Discussion 1: Focused Direction in Leadership

Fullan, M., & Quinn, J. (2016). Coherence: The right drivers in action for schools, districts, and systems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

· Chapter 2, “Focusing Direction” (pp. 17–46)

Chapter 2

Focusing Direction

Leaders need to find the glue that will increase the coherence of the district and school efforts at every level and build a clear path to improve learning in demonstrable ways. One component of the “glue” is the ability to develop and sustain focused direction in the face of competing and complex demands internally and externally. The first right driver of the Coherence Framework is focusing direction. Leaders need to combine the four elements of focused direction, purpose driven, goals that impact, clarity of strategy, and change leadership, if they are to meet the changing contexts they face (see Figure 2.1). In this chapter, we examine each of the four elements of focused direction in turn and then provide several examples of focused direction in action.

Purpose Driven

Leaders need the ability to develop a shared moral purpose and meaning as well as a pathway for attaining that purpose. The moral imperative focuses on deep learning for all children regardless of background or circumstance (Fullan, 2010, 2011b). Commitment to the moral imperative of education for all would seem to be a natural fit for public schools. But it doesn’t work that way. Having a moral imperative doesn’t mean much if you are not getting somewhere. In the absence of progress, educators lose heart—or never develop it in the first place. Of course, some do maintain their moral drive, but it is against all odds. Humans need to experience success to keep going; they need to understand and experience the conditions that advance the cause. In many situations, constant overload and fragmentation overwhelm moral purpose. The development of purpose and the other three elements of focused direction is a process as much as it is a state. The challenge is to turn chaos into focus. Hargreaves, Boyle, and Harris (2014) call this critical component “dreaming with determination”—a deep, relentless purpose accompanied by an equally strong learning mode.

How Does This Happen? (P.19)

Leaders must first understand their own moral purpose and be able to com- bine personal values, persistence, emotional intelligence, and resilience. This is essential because their moral purpose will be reflected in all their decisions and actions. To clarify your own moral imperative, consider your answers to four questions:

1. What is my moral imperative?

2. What actions do I take to realize this moral imperative?

3. How do I help others clarify their moral imperative?

4. Am I making progress in realizing my moral purpose with students?

Fostering moral imperative in others is not about giving inspirational speeches. Effective leaders foster moral purpose when they do the following:

• Build relationships with everyone, including those who disagree, are skeptical, or even cynical.

• Listen and understand the perspective of others.

• Demonstrate respect for all.

• Create conditions to connect others around that purpose.

• Examine with staff evidence of progress.

Great leaders connect others to the reasons they became educators— their moral purpose. They make purpose part of the organization’s DNA by creating opportunities for people to make meaning of the possibilities, work on aspects of the challenge, and achieve success. From working together, they build a deeper understanding of their shared moral purpose, a common language for communicating more effectively, and deeper commitment. However, by itself, moral imperative is not a strategy, so leaders will only realize their moral imperative by developing a small number of actionable and shared goals. Then they learn and build capacity and commitment through purposeful doing.

Goals That Impact What Matters Most

The problem is not the absence of goals in districts and schools today but the presence of too many that are ad hoc, unconnected, and ever- changing. Multiple mandates from states and districts combine with the allure of grants and innovations, resulting in overload and fragmentation. The overload results from too many goals, projects, and initiatives. Even if they are good ideas, the sheer volume makes it impossible for people to manage in a way that gives depth. The second problem is fragmentation. Even when the goals are the right ones, they may not be experienced as connected ideas by the users. People see them as discrete demands with little or no connection to each other or their daily work; scrambling to implement too many directions and lacking a coherent sense of how they connect results in paralysis and frustration.

You can either remain a victim of these—one can almost say natural circumstances in complex society—or you can turn the tables. One could easily say that the bigger system should “get its act together,” but don’t hold your breath. Our framework and the ideas within enable you to take greater control. You can achieve success under current conditions, as we will shortly show. And if enough of you do it, the system will change.

