Turnaround Leadership

The real reform agenda -- Turning schools around -- Change -- Turning a whole system around.

Change leaders at all levels of the university will need to grapple with both the content and the process of change. This book tackles the question of how universities can lead change from within.

If you are a leader, at some point in your management career, you will have to face times when business conditions turn against you. This may be as a result of technology changes, a recession or company specific issues such as a powerful competitor entering the market. When this happens, you will need to know how to guide your company through the tough times and profit from the changes that are happening. This book will give you the tools you need to use to make decisions and lead and motivate your staff, and communicate with your customers, investors, lenders and teams. As a business leader, this book will show you how to make the right decisions in this new environment, communicate those decisions effectively and deliver results.

Rural Turnaround Leadership Development: The Power of Partnerships focuses on a three- year rural turnaround leadership project sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. The project was designed to foster the development of a cohort of aspiring school leaders in rural high poverty/low performing K-12 school districts. The Alabama Project was selected by the U.S. Department of Education, in part, because it was the only submission which emphasized partnership between higher education institutions, school districts and the Alabama State Department of Education (ALSDE). Facets of the book include a treatment of the structures and processes each university created to develop their unique program, the distinctive turnaround curriculum used at each university, the role of mentoring in developing aspiring rural school leaders and the internship experiences and practices which supported aspiring leader development. One of the most powerful changes witnessed during the project was the development of aspiring leaders by the major and ancillary partners. The cross-connections between K-12 districts, the ALSDE, and the three university educational leadership programs was a multifaceted and multi-layered collaborative approach. The partnerships not only strengthened within each master’s program, but across agencies as a result of this project. The book will describe the value of partnership and leadership development through the eyes of the major contributors. The contributors or authors of the book will include the Alabama State Department of Education, the three educational leadership higher education institutions i.e. Auburn University, University of Alabama and Samford University, partner school district representatives and graduates of the program.

The head of the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics organizing committee describes how he assumed the leadership of the troubled organization and turned it around to present one of the most successful Olympic Games ever.

This book presents the outcomes of research and practical endeavour in some of the diverse contexts in which learning takes place: classrooms, schools, professional development settings, community projects and service sector agencies. It invites the reader to engage with two related questions of contemporary concern in the leadership field: "What can we learn about the important influence of different contexts on leadership practice and how are people brought together as collective human agents in different patterns of distributive leadership?" In doing so, this collection emphasises three of the critical concepts at play when leadership is viewed, not as position, but as activity. The three concepts are purpose, context and human agency. When this view of leadership is understood, it is always about achieving shared goals with people power, no matter the circumstances in which they are gathered together.

Developing a Turnaround Business Plan is an ideal resource for managers currently facing a competitive crisis as well as those who wish to avert one and must set a turnaround plan in motion before the situation results in irreversible losses. Whereas the book helps readers develop a sound turnaround plan, the focus of the book is on the actual process that contributes to the development and implementation of that plan. The book details how to identify the root causes that triggered the competitive crisis and how to initiate remedial actions before the turnaround plan begins. After reading this book, you will be able to: Develop a flexible and rapid response to competitive counter-moves Identify offensive and defensive strategies Use competitive intelligence to identify decisive points to concentrate resources Pinpoint the types of competitive campaigns that assure a successful turnaround Assess the required leadership traits for implementing competitive strategies Covering 13 different types of competitive campaigns, the book describes how to initiate effective offensive and defensive plans to neutralize your competitors’ advantages. It also details how to develop counter-measures for the numerous factors that can bring a turnaround campaign to a standstill. The book helps executives of small and mid-sized organizations, as well as managers of business units and product lines in larger firms, to activate change strategies and secure sustainable competitive advantages. Examples are provided about real company turnarounds, including Intel, Levi Strauss, Yahoo, J.C. Penney, Hewlett-Packard, Panasonic, Staples, Samsung, and Abercrombie & Fitch.

This book focuses attention on deans as agents of change using the conceptual framework of "turnaround leadership for higher education" (Fullan and Scott). Drawing on this tramework, case studies of six deans of color are presented. Interrogating the framework through the lens of these individuals is particularly cogent, given their positions as leaders of colleges or schools of education in a variety of institutional settings.