Why Don't Some Changes "Take?"

I have been thinking deeply about why some schools are successful in school turnaround and others are not. What are the differences between a school or a district that experiences visible change and sees visible results and a school or district that is on a treadmill of trying things differently but getting the same result. While I believe that there are many things that ultimately impact this change, there is one key ingredient that is critical to every single component of the change. Systems.

Go to your bookshelf and grab your copy of Peter Senge's book, Schools That Learn. If you have never read Senge's work, it is really critical to understanding systemic change in any organization (buy it or download it here). Senge has spent his career studying businesses, the corporate world, schools, and higher education with the quesion of what underscores real and effective change in these large scale organizations. His theories on systems thinking and having a systems approach to imacting meanigful change speak to the underlying reason that some schools successfully turnaround and others do not. Here is Peter Senge in his own words explaining systems thinking in schools.

Systsems thinking requires that leaders (classroom leaders, school building leaders, district leaders, corporate leaders) see change in terms of the entire system - what are the actions that will be required at every level of the system and who is responsible for the successful implementation. This is significantly different from a leader issuing a memo stating what the change will be and then becoming frustrated when that change has not been thoroughly implemented or implemented to the degree in which the leader is satisfied. It's the same idea as we have been pushing in classrooms with the implementation of the Common Core - who is doing the thinking and who is doing the work? In learning organizations who are successful in implementing systemic change, everyone in the system is doing the thinking and the work around the key components of change as outlined by the leadership.

I was first introduced to Peter Senge's work in 2001, when I was invited by my principal to join her in a year long book study with other leaders throughout the county. I was mesmerized by the principles that Senge outlined and it made so much sense in light of the work we were engaged in at the time - continuously striving to get enough momentum to move the needle away from single digit student achievement and significantly disruptive and dangerous student behaviors, struggling to be more proactive and less reactive, and always struggling to get our staff on-board with our vision. In my twenty-four years in education, I have watched district and building leaders have varying degrees of success with the same issues - trying to get buy-in, make changes that stick, and move the needle on student achievement. But changing the system is different from making changes - and systemic change is the only thing that will ultimately result in the organization looking, feeling, and acting differently.

The image of an iceberg is used in many different ways to describe thinking. Senge's image of system thinking uses the iceberg to analyze what we see as opposed to what is the underlying reasoning or purpose. If we are to make real systemic change, we must focus on what is underneath and not simply on the surface of what we see.

The bottom of the image refers to "mental models." That's the thinking that goes in to the decision making of people in your system. No matter how much effort you as a leader put into changing the surface of your system, if you do not disrupt the thinking patterns, or mental models, of the people in the system (in schools that includes teachers, students, parents, and the community) then we will not succeed in implementing systemic change. For leaders (classroom leaders, school building leaders, or district leaders), this is critical. We must look at every aspect of the system and work to built capacity for every person in that system to see how we need them to think, act, and respond differently if we are to make a difference in how the entire system performs.