Leadership Day - The Pace of Change

Who I am: Chris Lehmann

What I do: Principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, PA (Opening 9/06).

What I did: Technology Coordinator / English Teacher / Girls Basketball Coach / Ultimate Coach at the Beacon School, a fantastic progressive public high school in Manhattan.

Email: chris [at] practicaltheory [dot] org.

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Gary Stager about New Year... New Challenges... New Goals... New Excitement
Tue, 31.08.2010 05:14
I may have linked to the
wrong Merrow article -
http://takingnote.learnin
gmatters.tv/?p=4433

Gary Stager about New Year... New Challenges... New Goals... New Excitement
Tue, 31.08.2010 05:05
Dear Chris:

We've had this discussion
privately, so I hope you
don't mind that I involve
the [...]

Julie Strong about New Year... New Challenges... New Goals... New Excitement
Mon, 30.08.2010 13:35
I'll be curious to see
how #5 evolves. In
independent schools we
rarely lack for parent
[...]

dcollins about New Year... New Challenges... New Goals... New Excitement
Sat, 28.08.2010 07:32
Those are great things to
look forward to! At my
alternative school, I'm
looking forward to seeing
[...]

Andrew Marcinek about New Year... New Challenges... New Goals... New Excitement
Sat, 28.08.2010 06:42
I am sure it will be very
weird vibe without your
original class in the
building, but now you
have [...]

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Sunday, July 12. 2009

Leadership Day - The Pace of Change

[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.

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Tags: leadershipday09

Posted by Chris Lehmann in Ed-Admin, Ed-Tech, School 2.0 at 20:27 | Comments (10) | Trackbacks (0)

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My school has never had much tech and come Sept. we'll all have SmartBoards in our classrooms. I'm leading the effort to integrate their use into our teaching.

I've been inspired by what I have seen and learned about SLA and am eager, excited and probably over-reaching. Thank you for a reality check on my plans.

#1 Deven Black (Link) on 2009-07-12 21:39 (Reply)

As one administrator I know put it, experiments are OK - but we don't want any dead guinea pigs.

#2 Doug Noon (Link) on 2009-07-12 21:51 (Reply)

Experiments are good in developing and conditioning to higher alternative or for better out come. I think, there is no harm in doing a bit different kind of things to every system. Reveals many issues which might be unknown before.

#3 cisco training (Link) on 2009-07-13 05:58 (Reply)

I always advise people to ask themselves, what would result if we did nothing? In what ways might doing nothing impact our students?

Always seems to generate some good forward ideas and action.

#4 Rob Jacobs (Link) on 2009-07-13 14:37 (Reply)

Your nine suggestions here are really valuable. I find it very easy to overlay them and their very "conversational" tone atop the four ideas I presented in my post of yesterday.

However, I particularly like your suggestion to lay out the "worst possible consequence of your best idea." Though not the same, it reminds me a bit of the power of in generating the photonegative of your mission and beliefs. I have tried to do just that for years, and found a good book along those lines last Spring entitled: "The Opposable Mind" by Roger Martin. Check it out if you haven't yet seen it. He makes the case that brilliant leaders are capable of holding two opposing ideas in their mind at once. This then allows a better synthesis of thought than someone not so skilled at doing so. Simple, yet elegant.

Thanks for reminding us that the pace of success often runs on a slightly different -and deeper- schedule than that pace we feel with the inevitable annual return of test scores.

Sean

#5 Sean Nash (Link) on 2009-07-13 15:34 (Reply)

Great guidelines. I think the part where most plans go awry is in your first guideline on way change to begin with. Most school change tends to be superficial and targets institutional problems that are symptoms of deeper, underlying issues. Systemic thinking is the key phrase for leaders.

I think another guideline that could be added for leaders is not to attempt numerous changes simultanously...known at "innovation overload" in the literature.

