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Illinois School Board Journal
July/August 2005
District culture: How good can it get?
by Lawrence Baskin and John Cassel
Lawrence Baskin co-chaired the Consortium for Educational Change (www. cecillinois.org) for the past two years and is the recently retired superintendent of Glen Ellyn CCSD 89. John Cassel is IASB field services director for DuPage, North Cook and Starved Rock divisions.
With school performance and education policy now front-page news and common water-cooler topics, educational leaders need to look with a critical eye for what's good about their system and what needs improvement.
Today's students will compete for jobs in a global economy with a dramatically altered workplace. The vitality of our economy will require all workers to make a significant contribution. To that end, "We can leave no child behind," as Marion Wright-Edelman said.
As the economy changes, public schools with their democratically elected boards bear the weight of the difficult transition. While universal public education always has been a positive factor in both the American economy and democratic vitality, today it is under fire.
Not surprisingly, school board members from all over the state are asking similar questions:
A simple answer is that districts need two things for success: good strategy and, surprisingly for some boards, a good culture to support the strategy. For too many districts, culture is the missing part. Culture is a key board job, one where the board itself often determines success or failure.
No one is surprised by the importance of strategy. The word, along with a constellation of planning activities, has become part of our popular lexicon. The Illinois legislature, when attempting to reform the Illinois State Board of Education in 2004, mandated that board have a "strategic plan." They assumed a floundering ISBE needed to regain clarity regarding its mission and role in the larger system. If you don't know where you're going — so the popular mantra goes — every road will look promising.
Not only is good strategy presumed, a multitude of good ideas compete for our school improvement attention. To support true quality, a district must have laser-like clarity about what it is trying to do. Unfortunately, too many districts presume the task: everyone knows the job of school. These shortsighted districts have not spent time being clear about exactly what they are trying to do.
If the way forward is muddled, there is no way to choose among competing good things to do, nor any way to assess success. In our complicated world, muddled ends and/or ineffective plans are both recipes for failure.
Three imperatives
So what are schools supposed to do? No matter the location, economic standing or demographic makeup, all school patrons expect three "imperatives" from educational organizations each and every year: higher levels of performance in (1) student learning, (2) customer satisfaction and (3) resource use.
While there may be other expectations, these three "imperatives" are universally shared. Predictably, to the extent that school leaders can derive clear and focused synergy toward accomplishing these imperatives, they will achieve organizational success. Taken together, they provide a clear destination and allow the district to carefully plot its course.
For the sake of discussion, let's assume that a school district is focused and positioned to attain higher performance in student learning, customer satisfaction and resource use. Let's also assume that everyone's on board and ready to realize enhanced outcomes.
At this point, most districts seek to benchmark proven strategies that have had measurable success in other places. Board members, administrators and teachers frequently visit other school districts or attend a seminar that presents what would appear to be a "silver bullet." These "silver bullets," which come from private industry (here and abroad), universities and sometimes even the military, have been invented and reinvented over the years. They come in many shapes and forms, with acronyms and 50-dollar titles for 50-cent practices. Some are effective, while some are less so.
But why is it that even the most promising strategies seem to work in some locations and not others? And beyond that, why do we find them so difficult to implement, less successful than promised and, most importantly, difficult to sustain?
The real "silver bullet" for success has always been before us but most often taken for granted. Within every organization two factors must coalesce in order to attain desired outcomes: strategy and culture.
We've all heard educators state that old expression of cynicism: "this too shall pass." And in most cases, it does. Without a positive and accepting culture focused on systemic improvement, the best of strategies "will pass," too.
Why is this the case? Consider the following analogy: One could invest hundreds of thousands of dollars to create the fastest race car in the world — a car that travels from zero to 60 mph faster than any other. However, the car's success is greatly dependent on the surface over which it must travel. Race cars are designed to speed over surfaces that are free of significant moisture and debris, among other things. If these conditions do not exist, the race car will not function anywhere near as optimally as designed.
Likewise, promising strategies will present less than desired results if the culture that under girds them is less than accepting and supportive.
