Four Forms of Forgetting That Affect Sustainable Leadership

The main challenge to educational reform is not to retreat to the past. Instead, we should build an intelligent relationship that acknowledges its existence, understands its meaning, and learns from it. An organization may choose to forget elements of the past. De Holan and Phillips introduced four kinds of “organizational forgetting.” They categorized them based on whether they were intentional or unintentional, or whether they applied to established or recently acquired knowledge. Dissipation Dissipation occurs when new knowledge is brought into the organization, but without goodwill or ability to make it stick in people’s memory toward the goal of organizational …

Past, Present, and Future of Sustainable Leadership

Sustainable leadership builds on the past in an effort to create a better future for schools. This is against most educational change theories, which do not find a place for the past, since the “arrow of change” is thought to move only in a forward direction. Past problems are generally either ignored, or overcome in a rush to get to future improvement. For those leaders attracted or addicted to change, the past is seen as a monument of backward thinking and irrational resistance for those whom they consider to favor the status quo, or those emotionally incapable of letting go …