How to Prepare Your School for Continuous Change

The world of education requires us to evolve more quickly and significantly than ever before.

Despite the pressure to change we've found that schools are not getting any better changing. Only 12% of K-12 schools who embark on a transformation program fully achieve their intended outcomes.

In today's world, we must improve the odds of success.
So what does the minority do right?
The best schools understand that organizations don't change, people do.

But you can't make your staff and teachers change.

Change truly happens when they choose for themselves; when they understand the opportunities and challenges, and they embrace what is possible; especially when it's a stretch.
So we've helped schools develop the conditions where staff choose to change.

Here's how it works:
 

1. First, you need to design a future state that's right for your school. You also need to consider execution challenges as you plot your course. You'll need to balance the relationship between strategy and execution all the way to the end.
        
2. To prepare for execution start by helping your team bring your school's future to life -immerse this them in their future, help them understand how it will benefit them to establish a clear intent to change, use that story to inspire deep commitment all the way to the front line, make it meaningful through face to face conversations.
           
3. Adjust your plan, so it stays focused on delivering and encourage your teams to go to the edge but not over the limit.
          
4. Build to sustain the change by putting in place the right operating model systems and feedback loops and adjust when you hit the inevitable challenges and current plans and working.
          
5. At its heart, change is about people acting differently. So, define the two or three behaviors that really matter to help your staff succeed. Remove roadblocks to those behaviors, considering your school team's mindsets capabilities and the environment around them. You'll have to motivate and reinforce them to display the intended behaviors time and time again.
           
6. Focus on coaching and capability-building to win buy-in and making change stick to structure and sustain the change your school leadership team needs to make.
          
7. The single biggest reason most school transformations stall: lack of energy. Plan for frequent renewals of your commitment to the goal and rekindle excitement throughout the school.
           
8. Be prepared to up your leadership and inspire action. To sustain full alignment, you'll have to live and breathe your school's shared sense of purpose.