Unit 11: Driving and Sustaining Transformation

This unit, Driving and Sustaining Transformation, completes the content work for Course Three, Sustaining Transformation through Capacity and Commitment. In this course, the NISL program emphasized a variety of basic supports for a transformational school: developing team approaches to leadership, focusing on ethical considerations, providing job-embedded professional growth, understanding and engineering change, and embracing the resistance that change brings with it. 

In the first part of this unit, Driving and Sustaining Transformation, participants focus on the change theory and practices of John Kotter as articulated in his book Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Faster-Moving World (2014). In the second part, participants grapple with decision making relating to strategic leadership grounded in a change process and apply these ideas to the case of Montgomery County Public Schools, as described in Leading for Equity, as well as their own action learning.

• External and internal factors will affect most school organizations and create a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) environment.
• It is the leader’s role to strategize and guide this change and conquer the inevitable challenges to the change process.
• To effectively lead systemic change, school leaders must be able to distinguish between and balance the roles of change leader and change manager.
• Change is a difficult experience for the leader as well as the team members. Even leaders often find themselves locked into ineffective patterns of behavior.
• The principal must realize that there will be resistance to any substantive change. There are strategies for countering each form of resistance, and the principal must recognize the identified forms of resistance and be able to effectively implement the appropriate strategy.
• John Kotter, in the book Accelerate, defines five principles relating to a dynamic organizational design (hierarchy and networks):
  • Many people driving important change, and from everywhere, not just the usual few appointees
  • A “get-to” mindset, not a “have-to” one
  • Action that is head- and heart-driven, not just head-driven
  • Much more leadership, not just more management
  • An inseparable partnership between the hierarchy and the network, not just an enhanced hierarchy
• Kotter also defines eight Accelerators relating to leading change:
  • Create a sense of urgency around a Big Opportunity.
  • Build and evolve a guiding coalition.
  • Form a change vision and strategic initiatives.
  • Enlist a volunteer army.
  • Enable action by removing barriers. 
  • Generate (and celebrate) short-term wins.
  • Sustain acceleration.
  • Institute change.
• It is the leader’s role to strategize and guide this change and conquer the inevitable challenges to the change process.

• The NISL program’s Conceptual Framework for Strategic Thinking has a planning dimension that, in turn, has a risks and threats state. Resistance to a plan may be both a risk and a threat.

• Leaders must recognize that resistance has many faces and that not planning for how it (in any of its several forms) will be addressed will create impediments to success.

• A principal can learn strategies to effectively address resistance within the staff.

• The reduction of resistance within the faculty leads to a more positive building culture, which assists the change process.

• Strategic decision making connects “ends” (vision, or desired specific outcomes) with “ways” (actions) and “means” (resources). 
• The NISL program’s Conceptual Framework for Strategic Thinking is contingent upon a Theory of Action that connects vision with context, through an analysis of how intended actions move from current state to future state.
• Volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous (VUCA) environments drive a need to regularly revisit analysis of context and the assumptions that underlie the actions taken to move from the current state to the desired (future) state.

• Lack of planning for specific steps in a change process may lead to lower levels of successful implementation.

It is important to complete the pre-work prior to the beginning of the section in which the pre-work will be used (noted in parentheses) in order to participate fully. Be prepared to spend about 2–3 hours total on pre-work.

Pre-work that is available digitally can be accessed by clicking on the hyperlinks below or in the appropriate menus in the Unit Library to the right. Pre-work that is not available digitally will have been provided in the materials you received before the start of the NISL program.

Please note: Where complete professional books are provided electronically, the books are for the registered participants’ individual use only and may not be downloaded, printed, or shared in any way. Access to the digital version of the text, along with any individual annotations made by the registered participant, will be available across any device used to log into the NCEE Portal.

• (11.2) Review Chapter 2 (“Seizing Opportunities with a Dual Operating System”) in John Kotter’s Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Faster-Moving World.
• (11.3) Review NCEE’s Blueprint for a High-Performing Education System (website | PDF).

• (11.3) Read “Williams Middle School Scenario Year 3” including the data sheets in the appendix.

  • Annotate the scenario for strengths, challenges, and gaps as they stand now at the beginning of Year 3.

  • Based on the scenario, identify two or three priority goals.

• (11.4) Read Lawrence, “How to Deal with Resistance to Change.”
• (11.5) Review the NISL Conceptual Framework for Strategic Thinking as described in the “Strategy and Strategic Thinking” document from Unit 2.
• (11.5) AS ASSIGNED BY YOUR FACILITATOR: Read Chapter 3, “Building Relationships for Sustainability”; Chapter 4, “Expanding Capacity Through Investments in People”; OR Chapter 5, “Designing New Systems and Structures for Change” from Leading for Equity.
• (11.5) Read Chapter 7 (“Six Lessons from the Montgomery County Journey and a New Call to Action”) and Chapter 8 (“Strategy as Problem Solving—Applying the MCPS Approach”) in Leading for Equity. If you have time, you may wish to scan the Introduction and Chapter 1 (“Challenging the Status Quo”). 

• NISL materials
• Journal
• Laptop or tablet with wireless Internet capabilities

• Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Faster-Moving World
• “Counteracting Educational Injustice with Applied Critical Leadership: Culturally Responsive Practices Promoting Sustainable Change”
• “How to Deal with Resistance to Change” (Lawrence)
• Leading for Equity
• NCEE’s Blueprint for a High-Performing Education System (website | PDF)
• Performance Analysis Framework 
• Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams
• “Strategy and Strategic Thinking”
• “Williams Middle School Scenario Year 3”

• Bolman, Lee G., and Terrence E. Deal. 2008. Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership, 4th ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Brent, Mark R. 1981. An Attributional Analysis of Kübler-Ross’ Model of Dying. Boston: Harvard University.
• Cohen, Dan S. 2005. The Heart of Change Field Guide: Tools and Tactics for Leading Change in Your Organization. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.
• Collins, Jim. 2001. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
• Collins, Jim, and Morten T. Hansen. 2011. Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck—Why Some Thrive Despite Them All. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
• Katzenbach, Jon R., and Douglas K. Smith. 2003. The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization. New York: McKinsey & Company.
• Kotter, John P. 2008. A Sense of Urgency. Boston: Harvard Business Press.
• ———. 2011. “What Leaders Really Do.” In HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Leadership, 37–55. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.
• ———. 2012. Leading Change. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.
• Kotter, John P., and Holger Rathgeber. 2005. Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions. New York: St Martin’s Press.
• Lencioni, Patrick. 2002. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Michelli, Joseph A. 2007. The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Olivier, Dianne F. 2004. “Against All Odds: Reculturing a Troubled School.” In Learning Together, Leading Together: Changing Schools Through Professional Learning Communities, edited by S. Hord, 114–126. New York: Teachers College Press.
• Schultz, Howard, and Dori Jones Yang. 1997. Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time. New York: Hyperion.
• Senge, Peter. 2000. Schools That Learn: A Fifth Discipline Fieldbook for Educators, Parents, and Everyone Who Cares About Education. New York: Doubleday.
• Sibbet, David. 2013. Visual Leaders: New Tools for Visioning, Management, & Organizational Change. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

• Kotter International https://www.kotterinc.com/