“That’s what we’re here for, to get you outside your comfort zone,” said Consortium Executive Director Linda Croushore in remarks preceding a dinner discussion.
The overall goal of The Consortium’s Leadership Design Team initiative is to ensure that all voices in a district are heard and that all students’ needs are served. To participate, districts are required to form teams that include top administrators; all building principals; faculty representatives; and representatives of support functions such as counseling, food service and transportation. Teams also reserve an “open chair” to draw in community representatives, students or other stakeholders as discussions warrant.
The model is consistent with research findings that “diversity matters as much, if not more, than ability, in solving complex problems,” said Scott E. Page, a University of Michigan professor, who gave the keynote remarks at the retreat.
A mathematician, business economist and author of The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies, Page has been credited with recasting the common understanding of diversity from one that emphasizes race and gender to one that emphasizes differences in backgrounds and cultural frames of reference.
He has created mathematical proofs to illustrate the value of diversity, but told retreat attendees that the evidence is all around them in the business sector, with companies like Best Buy now relying on myriad store managers rather than a handful of market analysts to predict sales; and Procter & Gamble posting research problems on the Internet and sometimes finding solutions among nonscientists.
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Consortium Board Chairman Tom Knight (right) confers with Executive Director Linda Croushore during dinner.
