Does a business model translate into schoools?

Recently we have been working more and more with boards of trustees who have invited onto their board some outstanding business people.  What has happened increasingly is that heads are now being encouraged to behave like business executives.  A board member tells a head to just fire someone who was behaving badly - as if that is what happens in the private sector.  Truly, doing this would result in a law suit if there was no just cause even in business and this is certainly not the way schools tend to work.  Another board member at a different school has begun to redesign the head's administrative structure for her, saying that she has too many people reporting to her and must streamline this.  In yet another school, the board chair has decided that the head needs to change his style of leadership because it is just too friendly and responsive. 

While sometimes heads are slow to pull the trigger and fire an employee, or spends too much time walking around the school and avoids making tough decisions or working on strategic issues, in general this would become the conversation between head and head evaluation committee.  This type of insistence on doing things the "business way" without understanding the differences between schools as business and businesses themselves is going to lead to increasing conflict between head and board and may eventually result in a reversal of board  composition back to the fully parent-populated board.

It now becomes increasingly important that regular board orientation work happens and that the conversation expand to include discussion of business versus school ways of being.