunteers.

5. Volunteers are usually treated the same and have equal rights.

6. Community leaders’ power increases as the number of volunteers grows.Baghai M and Quigley J (2011) As One, individual action, collective power Penguin

Issues and implications

• Rethinking the architecture of community.• Using the skills and strategies of working in multiple

complex networks.• Securing consent, consensus and alignment around

values.• Working through empathy and interdependence.• Developing schools as communities rooted in trust.• Make schools microcosms of a just society and

communities of hope.