Insight into Trust & Organizational Change
An important conversation about trust and its role with successful organizational life and the abilities to change began this week in K&P, and carried into the blog. I thank the writers for motivating me to dig deeper than I might have otherwise for our action-research project. For those who are interested in insight into organizational change and trust, I urge you to take about 15 minutes with the information about TURN that was linked from a fairly deep location on the Education Minnesota website to this national network of innovators who want to change the labor-management culture of public education: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/hosted/turn/proposal.html
Does it surprise you to learn that an initiative like this exists? Is there a pattern that you see? My own musings on this continue on the extended entry. But I am interested in the class perspective about how significant you feel this initiative is to the overall ability of public schools to leapfrog. Let's vote on a short Leichert scale of 1-4 with 1 - "Not at all significant, 2- Somewhat significant, 3 - Very significant, and 4- Extremely significant, and then offer thoughts back for the benefit of the class -- and those of us exploring innovation and public schools for our action-research project.
This initiative is one of the most heartening I've stumbled into for a long time. If I had a dollar for every time someone in education has told me over the past 20+ years that there is "no trust," I would be a wealthy person. Ad hoc efforts, like local interest-based bargaining arrangements or attempts at establishing labor management committees have not seemingly taken hold. Innovations like charter schools have taken key individuals away from the organization into a different structure entirely, but not impacted the system that sponsors those schools. I believe those are safe statements. Anybody who has empirical evidence to the contrary is encouraged to bring it forward because I am scanning constantly and eagerly collect examples of change initiatives.
Adversarial negotiations and partisan politics and us-them thinking has confused who the stakeholders are, or are not, for virtually any conversations about public education at any level over the past decades. There are times, like right now, when statewide or national groups form coalitions around specific initiatives, usually resources, but that "regime" among leader teams does not bind the mindsets or actions or opinions of members. I have sat at those tables, willingly and enthusiastically, in the past. But, as the years have worn on and I've watched divisiveness over public education take on more alarming proportions, I've had to cast my eyes elsewhere for understanding about what the real problems actually are. I thank graduate school for helping me learn how to frame problems better, explore the nature of coalitions, and think about the cycles of policy change in new ways. This class is extraordinary for providing readings designed to help us look objectively at the chaos without rushing to clean it up like leaders are somewhat given to do. (I bear my share of guilt for this very thing.)
This website touches on a fundamental problem that must be discussed. Schools are workplaces. They aren't just places where kids go to school. Most people really don't have the patience for understanding how miserably complicated the workplace has become over time. School cultures are rooted in their past, governed quite rigidly by a complex matrix of federal and state law (like NCLB), court decisions (like fulfillment of special education needs at the local level), union contracts (different by district and by unions within districts of which there are many), state or local policy or rule (specific guidelines that interpret law or govern administrative procedure), administrative procedures (some written and some not, unique to each central administration, building principal, or other authorized individual), and -- significantly -- the past practices that honestly are the toughest to discuss or change.
All of this affects each teacher's mindset, the cultural practices of the building or various organizations they identify with (and each teacher has at least several), and the swirl of opinion that exists today about whether public schools are, or are not, what America needs for preparing its young people for this flattened, diversifying world. Yet it's all so entwined, where does one really look within an organization like one public school, or a district, or an entire system, for proposing or implementing improvements? And of all the improvements that could be considered, what would be the qualities that make some rise to the level of "innovative?"
Within the context of public education, what does "innovative" mean?
I think this initiative may qualify, but you will note that TURN does not use that word. What do you think?
Comments
Wendy, your concern is articulated with conviction and desire for change compelling within a system stuck in 'old school' methodologies. How I would gladly collect a dollar too for every time I hear of new initiatives that are based in changing form rather than exploring interior substance. What I'm getting at is how can there be any trust amongst rivals when the issues around trust come from our personal programming and life experiences that color our lens in which to view out there as unsafe and those people as the enemy?
Each and every one of us holding mistrust is responsible for identifying the lens in which that mistrust is filtered. No one can change someone else’s lens or shift someone else's perspective. We can hope that somehow the training becomes available to enable individuals to redesign and better manage their own interior landscapes and belief systems. I wonder, within the UCLA research team, if anyone will be courageous enough to suggest that all the players/stakeholders involved could benefit from a personal reflection inventory and then under take training on emotional maintenance. Dealing and coping with lingering forgiveness issues of childhood perpetuated in our adult relationships is a huge underlying basis for all mistrust issues out there in society. Having the opportunity to learn how to effectively 'heal' those personal wounds in public organizations has not been mentioned anywhere that I have found. That these processes could even be a primary requirement of establishing new footing and foundations for trust between partners isn't even included in the conversations on creating new forms of interaction between public groups. It confounds my mind, troubles my heart, and saddens my spirit.
I am brimming with ideas read from Ekhart Tolle's new book that Oprah put her stamp on by inviting online book club participation called "The New Earth". He claims that the reason why communism failed is that the 'form' of a new society was not enough to 'transform' the minds and beliefs of the people not adequately prepared to change to meet the goals of that new society. I am energizes that there is a shift occurring and an awareness growing for topics and processes that I mention as the real source and catalyst for change. My hopes the adoption of 'innovative' ideas on how to transform mistrust to trust happens sooner than later within public systems that are responsible for shaping the next generation of minds that have to cope with these internal issues as well.
Posted by: Diana Turner | April 1, 2008 05:34 PM
TURN eloquently and simply expresses their belief that wholesale school reform efforts are "...flawed because these reform efforts fail to include teachers and their unions as partners from the outset."
Whenever I hear 'trust' in this context I think about 'power' and what motivates leaders and policy makers in the diversity of groups that have real influence over school reform. Unions believe that administration is out to bust the union. Certainly NCLB is perceived by many to be just such an effort that covertly seeks to privatize education.
The TURN statement reflects resistance to change from diverse stakeholder members of the structures within which the derive their power i.e. Unionists believing that collaboration with administration on education policy will reduce the need for unions. (therefore union leaders). The new model supposedly increases the power and need for unions as teachers gain a greater voice in setting education policy, plus it holds the unions accountable for the performance of their members.
If administrators buy into this, will they be willing to meet the unions in the center somewhere?
Are teachers willing to participate in this process, and can administrators and union leaders carve out time in busy teaching days so they have time to be part of the education reform their schools and districts wish to enact?
Diane, your ideas about personal reflection to help alleviate trust issues based on childhood experience may have some value. However, I think an exploration of the underlying structures of power that sustain administrators, education department bureaucrats, school board members, and law makers may reveal agendas that are shaped by hard wired survival mechanisms, self-interest that can overwhelm a desire to create the common good, group think, and the hierarchal 'production' model that TURN mentions as an obsolete way to look at education going forward.
MIke Fink
Posted by: MIke Fink | April 6, 2008 10:57 AM