group may talk about many broad sweeping long term goals that everyone believes should be accomplished but no one feels immediately called upon to do anything about. As the group talks about what it is that prevents it from accomplishing these longer goals, it gradually begins to come closer to more immediate matters that all can agree really have to be done if things are going to improve. When such a point is identified, work can proceed. A realistic goal can be sharply defined, assignments made and due dates set. The discovery that coordinated cooperative effort of this kind can get a job done that had seemed to be impossible before helps give everyone a sense of accomplishment and a direct experience with what can result from time spent in planning. From such a modest beginning more ambitious projects can be undertaken with greater confidence. To illustrate from our own experience: When the Center on Innovation first began to look at its planning role, the staff spent long hours trying to decide on long term goals that it ought to seek to accomplish. It was very difficult to settle on anything specific because there was very little clarity as to what it was that should guide the decision on longer term goals and very little assurance that there was any capacity to carry out such goals. When the discussion seemed to be faltering, our planning consultant asked the group if there were any more immediate things that might be dealt with just as a way of getting started. After some brief discussion, the staff identified several things, one of which was that a move of the office to another location was anticipated but no planning had been done for the move. It was decided that this would be a useful short term planning task. The group agreed that a subgroup should be appointed to plan the move and also to explore the possibility that in making the move the design of the new office should reflect the new planning perspective of the office. Staff members most concerned about the move volunteered to serve on the work group. A time schedule was established and the group went to work. From that point on, the planning for the move occurred with minimum involvement of the top management of the Center. Although the usual delays occurred in accomplishing the move, the staff experienced little of the frustrations that usually are attendant upon such changes, and, most important, a totally different approach to the utilization of space was developed as a result of this effort. The experience gave the entire staff insight into factors that go into successful planning and produced an increase in confidence in the ability of the office to carry forward a joint activity toward a successful conclusion. Since that early effort, the staff of the Center and, increasingly, the staff of the Department have been able to identify similar "break through" projects and carry them forward with increasing success. The Department is now at the point where it is contemplating a major revision of the way in which it organizes to carry forward the work of elementary, and secondary and continuing education in accordance with a totally new conception of its mission, all of this accomplished within a space of little more than a year and a half of effort. Building on Strength Another key concept inherent in this approach is the idea of building on strengths rather than seeking to correct weaknesses, seeking out opportunities rather than trying to correct organizational problems. Effort is directed to exploiting the latent strength, unfulfilled aspirations and unused capabilities of the people in the organization rather than by trying to correct their weaknesses, deal with misconceptions, and overcome resistance. As people grown in competence, and as real work gets done, specific weaknesses seem to matter less, misconceptions are corrected by experience, and resistance simply disappears. This approach particularly avoids starting with the identification of problems in the organization and the development of programs to cope with them. The problems are endless and the solution of one problem is only likely to expose a dozen others. Problem hunting is. we believe, a strategy for avoiding positive action. People who want to get a job done generally find a way of coping with problems as they proceed. If there is no clear idea of the job to be done, solving problems becomes a goal in itself, and so, having problems is the way to keep feeling as though something is being accomplished. Aiming for Success Another key concept in this approach is the idea of beginning where the opportunity for success is high. For an organization to undertake an effort that is really beyond its capacity at the time is a sure way to create disillusionment, frustration and conflict. Instead, the planning effort should focus on a few specific goals that some people believe to be urgent or important. Around these goals projects can be organized that tap in some new and rewarding ways the untapped talents and energy of the organization. Build into the project should to some experimental testing of new management techniques and new human relations insights and understandings. That is, each project should be organized not only to accomplish its immediate aims bur should also be a learning laboratory designed to create a foundation for more farreaching, organized process of change. Whatever the project, it is important that all who are involved have a clear and common understanding of what the task is. It is amazing to find how often, when a group runs into difficulty in accomplishing a task, it turns out that the trouble arises from the fact that the people involved have differing notions about what it was that they were trying to accomplish. Time spent talking through what is to be done is well spent even though at first it may seem to take an inordinate amount of time to reach agreement. In this process, it is good practice to put the task in writing. Verbal exchanges are too easily misinterpreted and leave room for too much vagueness. Once agreement has been achieved on what is to be done, assignment can be made and deadlines set. Every member of the grouD working on a common task should know what others are assigned to do, and the assignment should cover the full task. Each person receiving an assignment should be sure he understands what he is to do and that he has the capacity, resources and time to do it. Acceptance of an assignment then becomes a commitment to get it accomplished by the due date. Deadlines are indispensable also to good work planning, for without them it is too easy to let work slide as new priorities int rude. Help Needed Just telling a group to adopt this approach and even gaining their commitment to it is not enough. People who have not been accustomed to the discipline of group work planning find it difficult to practice. When the pressures of on-going work begins to mount, old habits reassert themselves: managers ask employees to whom they have already made assignments to take on new ones; workers let routine demands take precedence over task accomplishment; members of the team get disheartened when progress is not immediately evident or others seem to be failing to meet their commitments. In all of this, an outsider with experience in the process of group planning and management can be a great help. He can first help the group be sure it has really clarified its task and not just accepted a goal for the sake of agreement. He can help sort out priorities among the tasks to be accomplished so that the group has a clear notion as what is first and what follows on. He can, as work proceeds, keep reminding people of the goals that they have set themselves and can get them to review progress so that they realize where they were and how far they have come. The outsider can greatly enhance the effort, but ideally the effort should be directed to building skills in the organization to enable it to carry forward without such help. The loss of the "work" that outside consultants do, the quicker regular staff will learn the skills needed to