Build change that outlives you

Think about all the changes your school has successfully implemented in the past five years. Now, think about how many of them are still going strong today. If you're like most schools, that second number is massively smaller than the first. And today, we're going to explore why that happens and how to change it.

Hey, everyone, I'm Shane Leaning. And welcome to Education Leaders, the chart-topping leadership podcast for school leaders like you. I'm an organizational coach. And in this show, I get to know the teachers, leaders, and innovators making a difference in education around the world.

Before we jump in today, I'm delighted that today's episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association and the University of Warwick. Stay tuned to learn more. Okay, so today's episode is part of our change series. In fact, it's the last of the change series.

So I've done a whole series throughout the last few months on organizational change. And this has been based really strongly around the work collaborative model for organizational change and some of the work that myself and my co-founder, Ephraim Lerner, have documented in our new book, Change Starts Here, which is out in the summer. So we've been through a change process, and now we're talking about sustainability. And you can do this in two ways.

If this is your first time tuning into the podcast, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. But also, you can listen to this totally on its own. If you're thinking about sustainability of change, this is your place.

But if you want to go through that whole change process, then go back, find the podcast episodes that are marked change series, or go to my website, shaneleaning.com forward slash podcast. There's a little filter button at the top, and you can filter it by work collaborative episodes. By doing that, you can listen all the way through to all of this change series if you want to do the whole thing in one.

So sustain. We are ready to sustain the change. Sustainability is often overlooked part of change. We get so hooked on implementation, we forget about sustainable in the long run.

And I'm not here just talking about sustainability of the change, the specific thing you're working on, but on a sustainability of change process, on a feeling that change is good around here. You know, at the very end of our book, Change Starts Here, we ask a question, which we think everyone should ask at the end of any change project. And that is, are we done or are we just getting started? Because every change is the start of something new.

There is no end of a change. It's not a finite process. And the real purpose of any change initiative is actually to prepare for future transformation, for future change. It's about culture.

Change should create a domino effect. Each shift builds momentum for the next. And if you're not ready for the next, if you've got this question where you're saying, I'm exhausted, I'm ready to finish, why is that? And how can you shift towards a mindset of ongoing growth?

It's a little bit like muscle building, isn't it, change? Every change we do, we learn from, every change strengthens our capacity for future change. And some of the best organizations in the world have changed as part of their organizational DNA. It's a continuous process.

It is not finite. Also, with a mind to the future, when thinking about sustainability, it really helps us create a space for honest reflection on our weaknesses and our plan. What's really sustaining? What worked?

What didn't work? What do we need to learn for the next time? It gives us opportunity to reflect on those foundations of sustainable change, consistent support, feedback loops, those things that make it work. And here we're thinking about the human element of change, how people's connection to the change process really determines its longevity.

Go back through those episodes where we talked about connection, where we talked about alignment, where we talked about learning, it was all about people. And if those people have bought into this change, it is likely they're going to be able to follow and work with new change. I want to take a moment to tell you about this event from the ICA. It's called the Learning Effect.

Play Paradox Passion. And I would encourage you to join the International Curriculum Association for its two-day event, which is going to bring school leaders and educators together for engaging keynote presentation and a diverse range of teacher-led workshops. In this day, you'll get to explore and examine how thoughtful integration of play, paradox and passion can create transformative learning experiences, all under the guidance of International Curriculum Association professionals. This is taking place in Amsterdam in the Netherlands on the 20th and 21st of March 2025, and you can find the tickets and more information using the link in the show notes.

You know, recruiting and developing great teachers is one of the biggest challenges we face in international schools. That's why I'm excited about the University of Warwick Centre for Teacher Education. Their QTS and PGCEI with QTS programs are specifically designed for international schools, combining online learning with hands-on classroom experience. Check out the link in the show notes to learn more how they can develop teachers in your school.

We also need to think at this stage, we've maybe decided, okay, this is working, this is great, our new change is implemented, but we need to think about what is something new comes along. And by the way, something always new comes along in education. How do we react in that? Because that's going to really have a bearing on the sustainability of our change.

My old boss, Stacey Wallace, brilliant boss, one of the best bosses. She was the CEO of a school group I was with at the time. She used to talk about the metaphor of driving through a hurricane. She used to remind us of this in our meetings, that our road is our strategy, it's the change, it's the thing we're wanting.

But we are driving always through a hurricane in any organisation, and there are going to things that pull us off the road at any point. The challenge for us is not to say we can't come off the road, that's inevitable. Sometimes you just can't resist those strong winds and you have to go off road a bit, but it's how are you going to chart your way back? How are you going to bring yourself back?

If you went back to my episode with Sharath Jeevan, which was a brilliant episode, we talked about the concept of asteroids and starships. These asteroids that hit our organisation from the outside and also our starships, the fundamental shifts that happen from within our organisation, these happen all the time. And if you want to go back to that episode, I'll link in the show notes, all about inflection moments, really important here. They're always going to come.

On that whirlwind, we also need to think about what is a distraction and what is a meaningful new development. There are going to things that come up. Do you have a process for this? And can you create flexible systems that can bring in new ideas without abandoning core principles?

There's that word that we've mentioned a lot in this change series, values, principles. These are the things that you can stay true to through a change. An example that I've seen recently is a school I worked with who were wanting to do a wellbeing initiative and they had significant pressure on their academic metrics during the exam season. Their big challenge was how do we keep focused to this wellbeing initiative through that?

And they had to come up with all sorts of ideas and metrics to be able to do that. And also to be able to let go of a few of them, maybe temporarily, to be realistic. Also with sustainability, I want to bring you back to the idea we've discussed before, which is Amy Edmondson's idea of failing well or failing forward. Our relationship with failure really determines the sustainability of change.

Hopefully by this point in the change process, you're getting towards sustainability. You already have normalized failure because failure is inevitable in any significant change process. In sustainable change, we need to minimize harm and extract the lessons of failure and create a culture of experimentation so we can support that momentum over time. For example, when you have a new initiative, can you have a protocol that says, what are our lessons learned after every initiative?

By doing that, you're going to be celebrating those failures because they were an expected part of change. Finally, we need to just be able to think about creating habits that sustain. So how do we embed change into our daily routines? How can we create regular review cycles and feedback?

How can we bring documentation and clear policies to provide continuity, support structures, building in as growth coaching talk about with habits and tactics? What habits do we need to sustain this change? What tactics do we need to put in place? Eventually, we want the change to become virtually invisible. It's just how we do things.

So there are just a few provocations in this episode just about sustaining change. Education Leaders is hosted by me, Shane Leaning. Thanks to the show editor, Pete McGill, and for the original music by Guillaume Silver. Thank you so much for tuning in today. And if we don't speak before, I'll see you here next week.

If you're interested in the work of my show's partners, the University of Warwick and the International Curriculum Association, head to the show notes to get links to learn more.