How to think wide with your next challenge | Change Series 1.3

Do you ever feel like in your school you're just trying to solve the same problems over and over again? Well it is time to break that cycle. In this episode we're going to explore how to uncover the true challenges facing your school and why the first answer is really the best one. Hey everyone, I'm Shane Leaning, welcome to Global Ed Leaders, the chat-topping leadership podcast for international schools. I'm an organisational coach and in this show I

get to know the teachers, leaders and innovators making a difference in education across the world. And every other week I share bite-sized strategies to supercharge your leadership and that's what today's episode is. Before we jump in to the conversation I'm delighted that today's episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association. Stay tuned to learn more about their upcoming conference.

Okay so this episode is part of a series that I've put together on organisational change based on work collaborative. I've already done two episodes, one that is based on an organisational change model that I've developed as part of this organisation. And then we had two more episodes, one about the sponsors perceived challenge and one about the first step in change which is connection. Today we're going to move across that model to the discover phase of a change project.

So whatever change you're working on, this episode is going to be useful to you if you want to really dig in to discover what your challenge is that you're facing. So if you haven't listened to those previous episodes, go back, have a listen or at least listen to the overview episode, our link in the show notes. And today we are going to jump into the discover phase. So this, if we're looking at the double diamond design model that we've looked at previously, this is where we're expanding wide at the beginning of a change. Here is all about exploring options, not making decisions and also about exploring

and considering multiple perspectives, not just that sponsors perceived challenge that we looked at before. Now discovery, this discover phase links very closely to that previous phase of connect. Remember building trust enables people in your organisation to think freely and to express their thoughts freely, which is really important when we go to discover. I'd really like to usually come back to Jim Knight's partnership principles here. He talks

about the importance of things like quality, choice, voice, dialogue, reflection, practices and reciprocity in coaching relationships. And these principles can be also applied equally to a change process to guide your relationships and guide your interactions with the community. Each of these principles contributes to a more effective discovery process. So go back to that connect episode if you want to learn a little bit more about that. So we are in

discovery here. We want to look at our challenge and explore multiple dimensions. We want to uncover some underlying feelings and assumptions about the challenge here in your change. You might use things like surveys to understand some of the dynamics of how your team operates and we're going to go really wide. We're going to look at the benefits and costs of multiple

different types of challenges. We're going to challenge ourselves on our initial assumptions that they might be wrong. And we're going to be seeking out voices that might not usually be heard. I think the easiest way to think about this stage is to go back to there is a brilliant guy called Michael Bunkestania. He wrote a book called The Coaching Habit.

It's the number one selling book on coaching in the world and it is a really nice simple guide. I recommend you go check it out. Here, one of his core questions that he asks throughout the book is to always ask what else? What else? And this is what we do at the discovery

phase. We've got an idea of what the challenge is, but we're going to ask what else could that challenge be? What could we be missing? What else? And then we're going to ask it

again, what else? What else? We're going to try create an exhaustive list really. And this question really helps to overcome that tendency to stop at a first good idea. We

all tend to do that and leads to definitely more innovative solutions and at least a more comprehensive understanding of the challenge. This kind of question, what else can also just help break us out of those habitual thinking patterns in our schools? We're also going to consider at this phase any consequences of not doing anything in action. John Cotter in his change models that have been referenced by schools for a long time, he talks about creating a sense of urgency in a change and this helps us to overcome complacency and resistance to change. So you might be thinking about how urgency might be embedded within

your change. Maybe is it that you're trying to deal with declining enrollment in your school or is there some kind of external challenge that is coming at your school that you want to address head on? And does that create the urgency for change? Urgency can really help to push change forward. So at this stage, you might be looking at your

different challenges and go, which one's the most urgent for us? Many people resist change initially. And it's really important in this stage to be really thinking about what resistance might be present. I really like the book, Our Iceberg is Melting by Cotter and Rathberger.

This is a nice little parable about a colony of penguins that face in melting ice and initially they're resisting to change. And the idea is that we have this kind of tendency of clinging to traditional ways when we see environments shifting around us. And urgency can help to just sometimes ping us out of that. So that can really be very useful. I want to take a moment to tell you about

the International Curriculum Conference that is coming up from the International Curriculum Association. This will be held from the 11th to the 13th of November in 2024 in Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia. It is so exciting. The theme of this is global perspectives, local impact. And I

was at their conference last year. I can't recommend it highly enough. This is a focal point for the global community of schools, part of the International Curriculum Association. There is going to be amazing keynote speakers and a wide range of school-led workshops delivered by classroom teachers sharing their practice and experience. Seriously, with the incredible

insights and showcasing of learning, I really do recommend the International Curriculum Conference because it offers a unique level of enrichment connection and learning for all. If you're interested, check out the link in the show notes to register. Please go there. It's going to be great.

Another way to think about this is about unfreezing our thinking. So there was a very old piece of research done by Lewin back in the 1940s, which talked about a three-stage model of change, which I love the simplicity of this. It works really well. Unfreeze, change, refreeze. Unfreeze where we just recognize that change is necessary.

Change where we transition and refreeze where we're stabilizing a new approach. In our discovery phase, we are absolutely at the unfreeze part of this. We're about challenging existing beliefs and practices. And that might, for example, in a school involve questioning some of our long-standing teaching methods or maybe some of our administrative processes that we're going through. Discover phase is one of the hardest

parts of the change model, I would say, and yet it's one of the most essential. If you skip through this really fast, you are going to find your changes on dodgy foundations as you go on, and it might not actually be the thing you are looking at. You also can lead very quickly without doing proper discovery into groupthink. What's groupthink? It's that practice of thinking

or making decisions as a group, resulting in a totally unchallenged poor quality decision. And it also sometimes can make us overlook some of the crucial details or risks involved. So you need to be able to, in a discovery phase, think how can we challenge those majority opinions? How can we look at what minorities within our organizations might think? This

requires us to question our assumptions, consider overlooked perspectives, and seek diverse thinking. We know diverse thinking can lead to better outcomes. Matthew Sier's work on diverse thinking talks about diverse teams actually bringing improved accuracy and innovation. So here we need to be thinking, who are we talking to? How are we bringing different

perspectives in to improve the outcomes at our school? We also might be thinking here about playing devil's advocate to the challenge. Okay, what if this is not right? What if we intentionally try to take a contrary position to what we're thinking? To really test the

strength of our argument, this can be a real help at the beginning of a change. Overall, in the discovery phase, we need to keep in mind that there's always more to discover, always more to improve. Dependent on your culture, this kind of perspective can be isolating in that, oh gosh, how would we go ahead? Or liberating in that, okay, this is great, look at these options. So again, we need to link it all the way back to our foundations

of connection to make this work. So if you don't feel you've got connection in your school yet, stop there before you go into the discovery phase. But if you feel you've got a pretty good connection, move into discover, explore with your team while there are options. By the end of the discover phase, what you should have is a nice list of all of our potential challenges that we're facing. We're not picking any yet, that comes later. We're just looking

at what possible challenges we might be facing that we want to address. In the next episode, we're going to come to the part of the diamond where we start to contract our thinking and make decisions. So come back in a couple of weeks and you can find that episode. Global Ed Leaders is hosted by me, Shane Leaning, thanks to the show editor Pete McGill, and for the original music by Guillerme Silva. Thanks to my co-founder of work collaborative

Ephraim Lerner for some of the content referenced in this episode. And thank you so much for tuning in today. I hope you're finding this little mini series useful. And as ever, if we don't speak before, I'll see you here next week. Remember to find out more about

the International curriculum association and that fantastic international curriculum conference in November. Check out the links in the show notes.