Practical Theory

[Couldn’t resist Scott McLeod’s call for Leadership Day posts…]

So… I’m going to come at this from a strange place. I think most folks in the edu-blog world would agree that trying to affect meaningful change is frustrating, and at one time or another, we’ve been incredibly frustrated by the pace of chance — or even convincing others of the need for change.

But let’s assume one is in a situation where the obstacles to change have been overcome, and the need for change has been understood — then what?

I think one of the most important things we can do at that moment is to be very deliberate — and even dare I say slow — in how we manifest that change.

Be it technological reform, pedagogical reform, policy reform, I think the road is littered with too many failures because leaders did not allow most people to follow them.

I had the opportunity to meet Ron Sofo – Superintendent of the Freedom Area School District near Pittsburgh. He’s been there for decades, and he and I spoke at length about how he took an initiative and rolled it out over several years… about building teacher buy-in, parent buy-in… about building a broad coalition… about listening and changing. And ultimately, about success.

Granted, most of us don’t have years to make change happen, but we also don’t have the ability to make mistakes because we rushed.

So some thoughts on how to affect change in a timely, and yet, deliberate fashion.

• Know why you are changing… and know what you are giving up by making this change. Every change creates winners and losers, so be sure to think through what you gain and what you lose (thanks to Neil Postman for that framework.) which leads to…
• Always ask "What is the worst consequence of your best idea?" Do it for two reasons – one, because if you can’t live with that consequence, don’t do what you planned, but two, because the process of thinking this through will help you (and your team) mitigate the problems and you won’t be as surprised when the thing you didn’t think of comes up.
• Research like crazy. Who has tried what you are doing? Who has tried something close to what you’re doing? Who is talking about it? Who is writing about it? Who says the idea is already crazy? There aren’t many truly new ideas in education, so figure out the history of your idea and learn from who has come before you.
• Get lots of opinions – Come up with a smart, sensible, honest way to explain your idea and then listen. Listen a lot. Listen to the folks who don’t like the idea, and ask them why.
• Be honest – Don’t oversell, don’t overpromise, and don’t pretend that the idea is perfect.
• Build consensus – If only a few people are on-board with the idea, it won’t work. But consensus doesn’t mean taking something from everyone and sticking it onto the original idea until what you have is the worst of committee-based decisions. It means listening for the truths in what other people are telling you and being willing to make substantive change when it makes sense.
• Know when to move forward. Don’t let ideas die in committee because the team gets hung up on the final 5% of an idea. 
• Set realistic expectations for initial success, and then set up a plan to get there. If it’s a tech idea — get the tech right. (Nothing worse than getting everyone excited about a new innovation and then getting everything but the tech side of it right. It took us a year to get our website even close to where we wanted it at SLA, fortunately, we got enough right that folks kept at it.)
• Finally, keep communicating throughout the process.

There are too many reasons effective innovation seems so hard in education. We should make sure that we, as change agents, are thoughtful and deliberate enough to make sure that we aren’t one of them.

Tags: leadershipday09