carry on for themselves. The approach described thus far may seem terribly unsophisticated. It is our contention, however, that only as the organization develops the capacity to use the talents and tools that it has, can it then employ effectively more sophisticated planning tools such as systems analysis. One of the great mistakes in much of the effort to improve education is thep remature introduction of such planning systems. No system by itself will change an organization or the behavior of people in it. People are enormously skillful in finding ways to sabotage approaches that they do not understand, to which they have no commitment, and which make them feel inferior to outsiders (often perceived as "whiz kids" with some technical capacities but little experience in the complexity of the "real world" with which the agency deals). Our point is that before systems approaches are introduced, work should first be done in building the capacity of the organization to plan and manage more effectively with the tools that it has. Only when people find they cannot do what they want to do because they lack the necessary skills or tools will they be receptive to the introduction of new skills. Efforts to introduce them first may appear to produce initial quick results, but one only need look long enough at organizations that have tried this approach to see its futility. Unless new behaviors are embedded deeply in organization and commitment is devleoped to them, they will not outlast the initial burst of enthusiasm that brought them into existence. The approach proposed here is, to be sure, a slower one initially, but we believe that over the long run it will prove far more sure. Summary The essential ingredients then of the process of change that is being employed in the New York State Education Department are these: 1. Involving operating staff in planning. 2. Relating planning to the on-going work of the organization. 3. Beginning wherever there is readiness and high chance of success. 4. Emphasizing opportunities rather than problems. 5. Spending adequate time to clarify goals of each task. 6. Developing clear assignments for each individual with deadlines set for their accomplishment. 7. Judicious use of outside help to support the process, not to do the work instead. The test of the adequacy of this aproach will be the extent to which the Department succeeds in truly putting action into its planning so that it rises to a new level of leadership in guaranteeing quality education to all the people of the State. As of the date of writing (February 1971), the approach appears to be working. The Department is moving. More staff are engaged in tasks related to the central mission of the Department. There is a new sense of excitment and commitment. People can begin to see the possibility of a comprehensive redesign of the entire educational system of the State. New forms of collaboration are being developed between the Department and the field and a new pattern of intermediate arrangements is being forged. Individuals and entire units are asking for and receiving help in acquiring command of the skills needed to make the new approach work. Open, participative, objectives-oriented management is beginning to be the department norm. This is not to say that all is perfect or that the change has been accomplished. Change is occuring; whether it will continue until the Department becomes a truly self-renewing force for educational leadership in the State remains to be seen. The task of learning new ways of behaving may be too much for people; may grow impatient with the seemingly slow pace of change; the very real and tough problems confronting education may defeat us; the public may be unwilling to support the changes they will see occuring; and we may not yet know enough about how to change large social organizations. But the effort is being made and there is broad commitment at all levels of the Department to make it work. If the approach succeeds, it has application at all levels of the educational system. From school superintendent, to building principal, to department chairman and classroom teacher the problems of organizational change that must be dealt with are similar. The relevance of this approach at the classroom level is of special interest to us. One of the key skills that the schools must begin teaching is the capacity to cope with and manage change. How better to teach it than by having teachers who themselves are models of the desired behavior? And how better for them to learn to behave this way than to function in a system which exhibits the same behavior at all levels right up to the State Commissioner of Education? Thus do we in the State Education Department see a relationship between what we do and the place of ultimate action-the classroom. There are other systematic retrieval systems that are also rather highly developed and of value to educational research. One of the more recent is a system known as "DATRIX,” under the management umbrella of the Xerox Corporation. Associated with University Microfilms Library Services, DATRIX is a doctoral dissertation tape file and includes more than 130,000 theses written since 1938. This system is economical and of much value to graduate students and other researchers. Still other similar kinds of clearinghouses for information storage and retrieval include The National Clearinghouse for Mental Health, The National Institute of Child Health and Development, and the Science Information Exchange (SIE). SIE, associated with the Smithsonian Institution provides one page descriptions upon special request which disclose the nature of a piece of research, where and when it was (or is being) done and a reasonably adequate technical description. All of these, like ERIC, are computer-based information systems. Progress, Problems, and Prospects All of this suggests that an impressive start has been made in the retrieval, storage, and dissemination of material of significance to educational R and D. Perhaps it is neither fair nor accurate to talk in terms of a "start" for after all, the American Documentation Institute, a non-profit organization of scientists, engineers librarians, and others interested in such problems was founded in 1937. But just as our knowledge expands at dizzying rates so also does the number of specialized people interested in it. Manfred Kochen has suggested that by virtue of this growth, researchers must confront the need to express at least as much interest is synthesis as in access. He postulates that: If research establishes that there are signs of potential instability in the growth of knowledge, then the most important and needed information retrieval systems are those which restore stability, which help to consolidate fragments into coherent, teachable wholes, which stress evaluation and synthesis above access. To large extent, it is this problem to which the Levien draft of the preliminary NIE plan addresses itself in the section concerned with "Developing Structures for Information Transfer." In that section there is a statement to the effect that, researchers in different disciplines do not communicate, even when concerned with the same problems. Some deficiencies have to do with access to existing information; many reports never enter the accessible literature. It can be stated with some assurance that researchers within the same discipline 'even when concerned with the same problem' do not always communicate and frequently that is merely due to the fact that they are not aware that their interests are mutual. Effective use of existing retrieval systems alleviates that ignorance but of equal problematic proportions is a condition of habit whereby a researcher, once he becomes familiar with a particular system is increasingly dependent upon that system and not as likely therefore to make use of 5 Manfred Kochen, "The Consolodation of Information," Educational Researcher, Supplement, 1967, p. 3. Roger Levien, National Institute of Education. Washington: RAND Corporation, December 15, 1970, pp. 87-88. 7 Ibid., p. 87. |