Working At The Edge

Make School Different: Digital leadership & Transformation

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#43 of 60: Are you ready for real organizational transformation? Ask these questions…. 🤔

By Randy Ziegenfuss

How do you know your learning organization is ready to make a transformation…..to alter the DNA of how it thinks about and acts on first principles of learning, schooling and education.

In Spiral Dynamics Don Beck and Christopher Cowan offer us leaders six valuable questions to gauge our organization’s readiness.

  1. Does the potential exist for people to think differently?
  2. Do solutions exist for unresolved problems?
  3. Is there sufficient dissonance about the present?
  4. Is there insight about alternatives?
  5. Are the barriers to transformation identified and addressable?
  6. Is support available during transformation?

While the answers will certainly vary from organization to organization, all six questions have affirmative answers available if the leaders and people within them are willing to confront the challenge of transformation.

And the number of leaders and learning environments willing to answer “yes” to these questions is growing as discontent with the current paradigm of schooling and education becomes less and less effective.

The task at hand now is to support those leaders to turn the affirmative answers into actions.

—–

❓ Provocations:

Based on your context, which questions are you most curious about? If you answered ‘no’ to any of the questions, what would you need to do to turn them into ‘yes’ answers?

💎 Resource:

Introduction to Spiral Dynamics and Evolution of Organizations – video

🧠 Mindsets:

Organizational psychology

💡 Areas:

Leadership

📣 Drop your thoughts in the comments, or in the Facebook group, and feel free to share resources. 🔥🔥🔥

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Randy Ziegenfuss
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Randy Ziegenfuss
I've retired from public education after 34 years, most recently as Superintendent. In addition to blogging at WorkingAtTheEdge.org, I co-host two podcasts at TLTalkRadio.org and ShiftYourParadigm.org. Learn more at https://workingattheedge.org/about/.
Randy Ziegenfuss
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Filed Under: #60DayChallenge

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About Working At The Edge:

My name is Randy Ziegenfuss, and I'm a retired public school superintendent and a life-long educator with over 34 years experience developing a passion for teaching, learning, leadership and technology. <read more...>

I first came across the phrase working at the edge while learning about the work of Marzano, et al. School Leadership That Works: From Research to Results. In this work, the researchers define 21 responsibilities of the school leader, one being change agent. A change agent is defined as one who is, "...willing to challenge school practices that have been in place for a long time and promoting the value of working at the edge of one's competence."

Randy Ziegenfuss, Ed.D.

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