Sometimes we, as leaders, focus on the "how" of things: We may think we're doing things in a way that's suboptimal so we decide to change how we do things. But that's not really the pathway to launch long-term, sustainable adaptive growth. In our education system, often-times people who find themselves in leadership positions are people who do something individually that's exceptional. How do you balance between directing teams and drawing on the wisdom of the team? Leaders get to make choices-but you must also inspire people to act on those choices. Much of management-whether in a company or university or school district-involves managing change, in bringing people on board with that change. What's best about that example is not that I was wrong-because that happens a lot-but that there were a lot of people who knew what was right for kids, for learning, and therefore for DreamBox, and so they kept pressing until they were satisfied.
It's about the courage and the comfort with saying, "Okay, our CEO is wrong, and we have an obligation to the kids to make sure we do what's right." I never want to be in a place where, because of title, great ideas are suppressed. The main point here is not so much about the technology. That’s a great example of staying focused on the big goal-moving to a mobile platform-but continuing to question the implementation choices, namely iOS versus Windows. So we began that work, but the intrepid folks at DreamBox continued to poke at that idea, to get data, to validate that data-and it turned out that I was wrong. I said, "The wisdom of the world is that we really should start off with the (Windows) tablet." We had limited capital and we couldn't do both simultaneously. Are you sure it should be Windows-based?" We couldn't do both. I had some engineers that said, "Well, in my home, with my kids in school, it's really iOS. We need to prioritize development with the tablet." I brought all of my expertise from oh, say, 15 million years in edtech, and I said, "Well, the infrastructure in K12 is very Windows-driven, PC-driven.
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One example happened years ago, when were thinking about how to begin our work with tablets. That's a lot of pressure! Tell us about an idea that you pressure tested at DreamBox that didn't hold up. So that means pressure sometimes, and I often tell folks at DreamBox that if you didn't have pressure on carbon, we would never see the diamond. We think the step to getting to a great idea is to subject it to intense scrutiny. We think that work is so important that we have to be willing to subject what we think are our best ideas to the scrutiny of people who share our passion and who can make it better. They have to live in harmony, but they're different. We think our work is so important, this work in learning, so separating the work of modifying or changing the education system from actually creating stimulating, relevant, personalized, engaging learning experiences. Woolley-Wilson: Woolley: So we try to be hard on ideas-that's the friction part-but soft on people.
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Below is an edited and condensed version of the conversation-or watch the full interview.ĮdSurge: Jessie, you have become known for a few key managerial phrases, starting with this one: “Benevolent friction.” What does that mean and how does it play out at DreamBox?
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That intentional choice put her on a more than 20-year path that led to her current post of chairman and chief executive of DreamBox.ĮdSurge sat down with Woolley-Wilson this month at the ASU+GSV Summit, as part of our Thought Leader Interview series on the future of education. She began her career as a banker but soon realized that to be true to her core beliefs, she wanted to have a role in education. Her steady but firm discipline of the company is a case study in how to grow an organization, especially in a complex industry such as education. For the past six and half years, she has led DreamBox Learning, growing the company from a startup into one of the leading providers of online math tools for elementary school children. Jessie Woolley-Wilson is a quietly powerful force in education.
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