Session 2: Leadership versus Management

Response to Discussion: Leadership versus ManagementWhen I think about the session 2 podcast I reflect on a school I worked at once which I will call ACME elementary school. At ACME leadership and management was easily visible after listening to Newberry’s podcast. Both the leader and manager were both for the advancement and implementation of technology at ACME, but that is where the contrasts started showing up. The leader would speak up in a technology committee meeting mandated by the manager with something like this, “I think we should phase out the desktop computers and put in wing laser printers, or better yet get one of those new Bizhub type printer copiers so we can better manage our paper, ink, and reduce the waste of the desktop printers when they go bad.” The manager (that persons superior) would say something like, “That is a great idea. Let’s look into the costs of it, but that sure does sound feasible.” After cost comparisons were looked at the idea was approved by the entire committee the big laser printers were ordered for specific areas on campus for the staff to have easy access to. Next, a staff member, which the leader had labeled a ‘red room’ (a red room at this site was one of those technology black holes, you know the room that nothing ever works) came into the managers office and said, “My printer is out of ink, I need more ink.” So in our next technology meeting we discussed the idea of buying 20 more desktop printers in the interim for specific hot rooms that would not be able to handle the change (ACME at the time had 46 teachers). In this scenario the leader presented an idea to a committee which was approved, but the manager shot holes in the idea to make things better for that one teacher. The idea of cost saving for the entire site did not work because the manager went and bought 20 printers for the staff, which ended up putting the school back at square one, but with all those fancy laser printers for a few teachers to use. The leader at ACME was thinking of the greater good for this site and the manager was just trying to please people one person at a time.

Activity Report:
1-14-7: brainstormed ideas for my proposals, hit the “Blog Tour”, posted on all sties that were up and running, changed the posting security setting on my blog to include word verification after receiving a spam post (sorry folks), I have my blog emailing me when someone posts so I read them as they are posted to give me time to reflect on them before I head out to my blog to post.
1-15-7: ran my proposal ideas by my wife to help me narrow them down to 5 that I could then run by Newberry, drafted up a Word document with the ideas and sent them to Newberry, listened to session 2 podcast (twice), wrote up my responses and activity log, posted to my site after several attempts.
1-16-7: hit the "blog tour" again and posted to all sites.
1-19-7: downloaded the session 3 podcast
1-21-7: downloaded the session 4 podcast, worked on the official write-up for my project proposals, posted my first proposal on my blog.
Daily: my email lets me know when people make a post on my site, I then can read the email with the post or check my blog.

Don't forget to check the comments, because I will respond to the posts there.