Structure determines nature, and when we can reset the structure of the system mechanism, the blueprint for a better future we describe may be more than just a prose poem.
Today I want to use a reverse design approach to show you what an organization looks like when it completes transformation and changeLet's work backwards to push back such a change, such a mechanism innovation and transformation, is it worth doing?
I would like to start with a story that allows you to get to know a group of people.
In 2004, Xiao Liu, who had just turned 18, left his hometown and entered Beijing No. 11 School as a sports equipment keeper in order to stop studying. But he never imagined that he walked into a place closest to Xi, and for nearly 20 years, Xi has been with him and changed him.
At first, he found Wubi typing very interesting, so he learned Wubi Input Method to help teachers type;Later, he obtained an electrician certificate and became the backbone of the school's maintenance classAfter that, he became very interested in computers, began to learn Xi equipment maintenance, and obtained a network engineer qualificationNow he is the maintenance and support staff of the audio-visual equipment of various activities of the eleventh school, and the first thing that comes to mind when the teachers encounter any difficult problems in the activities is to find Xiao Liu, and Xiao Liu will always live up to everyone's expectations, and no matter how difficult the problem can be solved.
In 2018, the first phase of Principal Li Xigui's "Pilot Flight" opened, and Xiao Liu was responsible for the maintenance of the audio-visual equipment on the stage, so I took a group photo of him and Principal Xigui, which is said to be the first time he has taken a group photo with the principal since he came to work in the school for more than ten years. I sent him the **, and he replied with a sentence that surprised me slightly:
"Thank you Mr. Shen for fulfilling my wish, when the principal introduced me and said that I was a model of self-taught, my heart was surging, tears almost came out, it turned out that the principal also knew me and understood me, I will continue to work hard to do a good job, thank you from the bottom of my heart." ”
In 2022, the second phase of "Pilot Flight" will start again, and the stage will become more colorful and colorful, which is still designed and maintained by Xiao Liu, and the entire lighting control system is planned and written by him. I took a second photo of him with Principal Xigui, and that night he sent me a ** hanging on the wall, which was the photo of him and the principal in 2018. It turned out that he printed out the group photo and framed it. He told me that this has always been his spiritual food, motivating him to keep moving forward, and every time he sees it, he is relieved of those troubles at work. Of course, Xiao Liu's happiest thing is not the improvement of his skills, but the group of children around him. The large and small activities in the school require him to carry out electronic education and maintenance, and he is too busy to do it alone, and each grade recommends himself or selects classmates to follow Xiao Liu to learn and Xi. There is a student Li, who is a violinist in the school orchestra, and he learned lighting design from Xiao Liu. There was a final performance, when he played the violin under the lighting he designed, he was very proud and excited, and he was very grateful to Xiao Liu, he told Xiao Liu the news of his premiere, and invited him to bring the whole family to see his performance. Recently, I met Xiao Liu, and he told me that he used to think that "everyone needs me, and I am very happy", but today I find that when more and more students "don't need me anymore, I am happier". Figures like Xiao Liu, who is active on campus, we call them "support staff". At the beginning of November, the "Adolescent Growth Forum" held by the New School Research Society set up a special session for support staff, which was attended by more than 40 support staff from the Eleventh Alliance schools, some of whom were drivers, some were janitors, some were cooks, and some were librarians. Xiao Liu won the first "Teacher of the Year" of the Eleventh Alliance School. During this year's "October 1st" period, when the school held a school celebration, many alumni came back and ran to thank the school staff as soon as possible. A classmate rushed to the school doctor's office to thank the school doctor, because when he ran to the school doctor's office because he was pretending to be sick, the school doctor did not expose him and criticize him, but let him lie quietly in the infirmary for more than ten minutes, and when he felt comfortable, he returned to the classroom. The school opens a window for the child to shine through a light. Some students went to the school kitchen to see if Chef Chubby was there, and Chef Chubby saw this alumnus who he hadn't seen for many years, and the first thing he said was, I know you, that young man who needs a little more sesame sauce. Here it isWe are looking forward to the scene of the whole school educating people, and everyone on the campus, including the staff, is contributing to the education of people. But how does it work?It requires our support staff to keep the resources in hand flowing to the front line of education and teaching. Before the organizational transformation, the evaluation of these employees was superior to that of their superiors, and they relied on their appointment and evaluation. It should be noted that whoever hires will be responsible for whom, so the eyes of the staff are responsible for the superiors, and they will not think of what they can do for front-line education and teaching. After the transformation, it is the internal customer evaluation of all the support staff, those teachers who are closest to the front line, the most likely internal customers of staff and administrative staff. Internal customer evaluations are directly linked to compensation, which inevitably makes employees and administrative staff turn their eyes to the front line and do their best to serve the front line. At the same time, it is precisely in the service of the front line of education and teaching that we have re-seen the value of setting up audio-visual education positions, the value of school doctor positions, and the value of dormitory administrator positions ......They are all in the service of educating people. 
In Beijing 11th School, there are more than 70 active course directors and more than 100 projects in a semester. The picture below is the list of the school's curriculum leaders from 2023 to 2024:
This list inspires us:A rich and diverse curriculum system is the core competitiveness of a school. What is a "course chief"?It's the product manager who spends his days thinking about how the course can make the user happy. As a result, more than 70 course leaders spent all day thinking about whether the teacher who used this course was uncomfortable, whether the students liked him or not, and what they needed to improve. Everyone is not working to write an award-winning article, but to sense the needs of front-line teachers and students, and iterate, modify, and improve the products of each course to meet the needs of users. In Beijing No. 1 Experimental School, which has been open for less than two years, there is also a lot of active product development. 
