Leaders Must Tweet!

Last week our Design39Campus team met with an exciting team of people from the Los Altos School District during our Bay Area travels. We had many discussions around topics of innovation and the group I was in was discussing change. 

A superintendent from a neighboring school district was discussing how he was going to be rewriting the district goals and that was going to facilitate change in the classrooms in the district. I stopped him in mid-sentence and challenged him on this. I basically told him that any energy he puts into district office level goal setting is a waste of time if he thinks that is going to transform the entire system. Top down initiates rarely do anything. 

So I challenged him to TWEET! Instead of talking through three or more layers of bureaucrats, speak directly to the teachers in the district. Share your vision in real time. Share articles, videos, TedTalks, quotes, your dreams, whatever! The power of social media is the ability to speak directly with a huge audience. And be ready to listen back as they share with you. 

Education must become more flat. The hierarchy of power of the past is not going to transform education for the 21st Century. Distributed leadership and teacherpreneurs are the future. And using social media tools, like Twitter, are going to be the communication devices needed in the fast-paced information age.

So school leaders, get on Twitter and encourage everyone in the organization to do so as well. And use the communication tool yourself. Don't delegate it to someone under you. YOUR voice is the secret sauce needed in this media. You have to be personally plugged in to your organization to nurture the change process.

With one tweet you can speak directly to everyone in your organization...regularly!