Global IB exam chief: how jazz provides lessons in management

Two childhood inspirations have permeated the varied career and managerial fashion of Olli-Pekka Heinonen, the someday Finnish politician, policymaker and general public official: education and learning and audio.

As he plots out strategy in his new purpose as director-typical of the Intercontinental Baccalaureate method first launched extra than half a century back, he is drawing on both of those these influences. He usually takes in excess of a advanced global organisation as it seeks to grow and fulfill the shifting requirements of young children and society in an era severely disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

“My father was a teacher and I was born and lived in an apartment in a main faculty,” he suggests. “I also studied in the [Turku] Conservatory [of Music] and for a year was a audio teacher.” Heinonen, fifty seven, then properly trained as a law firm and — at the very least as he describes it — nearly each stage in his skilled existence has been guided by requests and nudges from many others.

He was requested to turn into a parliamentary adviser, then minister of education and learning at only 29, before he had been elected an MP. After that had transpired, he became minister of transport and telecommunications. From 2002 he expended a decade running Yleisradio, the Finnish state broadcaster, but later rejoined government as state secretary to the primary minister.

The only posture for which he at any time utilized was his past article as director-typical of the Nationwide Company for Instruction in 2016. That place him in demand of a faculty method held up as a showpiece all over the planet, judged by benchmarks these as the OECD’s Programme for Intercontinental Pupil Assessment, for its belief in balancing sturdy tutorial achievements with existence exterior faculty.

“My philosophy is that you need to not place your believe in in setting up factors,” Heinonen, suggests. “There will be surprises and you need to just go together with what evolves. The only posture I have utilized for was at the Company. I felt it would be a superior time to return to the criminal offense scene of the industry of education and learning.”

He cites as 1 of his biggest achievements the period as education and learning minister in the mid to late nineties, when he granted autonomy to towns, colleges and lecturers themselves. He stresses the groundwork had been laid in excess of the previous two a long time by requiring all lecturers to have masters’ degrees. That boosted their competence, embedded a tradition of regular pedagogical investigate and bolstered their substantial status and regard in society.

“My approach was to include things like everyone in the approach,” he suggests. Encouraged by his government’s fashion of “humble governance”, he embraced the concept that “at the top rated you do not have the correct solutions, you have to entail individuals in co-producing them. Management is not about a human being, it is a good quality that need to be unfold extensively in a method. If you emphasise the purpose of 1 human being, you are failing.”

He suggests he learnt humility, but also the have to have to converse extra. “I’m not by character an individual who desires to be in the highlight. I’ve discovered to do that. We Finns from time to time converse way too very little. We try out to be quite precise and depart other factors out, but communicating to produce believe in is central.

“In the beginning, I had the concept that currently being in a management posture meant you need to seem, discuss and gown to seem like a chief,” he suggests. “That will not purpose. You have to have to be you, the human being you are. Authenticity is so essential, and the integrity that comes with it.”

Management is not about a human being, it is a good quality that need to be unfold extensively in a method. If you emphasise the purpose of 1 human being, you are failing

One particular of his biggest frustrations arrived as minister of transport and telecommunications, when he struggled in the course of the spin out of Sonera from the Nationwide Postal Service. Its shares rose sharply and then collapsed in the course of the IT bubble. “It didn’t go as efficiently as I hoped,” he suggests. “I realised how tricky it is to incorporate the planet of politics and organization. I need to have concerned all the partners even extra strongly to find a prevalent alternative.”

He then took a break from politics, partly reflecting a have to have to “balance do the job with household and restoration time”, as he suggests. “I learnt to constantly have extra of those people factors in your existence that give you energy than get it away. Normally make absolutely sure you have a reserve to cope with surprises. If you do not have that form of spare energy, they [superior and poor surprises] will get you.”

He took demand of the state broadcaster, and designed his identity as a manager, drawing parallels with his experiences as a hobbyist trumpeter top a jazz band. “You produce a little something new with a shared melody that everyone is familiar with but with a good deal of space for improvisation. It’s the very same in an organisation: you need to have a number of regulations everyone is dedicated to and depart space to produce new factors with absolutely everyone by way of listening and connecting.”

He established about amassing a mixture of study knowledge and personalized diaries and interviews from the Finnish general public to recognize their values and attitudes, which disclosed how diverse they have been from those people of most of his employees. “You can have a stereotypical check out of factors. That led me to truly try out to recognize our citizens as buyers.”

Three queries for Olli-Pekka Heinonen

Who is your management hero?

The quite substantial stage Finnish conductors Sakari Oramo, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Susanna Mälkki. I had the enjoyment of observing them in motion in rehearsals and in concert events. It’s marvellous how these professionals can produce a relationship on the place, give opinions and make pro musicians do a little something collectively that you want them to do and do it in a way that they are offering their greatest.

What was the first management lesson you learnt?

I played audio from a quite youthful age and a quite early lesson was when I observed how essential inner determination is to management: currently being in a position to produce internal determination for a team of individuals to attain a little something collectively.

What would you have done if you had not pursued your career in education and learning and politics?

Music would have been a little something I would have appeared to do, I would also have truly liked currently being an tutorial researcher. The means to inquire about and discover about new factors, attempt to find a little something new and by way of that to make a change.

Wanting back on his experiences, he queries the idea that management centres on selection generating. “Actually implementation is the strategy,” he suggests. “The way you are in a position to put into action factors is a quite major strategic decision. Teachers will not obey for the reason that someone suggests they need to. They have to recognize why and have the inner determination to do so. We need to be talking extra about the thought of imperfect management: to admit uncertainty and produce mastering paths for the more substantial method to find the alternative.”

The IB method is currently utilised by extra than 250,000 college students in nearly 5,five hundred colleges all over the planet. It has long sought to educate college students in a huge selection of subjects with broader knowledge of the principle of know-how and the use of venture and crew-centered do the job together with “high stakes” final created tests.

To lots of, that reflects the aspirations of lots of countrywide education and learning reformers to prepare for this century’s issues — despite the fact that some IB lecturers bemoan that whilst they appreciate the theory of the qualification, they are disappointed with the organisation at the rear of it and its slow speed of adjust. Like other test bodies, it was criticised for how it modified its marking methods in the course of the pandemic.

Heinonen is confident that the IB embodies an approach — also mirrored in the Finnish education and learning method — in which “competences are turning out to be extra central. It’s about what you do with what you know and how to educate for an unsure potential we are unable to predict.”

He sees “strong dedication to get the IB heritage into the new era” by employees and lecturers. “It’s not the strategy, it’s the implementation,” he suggests. “We have to have that more substantial jazz band hoping to enjoy the very same tone and improvise.”