Alaska School Leadership Institute

May 24, 2012

Lexie Domaradzki and Gary Whiteley

Using data to lead in the danger zone

Strategy 1: Establish a Sense of Urgency• Use data, feedback, and stories to build a sense of

urgency• Engage fresh eyes from inside and outside to help

build urgency• Make the status quo look more dangerous than

launching into the unknown• Explore the consequences of inaction

Empowering others to act on the vision

Strategy 5: Empowering Others to Act on the Vision• Remove obstacles or barriers to accomplishing the

vision• Model behaviors that are consistent with the new

direction and vision• Recognize and reward individual and group actions

that move toward the vision

Building a powerful guiding coalition

Strategy 2: Build a Powerful Guiding Coalition• Reach-out to the high contact and high influence

people in the organization• Invest time and energy in learning together as a

guiding coalition• Assemble a critical mass of people that can

advocate for needed change

Session II

An effective educational improvement strategy needs to include an explicit and well-articulated vision of effective instructional practice. Effective instruction is not left to individual preference; it is not voluntary (p. 11). Odden and Kelly, in the report, Strategic Management of Human Capital in Public Education (2008)

The Balcony

Designing Effective Mobilizations

Step 1. Get on the BalconyStep 2. Determine the Ripeness of the Issue in the SystemStep 3. Ask, Who Am I in This Picture?Step 4. Think Hard About Your FramingStep 5. Hold SteadyStep 6. Analyze the Factions That Begin to EmergeStep 7. Keep the Work at the Center of People’s Attention

The Practice of Adaptive Leadership

Get on the Balcony

• Observe closely• Watch for patterns (successful and

unsuccessful)• Stay diagnostic

Determine the ripeness of the issue in the system

• How resilient are people and ready to tackle the issue?

• The issue is ripe when it is urgency is felt across the system.

• Is the urgency felt in one subgroup and not yet spread across the organization?

• Are people avoiding the hard work of dealing with the adaptive challenge because the pain of doing so has reached too-high levels of disequilibrium?

Think hard about your framing

• Communicate your approach in a way that enables the group to understand what you have I mind, WHY it is important, how they can help carry it out.

• Think about reaching people above and below the neck– Some people need data first– Others need emotion first– Consider balance between strong attention-getting

language and language so loaded it triggers fight or flight

Ask, Who am I in this picture?

• How are you experienced by the various groups and subgroups?

• What perspectives on the adaptive challenges do you embody for them?

• Their comfort with the way you usually act, people are probably quite proficient at managing you in that role to ensure that you do not disturb their equilibrium.– Example, one who presents ideas, silence, wait for

you to solve the problem

Hold Steady• Do not chase after it• Think of the idea as ours, not yours, give it time

to find it’s way through the system• Once introduced, resist the impulse to jump in

with follow ups (“This is what I meant”, “Let me say that again”)

• Stay present and listen (silence with listening can be very powerful) (not holding back silence though)

Analyze the factions that begin to emerge

• Who is engaged• Who begins to use your own language or pieces

of your data as if it were their own• Faction map• Listen for who resists the idea• Refining and implementing will require

involvement of people from difference functions and departments

Keep the work at the center of people’s attention

• Avoidance is not shameful; just human• Resistance to your idea will have less to do with

the merits of your idea and more to do with the fears of loss that your ideas generate– What barriers are in the way that could be

removed to make the implementation easier?– Dealing with fears of loss requires a strategy that

takes those losses into account and treats them with respect

Closing