Your School's Secret Change Agents

School change is a challenging, necessary, and sticky business. Too often though, it begins with the search for the negative. Putting on, as thinking expert Edward de Bono would say, our “Black Hat.”

It’s a story that has been told a thousand times. A school needs to improve, to “fix what is broken” and it is up to the principal to identify what isn’t working, develop a plan to improve or repair the issues, and maybe hires a few consultants along the way to help.

What if, we started with de Bono’s “Yellow Hat?” Might the search for solutions began with finding those people at the school who are already succeeding and thriving in spite of the challenges and obstacles they face?

Because, as Harvard Business Review authors Richard Tanner Pascale and Jerry Sternin in their article “Your Company’s Secret Change Agents” point out….

“Somewhere in your organization, groups of people are already doing things differently and better. To create lasting change, find areas of positive deviance and fan their flames.”

Here is an “uncommon sense” approach to school change adapted from their article.

 

Traditional Approach To School Change	Positive Deviance Approach To School Change
Principal or Administrator as Path Breaker Primary ownership and momentum for the school change comes from the principal's office. Teachers and staff leave it up to principal to discover what isn't working and fix it.	Leadership as Inquiry Principal or administrator facilitates search; the school staff takes ownership of the quest for change. The teachers look around for positive deviance, those teachers, departments, or grade levels that are doing it differently and better.
Outside In Outside consultants are hired to identify and share best practices.	Inside Out School staff looks for and identifies preexisting solutions (what is working) and amplifies them across the school.
Deficit Based Principal deconstructs common practices and recommends best-practice solutions. The implication to teachers is "Why aren't you as good as your peers?"	Asset Based Teachers and staff leverage preexisting solutions practiced by those teachers who succeed against the odds.
Logic Driven Teachers "think" into new ways of teaching and instructing.	Learning Driven Teachers teach and instruct into new ways of "thinking."
Vulnerable To Transplant Rejection Resistance arises from ideas imported or imposed from outside consultants and or district office.	Open To Self-Replication Latent wisdom and knowledge of teachers and staff on site is tapped within the school walls to circumvent the school's culture/social reaction to outsiders.
Flows From Problem Solving To Solution Identification Best practices are applied to problems defined within the context of existing parameters.	Flows From Solution Identification To Problem Solving Possible source of solutions is expanded through discovery of new parameters.
Focused On The Protagonist Engages school stakeholders who would be conventionally associated with the problem.	Focused On Enlarging The Network Identifies school stakeholders beyond those directly involved with the problem.

Comments

[Augusto]

Interesting! Also check the works on Appreciative Inquiry in Education.