"Oh, darn writers block
Why is my mind in a lock?
It's taking over my mind
Oh, the right words are so hard to find
I think my sanity is gone
'Cause this writer's block has lasted far too long
Why can't I get the words dead-on?
Every single word I write seems wrong!"
- Boo to Writers' Block by fruitilicious
It only took me six entries into the relaunch of my blog before I felt like I was in a rut. I found this poem on the Internet and it captures where I have been at mentally with my blog for the last several months. I truly admire those people who can maintain a relevant voice on a regular basis. My goal is to publish an essay each month that attacks traditional notions of what education is and provides a vision of what education can be.
Back in November, I wrote about the outbreak of teacher strikes in Illinois schools this year. Even last month, West Chicago District 33 was the latest to go on strike. In my November essay, I argued that the new evaluation system based on student test scores has broken down any remaining trust between teachers and administrators. Much of the ongoing rhetoric around the new teacher evaluation system reminds me of Jack Welch, the high flying CEO of General Electric (GE) during the dot-com craze of the late 90s. For my December entry, I had planned on writing an essay about Jack Welch's management philosophy of measuring the quality of everything using Six Sigma and annually firing the bottom 10% of managers, which sounds a lot like the rhetoric around measuring students in every subject and firing teachers and principals and closing schools based on the results. The danger is that we measure the wrong thing and fire the wrong people. However, I could not get the right angle on an essay about Jack Welch and GE.
I finally figured out that the interesting story is not Jack Welch, but instead the relevant story is Robert Nardelli, who was one of Jack Welch's lieutenants. When Jack Welch announced he would be retiring by 2001, there were two other lieutenants, who with Nardelli, were all vying for Jack Welch's job. In those days, Robert Nardelli was known as "Little Jack" for his similarities to Jack Welch. Although he personified much of the Jack Welch philosophy, he was not selected as Welch's successor. Instead, GE selected Jeffery Immelt. Home Depot wasted no time in hiring Nardelli as its CEO.
At Home Depot, Nardelli quickly instilled the Six Sigma discipline and overhauled the company, including shifting from full-time to part time staff. Through Nardelli's cost costing and standardization, Home Depot doubled revenue and profits in 5 years. Just like Home Depot, districts can get large test score gains by overhauling school structures, installing outcomes-focused principals, and standardizing the curriculum.
However, investors saw a different picture of Home Depot. Home Depot's stock price remained flat during Nardelli's tenure. Meanwhile, the stock price doubled at Home Depot's main competitor - Lowes. In addition Lowes was gaining market share against Home Depot and had significantly higher customer service ratings.
The problem for Home Depot was that the Jack Welch/GE management style destroyed Home Depot's competitive advantage. The full time store employees were all home improvement experts in their own right. The Orange Apron culture was a force to be reckoned with. They could give trusted advice to customers about what products were needed to accomplish their home improvement project. In addition, there was an entrepreneur culture at each store, which allowed the stores to respond to local conditions. Replacing the experienced full time staff with part-time, inexperienced staff and standardizing the store management led to inferior customer service ratings, declining same store sales, and flat stock prices.
This imposition of the wrong management style earned Nardelli a place on the list of Worst American CEOs of All Time. In fact, the Jack Welch management philosophy is not even relevant at GE anymore. Welch's successor, Jeffery Immelt, revolutionized the corporate culture at GE. He squelched the focus on process improvement and instead focused on creating new business through innovation. Eight years ago Businessweek declared that the most successful companies in America are those that focus on design and innovation. Apple and the new GE were the poster children of this declaration.
Last month, the Chicago Public Schools announced the potential closure of 129 "underpeforming" schools in Chicago. The students in those schools will be transferred to other schools that are "higher performing." CPS is taking a page out of Jack Welch's outdated, irrelevant play book. Unfortunately, this model has been proven destructive when applied in other industries. Early indicators show that the teacher and principal firing and school closing policy that is sweeping the nation is heading down the Home Depot road. Instead of increasing the quality of teachers that displaced students get, a University of Chicago study shows that, "The teacher workforce after interventions across all models was more likely to be white, younger, and less experienced, and was more likely to have provisional certification than the teachers who worked at those schools before the intervention." (p. 3) Just like at Home Depot, the policy is shifting the workforce from experienced to inexperienced teachers that have little connection to the local communities.
As a footnote to the Nardelli story, when the next Home Depot CEO reinstated the experienced workforce and reestablished the entrepreneurial culture, Home Depot gained ground on Lowes and is better positioned today for growth when the housing market recovers. If our education leaders are going to look to the corporate world for management models, it is imperative that they focus on up-to-date successful business models to emulate and attract high quality teaching staff by creating cultures of innovation rather than standardization.
