A Cautionary Tale for Ed Reformers
Change management literature has missed the biggest reason for failed change, perhaps because it is just too obvious. The biggest reason for failed implementation has to do with too much change. Much has been written about change management — mostly about what effective implementation looks like and some about how to avoid the most significant mistakes. This is not to say that implementation is unimportant — it is critically important. But the amount of change demanded from organizations is a largely ignored variable in the equation.
To illustrate this notion, let’s analyze some changes in a contemporary historical context to see how it played out. More than a decade ago, the American education world became fascinated with a set of new standards called The Common Core. These new standards coincided with new Federal policy pushing public and private schools toward the use of these new standards, a new set of tests to measure them with, and a new teacher evaluation system that would be tied to these tests.
There was significant money dedicated to this movement, with all manner of parties throwing money at the problem, trying to ensure that implementation was effective. State education departments competed for Federal and private money to hire the very best consultants to develop the best implementation plans.
Nearly every state in the union submitted entries into this competition for extra funds with some winning, getting monies to encourage early adoption and implementation. Every state would eventually be eligible for additional monies as more lessons were learned about effective implementation.
The story of what happened to these three initiatives is a bit spectacular. The Common Core has been attacked vigorously and even the most strident defenders now advocate for standards that go by different names. Both major testing consortia that had millions of dollars to develop next generation assessments for this endeavor are now defunct. And the teacher evaluation system that would be tied to these test results created precious little difference in teacher ratings and new research has shown that it did nothing to improve actual teaching practices.
Before any doubters attempt to blame any of these failures on bureaucrats, consultants, an entrenched education populace or some other typical scapegoat, consider that the endeavor was misguided in its size, not necessarily its ideals. It is possible to predict, mathematically, that this endeavor would fail spectacularly. If we study this, we can avoid future failures by planning change more effectively.
To begin, consider that change takes energy, both in a physical sense of the law of inertia, as well as the personal and organizational sense. Getting people to do things differently takes energy from them and from those that are trying to make it happen. Additionally, consider the law of energy conservation that states energy can neither be created nor destroyed — there is a finite amount of energy in a system. Meaning, if you try to use more energy than you have, the energy you have will be conserved and rationed, not necessarily in planful or strategic ways.
Unfortunately, when this wave of reform in education was taking shape, there was no way to measure how much effort individual initiatives would require, nor how much energy organizations had to devote to initiatives.
Luckily, there is such a system now.
Energy for change is measured in Change Value Units (CVUs) which are calculated with three variables related to the initiative. CVUs are related to membership, affinity, and depth of an initiative. The membership factor has to do with the notion that the greater the percentage of an organization’s employees that are affected by an initiative, the more energy the initiative will demand. Affinity has to do with the degree of dislike among membership for the initiative. Initiatives that represent a conflict of values or beliefs will require more energy than initiatives that only have strategic or rational objections. The depth factor is a combination of the degree of interdependence required by the initiative and the complexity of thought and judgement required.
Each of these variables is easily placed on a five-point scale and multiplied. Meaning that a maximum score for an initiative is 125 CVUs. Initiatives also have their own implementation cycle, using more energy during the implementation phase than during the planning phase. In this way, it is easy to calculate both a gross CVU for an initiative as well as relative CVU measures for each phase: planning, ramping up, implementation, acclimatization, and normalization.
Lastly, organizations can spend somewhere around 225 CVUs on initiatives, at any one time, and about 80 CVUs on any one particular initiative before there is a significant degradation of efficacy. When leaders attempt to get more than 225 CVUs from the organization, the organization responds with energy conserving and self-preservation actions. This translates to change fatigue, initiative resistance, job-quitting, and even sabotage.
Looking back at the trifecta of initiatives that were the Common Core, new assessments, and new teacher evaluation systems, we can gain an enlightening view of what went wrong. The Common Core affected nearly every educator in every school, therefore it had a maximum membership score of 5. Some people had a values-based objection to the Common Core, and many agreed with it, but objected to the implementation plan. We can feel safe assigning an affinity score of 4. Effective implementation of the Common Core was moderately interdependent and highly complex, meaning, effective implementation of the Common Core in English class depended on the effectiveness of the rest of the English department, not the entirety of the school. It was also very complex in that this was new cognitive information that needed to be applied in a dynamic environment. This results in a depth score of 4. The implementation of the Common Core required 80 CVUs — a maximum amount for any single initiative.
The new assessments and teacher evaluation systems track similarly, with the exception that the teacher evaluation system receives a higher value for affinity. There was a strong emotional reaction to tying teacher and principal evaluations to results on these new tests.
The matrix for these three initiatives looks like this:
In looking at this chart, the Federal Government and State Education Departments exceeded school and district capacity before any principal or superintendent added their own initiatives. The new standards movement was doomed from the start because the system wanted to move schools far faster and have them produce more change than the laws of physics allow.
If you want to make change happen, on a large or small scale, begin by considering how much energy the organization(s) is already spending on change and how much your new initiative will demand. By being careful in your planning and timing you will significantly increase the success rate of implementation. If you want help measuring the amount of change your organization is demanding, or how much your future initiatives will require, Valorem Change Consultants can help!
Reach out to us at valoremchange.com and let us help you make change happen.
