“…. a turnaround is … continuous improvement tragically delayed….”
From The Future of Management. Hamel, G.
Hamel lists three conditions that threaten timely renewal: denying or ignoring the need for a reboot, a dearth of compelling alternatives, and allocation rigidities.
Can we deny that public education needs a reboot? No.
We continue to fail large groups of identifiable groups of students, and we spend more and more money doing it.
Are there any compelling alternatives to public education? Yes. There are private schools, charter schools, and Homeschoolers. Those alternatives are not available for all students. Ask any public school educator who has been to a state or national conference. They almost certainly heard a speaker talk about examples of innovations in public schools that benefited all students, and they were told how they could accomplish the same outcomes.
Do we suffer from allocation rigidities? Yes. Public school funding is notoriously complicated.
It is interesting to notice that in cases of turnaround or continuous improvement in a school or district, the improvement does not last. Leadership turnover, staff turnover, budget cuts, new initiatives from the State or Federal level, all erode any improvement. The pressure of the system to return to status quo, seems inevitable.
What if we abandoned turnaround and continuous improvement strategies and tried Design Thinking? We have people in industry with experience in this and we have researchers in Universities who teach the processes. We have facilitators to support the participants, and we have foundations to fund the process.
One of Hamel’s rules for innovators is “To solve a systemic problem, you need to understand its systemic roots”. A Design Thinking process must include stakeholders from the entire system, top to bottom.
In Thank you for being late, Thomas Friedman quotes John Hagel’s blog. “ ‘Rather than simply attacking our institutions, or conversely, simply defending them, we need to come together in a quest to redefine them… Redefine them to reflect the new context of a rapidly changing world, so that our institutions can continue to support us.”
Friedman continues, “Transitions, though, can be a real bitch. The most dangerous time to be on the streets of New York City was when cars were first being introduced but horses and buggies had not yet been fully phased out. We’re in that kind of transition now - but I am convinced that if we can just achieve the minimum level of political collaboration to develop the necessary social technologies to work through it, keep our economies open, and keep lifting learning for everyone, a better life will become more available than ever to more people than ever….. The transition wlll not be easy. But human beings have made transitions like this before, and I believe they can again. ‘Can’ doesn’t mean ‘will,’ but is also sure doesn’t mean ‘can’t.’ “
Couldn’t we just……..?