SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT: In Search of Excellence
This article is the last in the current series examining popular business concepts as they (potentially) apply to schools. This piece looks at what excellent schools might be able to learn from excellent companies.
Widely regarded as one of the most influential management books of all time, Peters and Waterman’s ‘In Search of Excellence’ is a business school classic. Written in 1982, it has been declared as “the greatest business book of all time”.
A bold claim. Does it live up to the hype? And how relevant is it to schools?
In essence, the core of the book is a focus on culture. Writing long before culture became a topic de jour, Peters and Waterman urged managers to:
“…figure out your value system: what your company stands for. What gives people pride?”
Peters says that he wanted — with a passion — to prove how crucial people and the cultures they create are to success, and to release businesses from the “tyranny of the bean counters”. The book’s success rested on the focus it gave to ‘soft’ factors — the needs of customers and the needs of staff. Systems, Peters and Waterman argued, should serve people, not people the systems.
Additionally, across the 32 ‘excellent’ companies they reviewed, Peters and Waterman found eight common themes:
- A bias for action — ‘getting on with it’.
- Close to the customer — learn from people served by the business.
- Autonomy and entrepreneurship — fostering innovation and nurturing ‘champions’.
- Productivity through people — treating employees as a source of quality.
- Values-driven — a philosophy that guides everyday practice.
- Stick to the knitting — stick to what you know.
- Lean staffing — keep headcounts tight.
- Simultaneous loose-tight properties — autonomy in shop-floor activities plus centralised values.
In other words, In Search of Excellence finds that excellent companies give people scope for autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy is made possible at excellent companies through values and not through direct control; strong values provide a framework whereby management are comfortable giving people latitude. This approach, coupled with a customer-focused orientation, allows the freedom for staff to master their roles. Purpose is achieved by “sticking to the knitting” — a phrase which encourages a clear focus on a firm’s core business, knowing what you do well and sticking to it.
FROM BOARDROOM TO BLACKBOARD
It is possible to see in Peters and Waterman’s themes some essential components of an outstanding school:
- Embracement of parent and student voice (close to the customer)
- Distributed leadership (productivity through people)
- Instructional leadership (sticking to the knitting)
- Team-based structures (loose-tight properties)
- Effective school improvement (getting on with it)
For schools seeking excellence, Peters and Waterman’s message may have particular resonance. School leaders may find that the key to improvement is productivity through people, a closer focus on parents and students (the ‘customers’), or even simply deciding on core values and ‘getting on with it’ — letting actions speak for themselves.
Equally, outstanding schools cannot simply rest on their laurels. The danger for these schools is overconfidence — there is a risk of not sticking to the knitting. An outstanding school may have even more to learn from Peters and Waterman than an improving school; the latter may still be searching for excellence, the former may believe they have found it and declared the search over. As Peters himself acknowledges though, excellence is not static, the excellent school of tomorrow will look very different to the one of today.
In short, the search for excellence is an ongoing challenge for all schools. Peters and Waterman’s text may be over 30 years old but it still provides a useful guide on this journey.
FURTHER READING
The value of In Search of Excellence for school leaders warrants a book in its own right. The book is focused on the corporate world but a quick reading of it, or of shorter summary articles related to it, would give a good return on time invested:
Peters, T. and Waterman. R.H. (1982) In Search of Excellence: Lessons From Americas Best Run Companies, London, Profile Books
Harvard Business Review — Towards a Theory of High Performance (July-August, 2005)
Harvard Business Review — Are ‘Great’ Companies Just Lucky (April, 2009)
