Leading Sustainable Change in Schools

My first impression of the online systems at my new school was metaphorical; we were adrift in a sea of information. People's email inboxes were flooded, and it was difficult to find a specific document in the deluge of SharePoint folders. Suggestions for new information handling were initially met with resistance because, as Ginni Rommetty, the former CEO of IBM, said, "Growth and comfort do not co-exist."   

In my 13 years in senior leadership, I’ve learned that nurturing change in a school might sound flashy, but it requires a practical approach with serious strategy. Strong change management planning can not only avoid hiccups during implementation but also get stakeholders to support, or at least tolerate, needed innovation. Without proactive groundwork, an initiative will not be sustainable or effective. 

Survey for the Gaps

If you’re like I was, caught in the undertow of something that needed changing, a survey followed by a Gap Analysis exercise is a good starting point because it creates a shared understanding of the experiences people have and reveals blind spots. My team and I surveyed colleagues and parents/guardians with regard to our communication and information infrastructure, and then a committee analyzed the gaps so we could make an action plan. This exercise exposed a need for modifications: Teachers felt information on new students could be more robust for induction purposes; parents/guardians criticized the plethora of platforms information was shared through; and new staff reported they were confused by the many inconsistent places where important files were stored.

Embrace Innovative Behavior

From there, adopting the behaviors that drive effective implementation is crucial; this is a primary recommendation from the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) guidance report, A School's Guide to Implementation. In my school, we continually shared the “why” of our efforts, and got to work sharing plans and updates along the way while soliciting feedback. This eventually led us to eliminate and consolidate SharePoint sites, create a one-stop staff portal, and take steps to reduce email traffic, among other things. 

Consider Your Context

Given that all of this was a big job for people with limited capacity, we had to consider a manageable way to do this work. Attending to these contextual factors, we allocated work time via a weekly meeting and freed  up key people from other duties. We carefully considered the resources we’d need and assigned reasonable deadlines to actions taken.

Decide on a Structure

The EEF also recommends enacting a structured yet flexible implementation process. My go-to resource for the past decade has been the Change Management Guide and Kit by the Post Primary Teachers' Association Te Wehengarua in New Zealand. It has a brilliant graphic on page six that helps lead teams through complex change. I used it to implement a research- and inquiry-based continuing professional development  program in my last school that transformed our culture around teaching and learning, and that rocketed student outcomes upward. The article When Change Has Legs by David Perkins and James Reese of Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero is also a helpful read.

Over two years into this particular bit of change management at my current school, we have had some commendable results. For example, the staff intranet portal is a hit and I hear much less language like “I didn’t know about XYZ…” That being said, we are continually evaluating our communication practices and still have work to do on information storage. This raises the point that change management is a live process which requires continual review and maintenance.

Time and time again, I have seen well-meaning school leaders who care deeply about their communities attempt to enact needed change that falls flat because they miss a link in the change management process. I have been there, too; it’s not easy to convince a diverse community with varied experiences and priorities to engage with innovation. But in school improvement, when student success and community wellbeing are at stake, there isn’t room for “but this is how we’ve always done things.”