Global IB exam chief: how jazz provides lessons in management

Two childhood inspirations have permeated the varied vocation and managerial fashion of Olli-Pekka Heinonen, the sometime Finnish politician, policymaker and public formal: education and new music.

As he plots out technique in his new part as director-standard of the International Baccalaureate method to start with introduced much more than 50 percent a century in the past, he is drawing on the two these influences. He takes above a elaborate world organisation as it seeks to increase and meet the changing desires of kids and modern society in an era severely disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

“My father was a instructor and I was born and lived in an apartment in a most important college,” he claims. “I also analyzed in the [Turku] Conservatory [of Songs] and for a calendar year was a new music instructor.” Heinonen, fifty seven, then skilled as a lawyer and — at minimum as he describes it — approximately each action in his expert lifestyle has been guided by requests and nudges from many others.

He was requested to develop into a parliamentary adviser, then minister of education at only 29, prior to he experienced been elected an MP. When that experienced occurred, he turned minister of transport and telecommunications. From 2002 he used a decade operating Yleisradio, the Finnish point out broadcaster, but later rejoined authorities as point out secretary to the key minister.

The only position for which he at any time used was his final submit as director-standard of the National Company for Education and learning in 2016. That set him in demand of a college method held up as a showpiece about the globe, judged by benchmarks such as the OECD’s Programme for International College student Evaluation, for its perception in balancing sturdy educational achievements with lifestyle outside the house college.

“My philosophy is that you should really not area your believe in in preparing issues,” Heinonen, claims. “There will be surprises and you should really just go alongside with what evolves. The only position I have used for was at the Company. I felt it would be a good time to return to the crime scene of the discipline of education.”

He cites as 1 of his best achievements the time period as education minister in the mid to late 1990s, when he granted autonomy to towns, educational facilities and academics by themselves. He stresses the groundwork experienced been laid above the prior two many years by necessitating all academics to have masters’ levels. That boosted their competence, embedded a culture of continuous pedagogical exploration and bolstered their significant position and regard in modern society.

“My approach was to involve everybody in the process,” he claims. Encouraged by his government’s fashion of “humble governance”, he embraced the idea that “at the prime you don’t have the ideal answers, you have to contain men and women in co-developing them. Management is not about a human being, it is a high-quality that should really be unfold extensively in a method. If you emphasise the part of 1 human being, you are failing.”

He claims he learnt humility, but also the have to have to talk much more. “I’m not by character a person who wishes to be in the highlight. I’ve learned to do that. We Finns often talk also tiny. We try out to be quite specific and depart other issues out, but speaking to create believe in is central.

“In the starting, I experienced the idea that currently being in a leadership position meant you should really appear, converse and dress to appear like a leader,” he claims. “That will not operate. You have to have to be on your own, 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 high-quality that should really be unfold extensively in a method. If you emphasise the part of 1 human being, you are failing

One particular of his best frustrations came as minister of transport and telecommunications, when he struggled in the course of the spin out of Sonera from the National Postal Provider. Its shares rose sharply and then collapsed in the course of the IT bubble. “It didn’t go as effortlessly as I hoped,” he claims. “I realised how difficult it is to blend the globe of politics and business enterprise. I should really have involved all the companions even much more strongly to come across a prevalent alternative.”

He then took a split from politics, partly reflecting a have to have to “balance perform with relatives and recovery time”, as he claims. “I learnt to generally have much more of individuals issues in your lifestyle that give you strength than take it absent. Constantly make certain you have a reserve to cope with surprises. If you don’t have that variety of spare strength, they [good and negative surprises] will take you.”

He took demand of the point out broadcaster, and produced his id as a manager, drawing parallels with his ordeals as a hobbyist trumpeter foremost a jazz band. “You create anything new with a shared melody that everybody appreciates but with a whole lot of room for improvisation. It is the exact same in an organisation: you should really have a handful of regulations everybody is fully commited to and depart room to create new issues with absolutely everyone through listening and connecting.”

He established about collecting a mixture of study data and private diaries and interviews from the Finnish public to have an understanding of their values and attitudes, which disclosed how diverse they had been from individuals of most of his workers. “You can have a stereotypical see of issues. That led me to really try out to have an understanding of our citizens as consumers.”

A few issues for Olli-Pekka Heinonen

Who is your leadership hero?

The quite significant level Finnish conductors Sakari Oramo, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Susanna Mälkki. I experienced the enjoyment of viewing them in motion in rehearsals and in concert events. It is marvellous how these industry experts can create a relationship on the location, give feed-back and make specialist musicians do anything alongside one another that you want them to do and do it in a way that they are giving their greatest.

What was the to start with leadership lesson you learnt?

I performed new music from a quite younger age and a quite early lesson was when I noticed how essential internal determination is to leadership: currently being capable to create inner determination for a team of men and women to attain anything alongside one another.

What would you have performed if you experienced not pursued your vocation in education and politics?

Songs would have been anything I would have seemed to do, I would also have really enjoyed currently being an educational researcher. The skill to inquire about and study about new issues, try to come across anything new and through that to make a change.

Looking back on his ordeals, he issues the notion that leadership centres on determination earning. “Actually implementation is the technique,” he claims. “The way you are capable to apply issues is a quite major strategic decision. Teachers will not obey for the reason that any individual claims they have to. They have to have an understanding of why and have the internal determination to do so. We should really be talking much more about the notion of imperfect leadership: to acknowledge uncertainty and create learning paths for the more substantial method to come across the alternative.”

The IB method is these days utilised by much more than 250,000 learners in approximately five,five hundred educational facilities about the globe. It has prolonged sought to educate learners in a vast array of topics with broader knowing of the principle of expertise and the use of venture and team-centered perform alongside “high stakes” ultimate prepared exams.

To lots of, that demonstrates the aspirations of lots of countrywide education reformers to put together for this century’s troubles — although some IB academics bemoan that whilst they like the basic principle of the qualification, they are annoyed with the organisation at the rear of it and its sluggish tempo of change. Like other test bodies, it was criticised for how it modified its marking programs in the course of the pandemic.

Heinonen is self-assured that the IB embodies an approach — also mirrored in the Finnish education method — in which “competences are getting much more central. It is about what you do with what you know and how to educate for an uncertain upcoming we are not able to predict.”

He sees “strong motivation to take the IB heritage into the new era” by staff and academics. “It’s not the technique, it’s the implementation,” he claims. “We have to have that more substantial jazz band trying to engage in the exact same tone and improvise.”