I came across an essay this weekend by Tennessee Williams, written in 1947, entitled "The Catastrophe of Success".
The essay explores the personal and psychological impact of Williams' sudden rise to fame after the success of his play, The Glass Menagerie. It reflects on how achieving success, rather than bringing him happiness, led to a sense of alienation, complacency, and even a loss of purpose.
Surrounded by adulation and luxury, Williams describes how he was stripped of the very hunger and creativity that had brought him to this point; how his now-comfortable life had isolated him from the ordinary experiences of those around him; and that he had begun to lose sight of the original vision and purpose behind his work.
Seventy-seven years later, it could be argued that Williams' essay stands tall and shines bright as a lighthouse, guiding us away from the rocks that might otherwise shipwreck the institution that is the modern successful school.
Reflecting on this essay and its wisdom for those of us intent on writing the future experience of school, three ideas come to mind.
First, the energy that a school requires for self-examination, reflection, growth, and creativity is often commensurate with its "hunger". It's one of the reasons why you tend to find levels of innovation in start-up enterprises compared to big bureaucracies; after all hunger is almost always most felt at times when there is the risk of not knowing where your next meal is coming from. Similarly, if a school enjoys consistently high enrolment and no financial constraints, it will simply not feel the same appetite for change or growth.
Second, just as the worst thing that can happen to a writer is to become comfortable but isolated from her audience, so it follows that the worst thing that can happen to a school is that it becomes comfortable but isolated from the very students and families it seeks to serve. As school leaders, we simply cannot afford to let our success - whether financial, reputational, academic, or otherwise - blind us to the ever-evolving felt experience of students, families, and (for that matter) employees in our school. We can also never lose sight of the fact that the job that we need to get done today is unlikely to be the same tomorrow, in just the same way that a successful playwright knows that today's 5-star broadway hit offers a guaranteed formula for future accolades.
Finally, the successful school is the school that is most likely to develop "organizational myopia", a syndrome that limits the capacity of organizations to foresee the effects of their own decisions and to recognize signs of danger or opportunity. Success locks us into complacency, a naive feeling of institutional invincibility and It-Could-Never-Happen-To-Us syndrome; all the while pushing us further and further away from the school's articulated purpose and the ambitious goals that we should be reaching towards. Organizational myopia, borne about through success in enrolment, academic or financial results, even accreditation results, can all quickly become an end in itself, rather than just a means to a more meaningful end.
As we anticipate (in many parts of the world) another "successful"year ahead, perhaps we would do well to stop for a moment and ask ourselves: What is the success that we want to achieve and what are the perils that success might bring in its wake, unless we are careful to navigate a path around them?
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