"Turnaround or Transformation? It Matters!"

The February 2011 Fast Company magazine included an article by Dan Heath and Chip Heath titled Passion Provokes Action. They write, “Knowledge is rarely enough to spark change.” There has to be something more. “People have to want change.” Concluding “It takes emotion to bring knowledge to a boil” Heath and Heath challenge leaders to use emotion, feelings. Simply, appealing to both the head and the heart.

Ulrich and Woodson in their work, “Connecting Hearts in the Workplace” give voice to what successful leaders know now more than ever. Without meaning there is no change!

When employees associate meaning to their work there is an engendered loyalty to the mission. Meaning, identity, purpose, and relationships shape attitudes. The deeper the commitment, the greater the motivation, the larger the significance of accomplishment, and desire to learn, grow and contribute all emerge from the sense of meaning.

As Ulrich and Woodson write, leaders “who create meaning shape the well‐being of employees, the cultures of their school and the attitude of their community”.

Knowing these truths however has been conspicuously missing from school reform efforts. In the draconian and sanction laden attempts to force schools and school systems to improve, policy makers employed the construct of turnaround. Reasoning that a school or school system that was heading in the wrong direction could turnaround and go in a different or “right” direction, policy makers mandated these schools and school systems turn around.

One of the lessons learned from mandating, sanctioning, penalizing and shaming schools and school systems that failed to turnaround is at the end of the day, improvements if any are short lived. Raising test scores versus the building of enduring habits or disciplines of learning are two different things all together.

Turnaround does not take into account what we know about learning. That is, a learner cannot be forced to learn.

Turnaround initiatives fail fundamentally to create meaning. They are external not internal. They are outside‐in rather than inside‐out. Another shortcoming of turnaround is that the approach completely under estimates context and the power of the culture in place. Hence, requiring a school or school system to turn around without the necessary connections or sense of meaning of the work only further frustrates, obstructs, or undermines the very ends so desperately desired and needed.

The lack of meaning making by turnaround formulas, strategies, and requirements is now being replaced by the more enduring work of transformation – at last!

Transformation is … “a major change in form, nature, or function driven by enduring beliefs, values, behaviors, deeply understood purpose, courage, and unwavering commitment”. Ulrich and Woodson capture succinctly the limitations of turnaround.

• “Turnaround is not transformation”;

• “Turnaround is public statements; transformation is personal commitments”;

• “Turnaround focuses on cutting costs; transformation builds an emotional bond”; and

• “Turnaround changes structures and reporting relationships; transformation changes the fundamental culture of an organization.”

Thus, transformation is the constant and consistent “making” of sense as well as meaning to and of the work – the enduring work of teaching and learning. Motivated by so much more than a test score, transformation by its’ definition connects personal and organizational meaning to the work. It is inside – out!

This is what we so desperately need especially in schools and school systems where the value proposition of education has so narrowly been defined by a single measure. In many respects, transformation is it. If schools and school systems cannot transform – we may well indeed see the demise of the public school system. There is no returning to yesterday. There is no going backward.

The choice is ours – individually as well as corporately. An amazing feature of transformation is that it is just that, a choice. One cannot be forced, coerced, or made to transform given that it comes from within not from the outside.

Without too much convincing, have we not learned that mandating, demanding, and legislating improvement doesn’t work?

When and only if the desired improvement connects with enduring beliefs, values, behaviors, understood purpose, courage, and unwavering commitment does it come about – we call that transformation.