{"id":485,"date":"2009-07-09T09:06:12","date_gmt":"2009-07-09T13:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/?p=485"},"modified":"2009-07-13T00:18:41","modified_gmt":"2009-07-13T04:18:41","slug":"part-iv-sharing-the-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/?p=485","title":{"rendered":"Part IV: Sharing the Pain"},"content":{"rendered":"

To start at the beginning of the 4-part article, go to Sharing the Pain: Drilling Beneath the 5th Why… and finding a tangled surprise<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 3rd Root Cause: The Gap-Causing Gap<\/strong><\/p>\n

What I like about that metaphoric Sistine Chapel picture in Part II (The 1st Root Cause: The Quantum Paradox<\/a>) is that while it illustrates two critical, and related, conditions that independently drive the nature and structure of the work of people-serving organizations\u2026 it also includes a third – an almost unnoticed disconnecting gap between them.<\/p>\n

\"gap\"<\/a>
\nAnd it\u2019s this gap that turns out to be largely responsible for today\u2019s more familiar \u201cgaps\u201d in student achievement and organizational results that we hear so much about\u2026 and whose \u201cclosing\u201d has become the primary strategic focus of most major reform efforts.<\/p>\n

Critics often seem to expect that somehow policies will miraculously flow smoothly through a system to emerge as practices at the other end. (The late John Gardner termed this a \u201cPenny Gumball Machine<\/em>\u201d belief — i.e., a coin inserted at the top produces gumballs at the bottom.) That they don\u2019t may be attributed to this disconnecting gap between the purposes<\/em> driving the daily actions of those at the system\u2019s two ends. Some are accountable for what happens to all<\/em>, others to each<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Usually we don’t have opportunities to think much about this each<\/em> or all<\/em> nature of the purposes to which daily decisions in school systems respond, especially when those who have to deal with the needs of each<\/em> child and those who have to deal with needs of all<\/em> of them work in relative isolation from each other.<\/p>\n

As a result, the two fingers often seem to end up pointing at, and blaming, each other for limiting their ability to make a difference for \u201call\u201d or<\/strong> for \u201ceach.\u201d Listen to the battles over control of urban school systems today, or about the consequences of No Child Left Behind<\/em> and note how system-fixing prescriptions usually seem to start with a blame-fixing blame diagnosis.<\/p>\n

As a consequence, many of today\u2019s arguments seem to meet the definition of an \u201cautoimmune disease\u201d where \u201ceither\/or\u201d battles between the parts of a system eventually destroy its actual \u201cboth\/and\u201d nature. For those committed to systemic<\/em> reform, that\u2019s the most serious consequence of this unnoticed gap.<\/p>\n

Its unthinking acceptance as an unbridgeable<\/em> divide with adversaries on each \u201cside\u201d means that, regardless of attempts to develop \u201csystems thinking,\u201d it effectively frustrates thought and action that can address the reality that the Sufi\u2019s elephant<\/em> is a pre-existing \u201cgiven.\u201d The both\/and<\/em> \u201csystem\u201d that generates \u201cresults\u201d is already there. It\u2019s not a hoped-for \u201cend,\u201d but the only starting point for development.<\/p>\n

\u2022 But, as I\u2019ve noted, the negative consequences of that condition weren’t as evident in the district I was observing. There, the two hands might be perceived as reaching out for each other<\/em>, \u201csomehow\u201d knowing the integral connection of their two purposes. (Deming once described the relationship as the answer to \u201cWho do I need, and who needs me?<\/em>\u201d) As an example, while its neighbor, the DC Public Schools framed its reform battle as one between a teacher\u2019s union and a superintendent who, alone, wanted what\u2019s \u201cbest for children,\u201d the three<\/strong> employee unions in MCPS were voting to give back some of their negotiated benefits to help the district survive the current economic crises that threatened all children.<\/p>\n

\u2022 To better understand the 5th why<\/em> of how<\/em> this was happening, I returned to the Sufi<\/em> – the ancient people whose parable \u201c The Blind Men and the Elephant<\/em>\u201d captures so well the holistic nature of the problem of organization-fixing. It turns out they had another saying that goes to the nature of the \u201cblindness\u201d of those whose understanding of the whole is comprised of the sum of its parts.<\/p>\n

You think you understand one.
\nYou think you understand two, because one and one make two.
\nBut, you must also understand “and<\/strong>“.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Century\u2019s later management researcher Jim Collins, author of \u201cGood to Great<\/em>\u201d and \u201cBuilt to Last<\/em>\u201d would frustratingly discover the same thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ll tell you the one thing I have been incredibly frustrated with, though. Probably the thing that \u2026I’ve had to most hammer into people, what people don’t get as easily — is that the BTL ideas are very much about the “And<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

One of the things that really has frustrated me has been peoples’ perception that BTL is about preservation, conservation, stasis, stability. To be built to last, you have to be built to change.<\/p>\n

\u2026you have to preserve the core and<\/strong> stimulate progress. This requires an institutional set of processes<\/strong> that map to a very, very deep primal human distinction: our need to believe and our need to create.<\/p>\n

\u2026So, if you were to say what I have learned since Built To Last<\/em>, it’s that people didn’t get the “and<\/strong><\/em>.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bridging Schooling\u2019s \u201cAND\u201d Gap<\/strong><\/p>\n

To better understand the significance of this third factor for the systemic transformation of the work of all schools, lets look more closely at the \u201cAND\u201d gap\u2019s present consequences for the work of schooling.<\/p>\n

Caught between the pressures for personal<\/em> and organizational<\/em> accountability — one intrinsic, the other extrinsic — and not recognizing the nature of the condition constraining them — school practitioners have been forced into a form of organizational schizophrenia.<\/p>\n

They find themselves functioning in two seemingly disconnected \u201csystems.\u201d One (a school and its classrooms) intended to meet the needs of each<\/em> child, the other (usually a central office) to meet the needs of all<\/em>. And the scope of these separate accountabilities affects the nature of what people in each system think they can do.<\/p>\n

The only thing manageable seems to be to take conditions on a one-at-a-time or an either-or<\/em> basis. Why? Because, on a practical level, we \u201cknow\u201d we have neither the time nor resources to deal with them both simultaneously. Even though at some level we feel they are inseparable sides of the same problem, we still have trouble figuring out what to do about it — e.g., what has to happen within the organization to convert the \u201call-ness\u201d of curriculum<\/em> to the \u201ceach-ness\u201d of instruction<\/em>?<\/p>\n

And curriculum<\/em> and instruction<\/em> isn\u2019t the only issue where we face this either-or<\/em> dilemma. It seems evident that it also affects the \u201cproblems\u201d of:<\/p>\n