Organizational culture
The impact of culture on organizational dynamics is undeniable, but a distinction should be made between organizational culture and tone. Culture is a sustained visceral attitude that is imbedded in the fiber of an organization. Whether positive or negative, culture has a profound influence on how constituents view and respond to strategic pursuits. Tone, on the other hand, pertains to fluctuations in attitudes that change from time to time.
While culture is developed and sustained over time, tone is temporal. Developing a positive culture focused on improvement takes considerable time to develop. From a practical standpoint, it takes far longer to develop a productive culture than to identify a promising strategy.
The message here should be clear: when considering lasting change with desirable outcomes, organizations need to develop and nurture the proper culture long before considering the implementation of a new strategy.
The educational landscape is littered with a myriad of ill-fated strategies that were introduced in the absence of an accepting and nurturing culture. Warm, fuzzy discussions that take place at the conclusion of a stimulating seminar should never be mistaken for the long-standing underpinnings of the collective psyche of the organization. Implementing the latest strategy without first developing a supportive environment for change is doomed from the onset.
Developing culture for change
How can school leaders develop a culture for results? A quick survey of high-performing districts identifies some keys that can create and sustain a culture for positive results. Unfortunately, a terrible gap often exists between an organization's best image of itself and its operating realities. Intent and practice, "the walk and the talk," must be brought together.
First and foremost, school district leaders must remain steadfast in the support of organizational imperatives. Each year, year after year after year, all constituent groups must mark progress in attaining heightened performance levels in the areas of learning, customer satisfaction and resource use. All personnel must know how their individual efforts translate into meeting these imperatives and, most importantly, feel that they have a role in identifying and performing tasks that help attain success.
Secondly, gaining support and investment from multiple constituencies is critical to attaining a commitment for improved performance. A vision held by one or a few individuals is a mirage, an apparition without substance or reality. Only when a collective vision exists is there any real commitment for change.
While volumes have been written about gaining commitment for change, we simply assert, "this takes some doing."
Perhaps the simplest way to gain commitment for change is to ask constituents a fundamental question: "Is this as good as it gets?" Is this as good as we can do on test scores? Is this as good as we can do on parent/teacher partnering?
Rarely, if ever, will the answer be "yes." After acknowledging room for improvement, the second question is: "Then, how good can it get?"
Once a distinction between the current and desired state has been made, the resulting effect is a powerful force for change known as "cognitive dissonance." Deeply felt, cognitive dissonance provides a platform in support of change.
A third key to developing a culture for improvement has to do with levels of trust. Specifically, to what extent do employees feel safe to pursue new strategies without retribution? Obviously, if retribution is the expected reward for trying new strategies, it's unlikely that anything more than the status quo will be embraced.
To mitigate this, school leaders should remain "hard on the systems and easy on the people." Organizations are comprised of an infinite number of systems, all intertwined in an organic way. Results are usually produced by the larger "system." In the event that the results are less than desired, it is incumbent on the organization to change that system.
To create a greater sense of safety in the pursuit and implementation of new strategies, school leaders need to be perceived as focused on "fixing" systems rather than "fixing" people. From a practical standpoint, systems (as opposed to people) are the "poor performers" that determine results. It follows, then, that to enhance the likelihood new strategies will be embraced and supported, the organizational culture must be one that is focused on collaboration toward higher system successes.
In other words, if school boards want to support the implementation of new strategies, the board and district culture must support such work.
The fourth way to create and sustain a culture for improvement is to foster a willingness to listen. While this seems obvious and a bit trite, school leaders must ask themselves what are the formal ways that constituent groups are engaged for the expressed purpose of seeking ways to improve? And, how frequently are these ways used?
While almost everyone recognizes the importance of engaging staff, parents and students, like any number of productive measures that enhance culture, these formal processes are too often regarded highly but taken lightly. Along with listening, it is important to ask the right questions. We need formal ways for school leaders to engage improvement recommendations from constituent groups and respond appropriately.
All four of these keys — remaining steadfast in support of the imperatives, a shared vision, a systemic approach and an engaging passion for listening — help create a foundational culture pointed toward success. And all can be manifest within the board itself.
Asking the question, "Do we manifest these qualities?" becomes the challenge for every school board focused on quality student learning. If a sustaining culture doesn't start in the boardroom, it likely will not be a district reality.