I have long drawn inspiration from Austin Kleon and today was no exception. He’s a fantastic curator and documenter of his sources of inspiration. In today’s roundup of his week that had been, he linked to this article about Barnes & Noble’s turnaround. They’ve struggled to survive for years to find a niche and landed on many unsuccessful strategies that mainly got them away from their core mission to sell books to people who wanted to buy books. They followed the money down rabbit holes that cut out their local managers, fired full-time staff in favor of part-time help, and gave increased power to publishers to push content that no one wanted – what the author termed making a deal with the devil.
Their turnaround was based on a lot of factors, but the author attributes much of it to bringing on a new CEO who basically let the bookstores sell books that they know will sell. He put much of the day-to-day decision-making and strategic execution of selling books up to the store, starting with stripping the shelves and letting the local managers and staff decide which books to put back – and where in the store to place them.
While the piece had nothing to do with education, there are many parallels to explore. Retiring tenured faculty are being replaced with people like me (adjuncts), educators are cut out of on-the-ground decisions, and there is a constant undercurrent of vendors bringing forth the latest educational technology to make instructional delivery more efficient (e.g., cheaper). But, at what cost to quality, to the admission of new students, to satisfaction/retention/graduation, etc? What would happen if we made systemic changes along the lines of Barnes & Noble to invest in highly passionate on-the-ground educators as drivers of the vision and owners of the mission? I fear the trends we see are too often the opposite.
Featured Image Photo by Alireza Attari on Unsplash