This picture is a project declaration, and all teachers can apply for the project. 
This one is good news, some teachers have won the completion of the project and received praise. 
Swipe left and right to see more.
There are also new projects, some under review, and research projects that are to be carried out every month. It can be said that Beijing is the first experimentThe school is operating every day, and the problems that every teacher is thinking about can be shown through these projects, and even the optimization of a reimbursement process and the iteration of a curriculum system can become a research project, which can be initiated and implemented anytime and anywhere, and the whole school flows with the breath of research.
Behind the second phenomenon is the change in the structure of the school, and the emergence of a "research and development platform". Before the transformation, the school set up a scientific research office, but there is a problem with the "scientific research office": when you set up a department, you will definitely design a set of indicators, how many ** will be published in a semester, and how many topics can be won at the district and municipal levels. When a department is always focused on performance, it is gradually moving away from the real needs of the front line. 
So after the transformation, we set up a chief knowledge officer and built an R&D platform. On the R&D platform, everyone only pays attention to the product, and does not involve people or posts. Any product, whether it is the chief R&D or the project team member, will receive a start-up fund, and there will be expert review in the mid-term, until the final completion of the project and a final fund. These successful projects are all rooted in the pain points of the front line of education, rooted in the real needs of teachers and students, and finally feed back the needs of teachers and students. The transformation and transformation of the eleventh school in the past 20 years tells us that the project research based on the "real demand" can get all the scientific research awards in the district, the city and even the whole country as long as it is transformed slightly, because these are the real scientific research. We once studied a project called "What is the most cost-effective way to maintain swimming pools", and it was successfully incubated on the R&D platform. When everyone is sensing the pain points on the front line, everyone's energy flows to the front line of education and teaching. 
There is an interesting phenomenon in the 11th school, whether it is Principal Li Xigui or the current Principal Tian Jun, they will not receive interviews with individual parents themselves, even if there are some small conflicts between home and school, they will be resolved in the grade. No principal makes an appointment with parents, no principal attends evaluation classes, participates in teaching and research activities, participates in grade level activities, attends parent-teacher conferences, and does not even attend high school.
Third, the quality analysis meeting of the third year of junior high school. Because,Only by having people who can make decisions attend the meeting will the principal have time to think about the development strategy of the school. At the beginning of 2022, the 11th School iterated the "Secondary Growth" strategic pyramid, established the vision, mission, education goals, and school-running guidelines, and clarified the four strategic goals for the next 6 years. Of course, it is not enough to have strategic goals alone, so Principal Tian Jun took 20% of the key people to carry out systematic research, established the key results and strategic actions formed around the strategic goals, and sorted out each of the key behaviors, key results, and strategic actions that point to students at the school level, and there are people, departments, and projects to ensure the implementation of strategic goals.
At the same time, Principal Tian Jun also led the team to gradually form the "non-for" and "promising" culture of the 11th school. Focusing on the school's strategic values, we sorted out more than 100 things that we must not do. When the "do not" is established, the "promising" will also surface.
Why do principals have time to think about school development strategies, and are there any tricks in this?Before the transformation, the principal was able to do everything, but after the transformation, the main body of governance was established, the matching of responsibilities and rights was realized, and the strategic top level cut the power chain, so that the most informed place can make decisions.
80% of the conflicts between home and school are due to the tension between teachers and students, and the core of resolving the relationship between teachers and students lies in the grade level - the grade director is the first person responsible for coordinating the relationship between teachers and students and sorting out the relationship between home and school, rather than uploading it to the principal level. So,Allowing decision-making to take place where information is most abundant is the basic principle of splitting the chain of power and ensuring that power can flow to the front line of education and teaching.
There are six major governance bodies at the strategic level of the 11th school: the party organization, the school council, the teaching congress, the student congress, the family congress, and the academic committee. The boundaries of power of these six governing subjects are different, and each subject has full power and corresponding constraints, locking power in a cage.
For example, at the financial level, which everyone is more concerned about, each governance body is only responsible for one line segment, and together they open up the chain of power, so that those with power do not manage their finances, and those who manage their finances do not have power. The same is true for personnel appointments, adopting "two-way selection and hiring", so that each governance subject can keep one acre and three points of land, open up the entire power chain, and realize the matching and equilateralization of rights, responsibilities and interests. In this way, support personnel will flow resources to the front line, R&D platforms will flow energy to the front line, and strategic executives will flow power to the front lineThe power that can be given to the lower level will not be left at the higher level, the activities that can be carried out at the lower level will never be carried out at the higher level, and the troublesome things that can be handled at the higher level will not be given to the lower level。In other words, really let the one who hears the artillery fire command the battle. As a result, a large number of project-based research projects are active on campus, while the president has free time to think about the future. Finally, I would like to say that behind these three phenomena, there is essentially a transformation of the structure and the transformation of the mechanism. We all like to talk about "organizational transformation", which is "change in the governance system". The two major factors of the change of the governance system are "organizational structure" + "element relationship", the organizational structure is the five elements of the previous cabin map, and the factor relationship is that each structure has a different evaluation method. For example, the support staff evaluates the product with the customer evaluation, the R&D platform evaluates the product, and the strategic management evaluates the trust and satisfaction of the principal, and each evaluation method with a different structure constitutes the relationship between the elements. So,If you can solve it with structure, you don't need a system, and an organization with a good structure and a healthy operating mechanism should be very light.
丨Keynote speech at the 10th China Education Innovation Annual Conference.
Editor-in-charge丨Zhang LeiAmerican editor丨Zhang TianyuSubmission email| [email protected]