Are You a Fox or a Hedgehog?

For organizations like schools, the answer is critical

by Simon Holzapfel, Head of School, holzapfels@darrowschool.org

As you look at the future of education or business, would you rather be a fox or a hedgehog?

In his quest to understand high-performing organizations, author, consultant, and lecturer Jim Collins has rightly steered a generation of organization builders in the direction of the hedgehog, noting that success comes from knowing one thing very well, as opposed to knowing lots of things, fox style. Isaiah Berlin’s essay (in which he originated the concept) has also been formative for many, although he is more agnostic on which choice is better.

Of course, for any leader the answer is both — you need to be a fox and a hedgehog. The question is simply, in what proportions?

The proportion element is critical because if you fox around too much, you risk losing sight of your core strength and consequent revenue stream. At the same time, changes are coming in education and work life that will see hardcore hedgehogs get into trouble for not adapting. Doubling down on a hedgehog mentality is not something most schools can afford, literally.

Here are a few considerations:

• To foxes, all the world’s an opportunity, which clearly isn’t true. Richard Branson is famous for talking about all the opportunities he’s walked away from, leading to his business’s strength.
• To hedgehogs, the answer to a rapidly changing landscape is more of the same, which is probably not wise either.
• Organizations’s inherent biases are towards stasis and repeating past successes, i.e., hedgehog-ism, so any changes will have to work respectfully with those biases.
• If your team and organization isn’t having any sort of change conversation now, you are too hedgehog.
• If your team is only talking about change, you are too foxy.

Personally, I am more drawn to the fox view. Of course, some of my preference is just an inclination towards novelty. But not all of it. Most of it is the realization that demographic trends, socioeconomic trends, work life trends, and what families are looking for schools to do suggest that the future won’t look like the present, just more so.

The future is going to demand more fox from all of us. The key is to stay friendly with, and connected to, your inner hedgehog. It’s not the enemy, it’s the ballast needed to allow your fox to find new productive areas in which to roam.

Simon Says… is a regular blog by Simon Holzapfel, Head of The Darrow School. Learn more about active curriculum and project-based learning at darrowschool.org.

Read Simon Holzapfel’s bio.