When the CEO of any large organization departs unexpectedly, the reasons for the departure quickly become irrelevant.
When it happens twice in the same week — Rob Wood, deputy minister of education, and Kathryn Laurin, president of Camosun College — there is a degree of bureaucratic shock in both organizations.
With no connection between the two sudden departures, the immediate questions within both organizations will include: “What now?” “How will this affect me?” and “How will this change the policy directions of what we do here?”
Politics of one kind or another usually play a part in sudden CEO departures.
That, in turn, creates uncertainty within the organizational culture and immediately affects the ways the organization conducts its business and the community it serves.
Nowhere is this effect more apparent than in the Ministry of Education.
The extent to which freedom is allowed in decision-making, developing new ideas and personal expression, and how power and information flow through its hierarchy become subject to suspicion and uncertainty and are very much part of the culture.
Organizational culture comes from the example set at the top and influences how committed employees are toward collective objectives, the organization’s productivity and performance.
But changes at the top also create opportunities.
Organizational culture, if understood by those in executive positions, can provide an unerringly useful testing ground before policy directions become bad administrative decisions.
Old-school executives call it “management by walking around.” The benefit is that a manager, by simply walking and talking to those with whom he or she works can encourage a sense of organizational purpose and productivity, compared to remaining in a specific office area and waiting for employees to deliver status reports.
So when David Byng takes over as deputy minister of education, he faces a daunting task, but he also might grasp some opportunities and be able to step around the detritus left at the end of June.
In recent months, the endless government/teacher contract negotiations have dominated the public-education agenda — and without any evidence of a successful resolution on the summer horizon.
With the minister as the public face of government’s management of education, it is the deputy’s job to keep tabs on the details of K-12 standards and accountability, funding, independent schools, literacy, libraries and even the StrongStart B.C. Early Learning Centres. Beyond that, there are the Education Advisory Council and the B.C. Teachers’ Council.
It is an intimidating list of responsibilities, included here only to illustrate that the sudden departure after less than a year of the incumbent deputy could be interpreted as evidence that all is not well within the bureaucracy too strongly influenced by large “P” political agendas.
Setting aside political agendas in the interests of restoring some sense of public confidence in public education would serve public education well, if it were it to become a feature of Byng’s agenda.
A recent Conference Board of Canada study entitled How Canada Performs ranks B.C.’s education program the tops in the country.
The board’s researchers examined results from grades K-12, and B.C. was judged to be No. 1, receiving almost straight As across the board in categories including high-school attainment, the lowest percentage of students with inadequate reading, math and science skills, and equity in outcomes.
Good news about how B.C. kids are doing might not fit comfortably with either a BCTF “the system is failing” political agenda or a government “it’s all about more money for teachers” message, but here is a new deputy minister with the opportunity and, we hope, the leadership skills to get the system off life support and back on its feet.
Geoff Johnson is a retired superintendent of schools.
