Global IB exam chief: how jazz provides lessons in management

Two childhood inspirations have permeated the assorted career and managerial design of Olli-Pekka Heinonen, the someday Finnish politician, policymaker and public official: instruction and new music.

As he plots out technique in his new role as director-common of the International Baccalaureate method very first released additional than 50 % a century ago, he is drawing on the two these influences. He takes around a elaborate worldwide organisation as it seeks to extend and fulfill the switching desires of youngsters and society in an period severely disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

“My father was a trainer and I was born and lived in an condominium in a major university,” he says. “I also studied in the [Turku] Conservatory [of New music] and for a calendar year was a new music trainer.” Heinonen, 57, then educated as a law firm and — at the very least as he describes it — practically each and every phase in his specialist life has been guided by requests and nudges from some others.

He was requested to become a parliamentary adviser, then minister of instruction at only 29, right before he experienced been elected an MP. At the time that experienced occurred, he turned minister of transportation and telecommunications. From 2002 he invested a ten years running Yleisradio, the Finnish point out broadcaster, but later rejoined federal government as point out secretary to the prime minister.

The only situation for which he at any time used was his very last post as director-common of the National Agency for Training in 2016. That place him in cost of a university method held up as a showpiece around the globe, judged by benchmarks this kind of as the OECD’s Programme for International Scholar Assessment, for its perception in balancing potent academic achievements with life outside the house university.

“My philosophy is that you should really not position your have confidence in in arranging factors,” Heinonen, says. “There will be surprises and you should really just go alongside with what evolves. The only situation I have used for was at the Agency. I felt it would be a superior time to return to the crime scene of the subject of instruction.”

He cites as 1 of his finest achievements the period as instruction minister in the mid to late nineteen nineties, when he granted autonomy to towns, faculties and lecturers them selves. He stresses the groundwork experienced been laid around the preceding two decades by requiring all lecturers to have masters’ levels. That boosted their competence, embedded a culture of frequent pedagogical exploration and reinforced their substantial position and respect in society.

Key leadership lessons

  • Grant autonomy — in Heinonen’s case, he devolved instruction choices to towns and lecturers them selves

  • Embrace the ‘humble governance’ strategy and accept that leaders do not have the ideal responses

  • Leadership is not about 1 human being, it should really be distribute through a company or organisational method

  • Interaction to create have confidence in with personnel and stakeholders is crucial

“My solution was to incorporate most people in the process,” he says. Inspired by his government’s design of “humble governance”, he embraced the plan that “at the best you really don’t have the ideal responses, you have to contain people in co-building them. Leadership is not about a human being, it is a excellent that should really be distribute greatly in a method. If you emphasise the role of 1 human being, you are failing.”

He says he learnt humility, but also the require to converse additional. “I’m not by character an individual who desires to be in the highlight. I have learned to do that. We Finns at times converse as well minor. We check out to be really exact and go away other factors out, but speaking to create have confidence in is central.

“In the starting, I experienced the plan that getting in a leadership situation intended you should really appear, converse and dress to appear like a chief,” he says. “That won’t operate. You require to be your self, the human being you are. Authenticity is so critical, and the integrity that comes with it.”

One of his finest frustrations came as minister of transportation and telecommunications, when he struggled all through the spin out of Sonera from the National Postal Services. Its shares rose sharply and then collapsed all through the IT bubble. “It did not go as efficiently as I hoped,” he says. “I realised how complicated it is to merge the globe of politics and small business. I should really have associated all the companions even additional strongly to locate a typical solution.”

He then took a break from politics, partly reflecting a require to “balance operate with household and restoration time”, as he says. “I learnt to usually have additional of people factors in your life that give you strength than consider it away. Normally make confident you have a reserve to cope with surprises. If you really don’t have that kind of spare strength, they [superior and undesirable surprises] will consider you.”

He took cost of the point out broadcaster, and made his identification as a manager, drawing parallels with his encounters as a hobbyist trumpeter main a jazz band. “You create a thing new with a shared melody that most people knows but with a ton of room for improvisation. It is the exact same in an organisation: you should really have a couple of regulations most people is fully commited to and go away room to create new factors with everybody via listening and connecting.”

He established about amassing a combination of survey info and personal diaries and interviews from the Finnish public to have an understanding of their values and attitudes, which exposed how various they had been from people of most of his personnel. “You can have a stereotypical view of factors. That led me to actually check out to have an understanding of our citizens as shoppers.”

Three questions for Olli-Pekka Heinonen

Finnish conductor Sakari Oramo conducting the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra
Sakari Oramo

Who is your leadership hero?

The really substantial stage Finnish conductors Sakari Oramo, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Susanna Mälkki. I experienced the satisfaction of seeing them in action in rehearsals and in concerts. It is marvellous how these pros can create a relationship on the location, give feedback and make skilled musicians do a thing jointly that you want them to do and do it in a way that they are supplying their most effective.

What was the very first leadership lesson you learnt?

I performed new music from a really youthful age and a really early lesson was when I noticed how critical inner determination is to leadership: getting equipped to create inside determination for a group of people to attain a thing jointly.

What would you have completed if you experienced not pursued your career in instruction and politics?

New music would have been a thing I would have appeared to do, I would also have actually liked getting an academic researcher. The means to inquire about and master about new factors, try to locate a thing new and via that to make a variance.

Searching back on his encounters, he questions the notion that leadership centres on conclusion creating. “Actually implementation is the technique,” he says. “The way you are equipped to put into practice factors is a really significant strategic choice. Instructors won’t obey because any person says they will have to. They have to have an understanding of why and have the inner determination to do so. We should really be chatting additional about the strategy of imperfect leadership: to confess uncertainty and create studying paths for the greater method to locate the solution.”

The IB method is nowadays made use of by additional than 250,000 pupils in practically five,five hundred faculties around the globe. It has extensive sought to teach pupils in a vast variety of subjects with broader knowledge of the theory of information and the use of project and workforce-primarily based operate along with “high stakes” final composed exams.

To numerous, that reflects the aspirations of numerous countrywide instruction reformers to get ready for this century’s worries — even though some IB lecturers bemoan that while they appreciate the theory of the qualification, they are frustrated with the organisation at the rear of it and its gradual rate of improve. Like other exam bodies, it was criticised for how it modified its marking programs all through the pandemic.

Heinonen is self-assured that the IB embodies an solution — also reflected in the Finnish instruction method — in which “competences are becoming additional central. It is about what you do with what you know and how to teach for an uncertain long run we cannot forecast.”

He sees “strong motivation to consider the IB heritage into the new era” by personnel and lecturers. “It’s not the technique, it’s the implementation,” he says. “We have to have that greater jazz band attempting to enjoy the exact same tone and improvise.”