We illustrate with three districts that operate within the same political, funding, and demographic constraints as neighboring school districts yet manage to provide coherent direction and consistent results for their students. York Region District School Board in Ontario, Canada, has over 200 schools. It created instructional coherence and corresponding individual and collective capacity with a decade-long focus on literacy, resulting in substantial gains for students. The literacy focus guided all decisions, was a beacon for assessing needs and successes, and ensured a common language and knowledge base for everyone. We see similar patterns in Garden Grove Unified (Knudson, 2013) and Long Beach Unified (Mourshed, Chijioke, & Barber, 2010) in California, where both districts have sustained a consistent, clear focus and strategy for instructional improvement with persistence, despite political, budget, and demographic changes. The solution lies in developing limited goals, persisting, and avoiding distractors. In other words, these leaders turned the table on overload and fragmentation to establish continuous focused direction.

In 2014, the York Region District School Board appointed a new director (superintendent). Although the appointment was from within the district, the new director has a mandate to revisit and renew the vision. We are currently working with the York Region District School Board as they develop an updated vision and direction for the next period. It will need to be focused, inspiring, and engaging for students and educators at all levels of the system.

As we think about York Region and other districts at the early stage of developing a new direction, we note one of the most important change insights we have learned about visioning and coherence. It is a mistake to overload the front end with massive amounts of input from all constituencies in the absence of action. It is much more effective to shorten the front- end process and overload, so to speak, by implementing action, learning from it, and grounding the vision in practice. Once again, it is learning by purposeful doing that counts most.

In another large district, we work with (240 schools, high English- language learner [ELL] needs, and huge diversity), we see the promising struggles in action to overcome a history of fragmented overload. The district has achieved success for students but over the years has initiated a myriad of programs, projects, and initiatives to meet the changing needs of its population. Principals and teachers are proud of the district but describe feeling overwhelmed and unsure what the real priorities are when there are so many. The district recognizes that future success depends on a much clearer focus. This scenario of overload and fragmentation is not uncommon and could be happening in any state, province, or district. Figuring out what the small number of ambitious goals ought to be and staying focused on them is a challenge. This means reducing the number of goals and strategies, giving people experiences that show the integration (not just coordination) of the goals and strategies, learning as you go, and constantly reiterating the direction and how well you are progressing. Talking the walk is what we call this process.

We recommend a four-step approach to tackling what we have called the problem of “initiativitis.”

1. Be Transparent

Acknowledge and get clarity on the issue. Consider quick, transparent assessment methods (surveys, focus groups, interviews) to identify the perceptions of staff, leaders, school board members, students, parents, and community. Avoid excuses and blame. Review the data, and avoid the “yeah, but” syndrome. Establish norms that resist the blame game of “overload is because of xyz’s focus while my initiative is essential.” Remember that the projects and initiatives were likely implemented as solid approaches to a perceived need at the time. The problem is not the quality but the cumulative effect, volume, overlap, and lack of clarity or connections. Be careful not to have a lengthy front-end process.

2. Build a Collaborative Approach

Recognize that finding solutions to complex problems requires the intelligence and talents

of everyone. Create a task team that is small but representative of the layers of the

organization to strategize a plan and provide leadership.

The senior leadership team must develop a common language and approach that is

sustained and communicated consistently across the system. All parts of the organization,

including unions, classified staff, students, and parents, must feel they have a place in the

process. Collaboration during initial and ongoing implementation is especially crucial.

3. Develop a Clear strategy: Reduce, Reframe, Remove

Reduce the clutter and overload by listing (on sticky notes, for example) and examining current initiatives with a view to reducing and clustering them:

• Avoid the temptation of trying to realign them or cluster them into a new picture of the old way. Start with student learning. Ask, “What learning do we want for our students?” instead of starting with, for example, “How do we implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS)?”

• Identify the umbrella focus that captures this vision. It may be 21st century learning, literate learners, college and career readiness, literacy, or others. The process needs to be inclusive enough to involve everyone.

• Name the two or three ambitious goals you will need to pursue if you want to attain this vision.

• Develop a strategy for achieving the goals. Identify the supports that are needed. Do not just try to fit all the current programs and initiatives under the new goals. Rather, identify what is needed and review current projects or supports to determine fit.

Reframe the connections between the goals to overcome fragmentation:

• At this stage, the designers or task team may see the connections and overall plan, but it does not have meaning for the users. You need to develop a coherent picture, visually and in words, of the pieces and how they connect.

