“The best laid schemes of mice and men
, go
often awry” –Robert Burns
At my kids’ school, they have a hierarchal
chart of crisis management teams that, if tested, have practiced drills
repeatedly through the years and instantly and without much thought, launch
into their various roles. The organizational structure resembles a bit of a
bowtie with the new Principal in position as the knot centrally tying the
networks together giving orders in one direction to the teachers, aides and
students, while communicating in the other direction with the district, external
safety officers and families (Krackhardt & Hanson, 1993, p. 111).
They’ve practiced fire drills, walking in
specific classrooms being led by their teacher out to the black top. They’ve
undergone large-scale emergency drills in honor of California’s Great Shakeout
(earthquake drill) with student actors acting as the injured. The principal has a reverse dial phone system
that can immediately contact the parents for all students just by recording one
simple message. The school has handled lockdowns during the course of the day,
if they’ve received notice from city safety officials that it is necessary to
shut off the campus.
From the very first paragraph of their article, Krackhardt and
Hanson mention that, often, it is not the formal plan, but the informal network
that truly gets the work done when push comes to shove, for example, when the
bank 1 block from campus gets robbed the day of the school Halloween carnival,
the suspects are armed and at large, (last seen one street over from the
school) causing the campus to go on lockdown for most of the school day and
into the evening.
The official network kicked into play. I received my reverse dial call from the principal and while pushing the buttons to instruct the system to begin the message I rolled my eyes and said “Yes, I’m aware that there is a Halloween carnival tonight and you hope to see us there…” Instead, the voice of the principal (4 weeks into his new position) stated that the school was on lockdown and parents needed to come pick up our kids.
With the need to speed up and spread out the communication effort and have multiple additional players step in to make the system operate smoothly, the informal network kicked into
action, straying from the formal hierarchy and following the lines of trust, as
parents started phoning each other to spread the call to pick up the children
since in this event, the children would only be released to their parents. When
I arrived at the school it was not teachers that greeted me at the locked front
gates but other parents who took note of my children’s names and classrooms,
sent yet another parent to go retrieve the students and who marked their names
when they were released to me. In that element, we were all parents trusting
each other to protect or deliver our children safely.
Ibarra and Hunter labeled these informal networks
that jump into action, keeping the system operating in a timely manner, Operational
Networks (Ibarra & Hunter, 2004, p. 4). While the particular roles that parents played that day were
not their usual informal network, they would not have been at campus and
in-place to assist so quickly if it were not for their true informal role with
the school as a art docents, classroom assistants, or PTA members – all roles
that are not formal roles in the school, but are all significant and easily
identifiable roles in the school operations.
I found out from my children, that the parents
and teachers all stepped outside of their formal roles and into informal roles
to feed students who were locked in the computer lab and not allowed to go to
lunch, or to escort children to their parents at the gate, or even let the
children make cell phone calls to hear a comforting voice of their parent.
After it was all over, the worst thing that happened was the kids were hurt by the cancellation of their Halloween carnival, and there were some parents frustrated
by the glitches in the formal system. I felt, personally, that the informal
network kicked in at exactly the right time and delivered my children to me in
one piece so I had new respect for the underlying informal networks that
were in place.
References:
Ibarra, H., and Hunter, M. (2007) How Leaders Create and Use
Networks,
Harvard
Business Review, pp.1-9
Krackhardt, D, and Hanson, J. (1993) Informal Networks: The Company
Behind
the
Chart, Harvard Business Review, pp. 104-111.
Great post Sarah!
ReplyDeleteI thought you did a great job of explaining formal and informal networks. Your personal anecdote really made it easy to understand. The way you descirbed the informal network reminds me of the whole telephone tree process that some schools have. Parents can really get a lot done when the time calls for it huh?
Pretty awesome blog post.
Hey Sarah,
ReplyDeleteGreat title too in your piece to grab a reader's attention. Parental networks at schools can be very strong, and informal, and they are looking out for each other and the children. I wonder though how the principal felt. Here he is new on the job and he's seeing the parents sort of take over the response. Did he feel his authority was usurped, or was he thankful for having engaged parents? Great job!
J
Honestly, John, I think he felt relieved that he had engaged parents. It stunned him (well, everyone) that this happened so to have the informal organization rise to the occasion was something he was grateful for.
ReplyDeleteMelinda, you're so right, that sometimes it's so easy for parents to just sit back and put it all on the parents and daytime caretakers, but that when put under the gun (pun intended) they didn't even question it, they just stepped in and did whatever was needed.
Now if they could do that over the non-hijacked holiday functions!
Thanks for your comments!