In previous years by this point, I’d already been told by Spotify that my twelve months of music listening was “eclectic”. Taylor Swift meets Scottish folk meets big band jazz. To much consternation amongst my teenaged daughters the annual analysis has not yet arrived.
But as I wait for my own Wrapped 2024 to appear, I’ve taken an interest in the company culture of Spotify that has lent the firm so much success.
Spotify has found the seemingly perfect balance between autonomy and accountability. At Spotify, teams are autonomous. Leadership at the firm equip these autonomous teams with:
A clear focus on an opportunity or problem;
Outcomes for which they're responsible;
Resources and guidance;
Empowerment to work closely with the users;
An expectation to try out things quickly: it’s a prototyping culture, rather than one where you’re expected to get things right first time;
Approachable leadership who see their key jobs as a) addressing barriers and b) driving adoption of the team’s best work across the whole firm.
This is how most successful firms work today. NoTosh, too.
In a 2017 Bain & Co survey, 95% of respondents agreed with the following statement: “Today’s leaders must trust and empower people, not command and control them.” Quelle surprise.
In the same year, a Forbes expert panel found that most middle leaders felt that they were neglected:
They’re not communicated to.
Their growth and development is ignored.
They’re not kept in the loop.
They get too comfortable.
They don’t get recognition and support.
They don’t get involved in decision-making and change.
They’re underused.
They don’t get delegated to.
They're not part of succession planning.
Their creativity isn’t tapped into.
Their feedback is ignored.
Their leadership skills are not developed.
They’re taken for granted.
In schools, we find that teacher efficacy is stifled. Frequently. Too frequently.
In most middle leaders we don’t see leadership. Stifled, their leadership over time becomes managerial. Professional Learning Teams or Project Task Forces are supposed to charged with autonomy and collective efficacy. But too often they have the opposite conditions to those which can empower teams:
A tightly defined challenge to solve (with no wiggle room to test the assumptions behind the problem);
A lack of objective, outcome or key result to know they're on target;
A lack of resources and time;
No student or parent involvement in the project until the very end, when they’re told about it;
An expectation that the team must arrive at one “right” conclusion;
Absentee leadership: zero involvement or little drive.
Self-efficacy matters.
In the world of education, John Hattie’s research has found that collective teacher efficacy has a significant effect on student achievement. It makes a difference.
But it’s not how most schools run. We know, because we hear it every week. "We’re totally hamstrung!" “The boss goes out and says all this stuff, but none of it is actually happening.” “Everything takes so much time to get agreed - we just get on with our own work.”
We’ve heard these quotes and many like them over the past month.
Teachers working on projects and development work with which they had permission to run, officially, on paper.
But unofficially, they felt they had been cut off at the knees trying to put things into action.
Delays. Process needing followed.
Agreements required from yet another unknown committee.
Most senior leaders want their teams activated. They want them productive and generating ideas that move the needle of the school’s strategy. So let’s be like Spotify and set them up for success.