#6 Tom Patten on 2009-07-13 18:34 (Reply)

I enjoyed this, Chris, largely because of the emphasis you place on taking deliberate action. I'm not sure that "deliberate" is a word that describes most of the change efforts that schools make simply because we're always wrapped in a crisis mentality.

I guess I'm just tired of seeing schools throwing Hail Marys all the time! Three yards and a cloud of dust may not sell a ton of tickets, but it's won a lot of Super Bowls.

I wonder, though, whether school leaders with less confidence or accomplishments are given the same time to be deliberate. While I agree that real change can take years to successfully implement, I worry that struggling leaders will be kept on a short leash and given little room to take the kinds of careful, thoughtful steps that accomplished school leaders regularly take.

Is that the case?

Do you find that you're able to be more deliberate in your work because of the credibility that you carry with your bosses? Would every building principal in your district have the kind of wiggle room necessary to work through the ambiguity of a successful change effort?

Bill

#7 Bill Ferriter (Link) on 2009-07-17 11:46 (Reply)

I had a principal that asked "What is the worst that could happen?" whenever I wanted to try something new. It was great because he would always encourage me by saying that if it didn't work, we would just try something else. It was never a bad thing to try something new because it might work.

#8 Pat (Link) on 2009-07-19 05:49 (Reply)

Bill,

There's no question that I was given space at SLA to create change that other school leaders weren't given. My hope is that I've proven (most of the time) worthy of that space, so that we continue to be able to push the envelope.

I don't know what to do about the "teacher-proof" and "principal-proof" movement in education today, because I agree, too many principals don't have the opportunity to attempt deliberate, thoughtful change.

But I also think we have too many leaders in our schools who, for whatever reasons, don't take the opportunity to create sustainable, thoughtful change when they do have the chance. Much about SLA wasn't part of the original thought-process, but we presented a thoughtful, carefully-constructed vision for change, and we were given the chance to do it.

I think, looking at the charters, for example, you have a class of schools that are supposed to be incubators for change, and while some are, too many created the same educational experience for the kids while making moderate changes on the governance side.

We need to ask two questions -- one, why aren't more school leaders afforded the chance to create meaningful change, and two, why aren't so many school leaders who have the opportunity doing more with it?

#9 Chris Lehmann (Link) on 2009-07-19 23:51 (Reply)

Chris wrote:

There's no question that I was given space at SLA to create change that other school leaders weren't given. My hope is that I've proven (most of the time) worthy of that space, so that we continue to be able to push the envelope.

And I'm thankful that you are still pushing the envelope, Chris---and making your envelope-pushing public in the ways that you do.

You've become a model of what's possible when principals and teachers are willing to innovate and when district leaders provide room for innovation.

Every example that the rest of us can point to as a success is important as a confidence builder, breaking the teacher and principal proofing barriers that hold so many schools back.

Chris also wrote:

Why aren't so many school leaders who have the opportunity doing more with it?

It may be the easy answer, but I think the answer rests in what exactly we're held accountable for.

I've seen the primary tool used for evaluation conversations between principals and their supervisors in our district, and it includes two data sources for review:

1. Student scores on end of grade exams.

2. Indicators of teacher satisfaction with their working conditions.

Neither of those factors are going to require progressive work at all, are they!

In fact, teacher satisfaction with their working conditions could be a disincentive to push away from traditional instruction, considering how hard it is to change instructional practices and how little time we have on the clock to do that kind of knowledge work.

It leaves me discouraged, actually---to the point where I'm not even sure that district or state-wide reform/success is even possible.

When reform is dependent on progressive principals who are willing to work beyond their evaluation criteria, we're hoping that we'll be able to find enough competent, confident leaders for every single school----and considering the demands of the job as compared to the compensation, I'm doubtful that we'll ever have that kind of supply problem.

Anyway....thanks again for "leading" beyond your own school.

Bill

#10 Bill Ferriter (Link) on 2009-07-20 05:14 (Reply)

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Sunday, July 12. 2009

Leadership Day - The Pace of Change

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