Challenges as opportunities

The global finacial crisis is presenting challenges across the board. Many of these challenges are urgent as resources are lost, or simply not available. If financial resources are inadequate the first response is to stop spending in an attempt to 'reduce costs'. But this strategy does not actually reduce costs... it just changes who pays the cost, and usually, this becomes those who can least afford it (The Myth of cost saving by cutting spending).

The only way to reduce costs is to improve the system - to reduce waste starting with rework. The best way to do that is to ensure that

• Goals and purposes are clear and shared
• Commitments are feasible (and/or safe)
• Processes are efficient and effective (reduce rework - releases resources)
• Improvement is continuous
• Everyone is a contributor and beneficiary
• The initial focus is on making things easier first (releases resources)

NOTE: the above list are core tasks - they do not really represent anything new. The small change is to actually attend to these matters on a moment by moment basis and to integrate them into everyday practice. They are not (and cannot be) separate from doing what needs to be done.

Improving the system is a key response to the urgent challenges we face. But the challenegs also represent an opportunity is (at least two ways):

• The harsh reality we face forces up to reflect on what really matters - we have an opportunity to ensure that our goals and purposes are clear and shared
• The unfamiliar difficulties we face brings our systems to the 'edge of chaos' under which conditions the system may be vulnerable but it is also easier to change.

IKEA as role model

Recently, members of a staff group expressed some of the challenges they faced in carrying out their work. Their concerns and the possible improvement strategies that they had identified were summarised by a third party in an email to the Principal. The email was intended to be a starting point for discussing the situation.

In response the Principal provided the members of the team with a comprehensive email containing several key documents and advice and instructions. The Principal's email was rather like something from IKEA. It was presented as having all the required bits and pieces (information) and a set of matching instructions.

While some specific aspects of schools can be improved using the IKEA method, the 'constructivist' notions of IKEA are fundamentally different from those involved in constructing the knowledge, arrangements and actions required to make a school effective.

For example, the construction of an IKEA item is a generally a once-only task and most customers would produce very similar items. In addition, the item is largely independent of the context in which it is constructed and the use to which it will be put. Also, the construction of one IKEA item does not impact on the effectiveness of other IKEA items even if they are same room.

In contrast, the aspects of a school are in a continual state of flux... the knowledge, arrangements and actions need to be continually constructed and reconstructed. And no one have the full set of instructions. In this information age, information and instructions are not enough. IKEA is great at furniture but it is not a suitable role for dealing with the complexity of schools.

Dealing with complexity requires on-going conversations in which experiences and insights are shared, and knowledge, arrangements and actions are co-constructed. Rather than trying to produce fail-safe kits (a la IKEA) it is wiser to undertake small safe-fail experiments to find out what works and what doesn't and then respond to the results: nurture and extend what is useful and curtail what is unhelpful. And the time, incorporating the best as part of 'our story'.

Monitoring school (system) capacity

One of the reasons that this blog focuses on small changes is because schools do not have an unlimited capacity to do good things. At the same time the number of good things that schools could being doing is almost unlimited, especially if one considers all the desirable and effective approaches that already exist for improving school performance.

One of the differences between implementing solutions and fixing problems is that the former tends top lead to low cost, sustainable arrangements. The later tends to lead to counter measures which usually require additional resources... time, efforts, $, arrangements...

It is true that many decisions about what to improve arise from the need to address problems that already exist. However, addressing an existing problem thoroughly can significantly reduce recurrent costs. The following guidelines may be useful

• An identified problem represents an opportunity for improvement
• An identified problem may require containment and resolution in the short term
• Understanding how the problem arose may enable arrangements to be improved so that the problem is less likely to recur
• Such improvements may require very little change: many problems can be reduced and even solved by ensuring that things get done on time, by the right people...
• While counter measures may be still be required they need to be understood as an additional cost and not an improvement

It is wise to assume that the school is already near capacity. Thus, preferred improvement strategies are those that release resources rather than incur recurrent costs. Indeed, releasing resources is the key to increasing a school's capacity:

Attention to small everyday things and, everyone making it easier for the next person can be powerful ways to increase the school's capacity. The resources released are then available for higher order endeavours.

The myth of cost savings by cutting spending

In response to the global financial crisis many governments are trying to reduce costs by cutting back on services. This is described as cutting costs although it is actually simply cutting spending. The spin is based on the implication that cutting costs is both necessary and desirable...whereas, cutting spending might mean that someone misses out. And they probably will.