Remove distractors, which may be mandates or alluring innovations:

• Identify the time wasters and inefficiencies. These are often management issues that take time away from the learning focus and keep the system off balance. For example, the Hawaii Department of Education created a task team with the goal of reducing by 25 percent the paperwork, forms, and demands on school leader time to support leaders in focusing on literacy. Within three months, they had reduced the requirements by almost 50 percent by identifying duplication across departments, data collected but not used, and other inefficiencies. This sent a strong message to the field that they were serious about focused direction.

• Give leaders permission to say no. Once the goals and strategy are clearly understood and manageable, leaders have a rationale for saying no to the multitude of requests that bombard schools and districts. • Avoid shiny objects and other alluring possibilities. Distractors can be very useful and effective projects, initiatives, or supports. The key is in discerning the relevance of the new addition to the goals and current strategy. It may be a great innovation—just not at this time.

Kirtman and Fullan (2015) have a chapter on “moving compliance to the side of the plate.” The idea is not to be a rebel for the sake of it but to change the game from compliance to purposeful focus.

4. Cultivate Engagement

Communicate often, and listen even more often. Avoid overreliance on print or digital media, and instead, engage all groups with the goals and strategy, allowing rich conversations to develop meaning for everyone. Use social media to reinforce these discussions. Cycles of sharing and revision will lead to a common language about the direction, deeper understanding, and commitment.

Build opportunities to check with all groups regularly over time—for example, assistant superintendents can begin all main meetings with principals or schools by articulating the goals and strategy (we witnessed this in York Region; it takes fewer than 10 minutes) then checking progress by asking the following: What is going well? What do we need to be worrying about or taking action on? Giving an authentic forum for consistent, meaningful conversation about the goals and the strategy will reinforce the common language and understanding of the direction as well as build ownership for results.

Once the purpose and goals are identified, it is critical that everyone perceive that there is a clear strategy for achieving them and be able to see their part in that strategy. People need to get better and better at “talking the walk.”

Change Leadership

The pace and complexity of innovation and change today—combined with the emergence of instant digital connections—is shifting our notions of an effective change process to a much more fluid dynamic. Leaders remain crucial in creating a North Star for action, establishing enabling conditions, and shaping a pathway for change; however, the new process of change shifts from a notion of sequential, discrete stages of the traditional alignment of policy, resources, skill development, and supports (getting the pieces aligned) to a more organic process of diffusion and continuous learning. Under these conditions, the ultimate question is this: How do we help people through the change process and get greater coherence while we are at it? This is the sophistication of change leadership.

It has long been stated that change is a process, not an event. The leader’s role is to manage the transition from the current to the future state. We use a metaphor of two fishbowls to describe the challenge of shifting individuals and organizations from current to future practice (see Figure 2.3).

The difficulty of shifting practice or moving from bowl to bowl is compounded by two additional factors of confidence and competence. Some do not believe they have the ability to make the leap from what they know to the new way of thinking and doing. Even if they are good swimmers in the current bowl, they do not know if they have the skills to make the leap or be swimmers in the new way. They lack confidence to make the leap. The question of competence is a closely related problem. Some are not good swimmers or leapers and are fearful for good rea- son; others may not have the skills to swim in the new way of thinking and doing. One can see for both confidence and competence that both capacity building and a supportive climate are crucial. Effective change leaders know that.

The fishbowl metaphor provides clues to how we support others to shift practice:

• Foster clarity of the purpose for the leap and specificity of the destination.

• Support the early leapers, and learn from their attempts.

• Build the capacity of others to leap with support.

• Create a culture of collaboration where leaping can be nurtured.

• Recognize successes at leaping at all points of the journey.

We don’t want to carry the metaphor too far, but it underscores one final issue: we need to make the journey of change vivid for people—bring it to life. Connect it to what they know (the simple fishbowl example) as a catalyst to have honest conversations about their worries, desires for change, and their needs for support.

We have learned a great deal about the ins and outs of change leader- ship by working with leading practitioners. Such leaders understand and foster the new change dynamic where progress is not linear. The big findings are as follows:

• The best leaders use the new change dynamic to move their organizations forward and “participate

as learners.”

• They build vertical and horizontal capacity and integration.

• They balance and integrate push and pull strategies.

• They build vertical and horizontal capacity and integration.