While it is true that such a strategy reduces the cost to government (at least in the short term) it almost never reduces the total cost. There are two common outcomes from such a flawed strategy:

1. The total cost increases because
   
   • Processes become less efficient since they have to be developed using different arrangements and this may not happen (efficiency = 0%, effectiveness = 0%)
   • Actually require more resources - new arrangements have to be established
   • Processes become less effective creating backlogs, rework and deficiencies
2. The cost moves towards those who can least afford it - those who have the least resources

The only way to genuinely reduce costs is to improve the systems involved.

Note: A new improved system may emerge spontaneously as a side effect of cost cutting - the edge of chaos phenomenon - however this is a very risky and unpredictable strategy.

Misconceptions of change management

Two major themes permeate much of change management. The heroic enlightenment of managers and leaders as the proponents of change and the undermining resistance of staff as the opponents of change.

Firstly, management and leadership are two different and disparate functions. Management is largely based on authority associated with a delegated role whereas leadership is usually based on (working) relationships. Few managers are actually leaders because of the likely conflict between role and relationship. Similarly few leaders are actually managers.

So how do those in charge (those with authority) change organisations? The most common approach is to produce a plan and communicate it to staff. The 'short-cut' version of this approach is simply to use direct force, often in the form of changed policies and structures.

Sometimes this approach seems to work, at least in part. Of course, this implies that the plan was, to a certain extent, well thought out and comprehensive, and hence. The manager is, usually to a greater extent, a heroic and insightful leader.

Closer examination will usually show that the outcome differs significantly from the plan. What has emerged is different from what was initially proposed, due to unforeseen circumstances or the resistance of those who are required to implement the plan.

In reality, it is not possible to predict what will emerge from a change initiative. Afterwards, the difference between intensions and outcomes are often readily explainable through 'retrospective coherence'.

Student at the Centre: student as client?

Most organisations tend to identify their clients as those people and groups outside the organisation who use the services or products that the organisation produces.

Student at the Centre is a good example. Paradoxically, Student at the Centre actually places the student outside the Department (and even schools) as shown by the lack of student voice in the everyday conversations from which the Department emerges. This paradox creates a dilemma for schools as reflected in their need to serve (educate), train, manage and report on students. So despite everyone's best hopes and intentions, it is possible that 'Student at the Centre' is like a nicely labelled but empty paper bag.

The client as an external role arises from the almost universal production paradigm that has the organisation as 'factory'. A more aggressive form of the production paradigm might be the organisation as 'army'. In either case command and control are frequently in use.

Minimal examination will show that it is clearly a nonsense to assign a fixed role of 'client' to particular persons , groups or other organisations. It just isn't that simple. In any organization, the best interactions occur within working-learning relationships. Everyone is both a client and a provider and these 'aspects of any working-learning relationship change from moment to moment in everyday interactions. Consider another example: the patient provides the doctor with information that he/she then uses to make a diagnosis and design a response. And this not really a linear process, rather it is an iterative process in which each party moves from provider to recipient on a moment by moment basis. 'Patient' and 'doctor' refer respectively to particular needs and specialist capacity within the working-learning relationship.

Thus ‘client’ is better understood as a momentary ‘role’ within dynamic working-learning relationships. It is not a fixed personal role, the 'client' is simply the next person,… in the process.

Clients and providers may exchange ‘roles’ from moment to moment as in the doctor-patient example above. This iterative movement occurs in everyday conversations in which knowledge, arrangements and actions are constructed. The collaboration of teachers and learners is another prime example. Rather than 'Student at the Centre' we need to make the success of teachers and learners working and learning together the centre of the Department.

Top down approaches

One of my sad experiences this year came from a conversation I overheard in a school. A parent asked about a minor aspect of the school's future arrangements. The senior staff member replied: "We don't know ... the Department hasn't decided yet."

This informal exchange illustrated the extent to which the Tasmanian education system has become a top down system. In earlier times, such minor matters would have been decided by the school as a matter of course.

Few Tasmanian schools are the purposeful creative places they used to be before the system became the client. This latter development is the inevitable outcome of the recent unchallenged top down approaches.

Despite their rhetoric, top down systems do not support leaders at all well. They may talk 'leadership' but the system constraints reduce leadership to management (implementing the system's decisions) and compliance. But there are still leaders in spite of this. And the leaders are paying a very high price in those schools that are trying so hard to be purposeful and creative. Many school leaders are quite exhausted by the competing demands of the Department and governments and the needs of the staff and students. An indicator and outcome is the low and shrinking number of applicants for Principals' positions.

And then there is the paradoxical phenomenon in top down systems that

• The less well top down interventions work, the more likely they will be applied and increased.

The common flaw in top down approaches is that they treat most things as simple when in reality most are not. See It is not personal and it is not simple below.