Always start from the end

How do you design something new? - a new teacher evaluation system, a process of transition to new state curriculum standards? But also, how do you put together a faculty evaluation process, or a new graduate program; a new student teaching application, a new way of paying people for practicum and mileage, etc., etc.?

In one of those groups that think about implementing a project, I was involved in an interesting conversation. The leaders of the project argued that we need to first agree on principles, to lay out what has to be done, what is the right thing to do, and only then lay out specifics, address questions about logistics, feasibility, and perhaps scale the plan back. I was arguing that one should always start from the end, from specifics and the limits within which you operate. You need to see how much time and money (which is ultimately, the same thing) you can have sustainably over long time, then translate it into what maximally can be done. Then you need to visualize, to paint the picture of the end result. The next step is to share that picture with all people affected, so they are not scared of the future, and can ask questions about what really bothers them. And only then you should go into how to get there, which is the planning process.

My opponents argued that if you start with limits and specifics, you never set goals that are large and ambitious enough. My way, they say, encourages more-of-the-same kind of thinking. I am not sure that is true, especially for significant change that involves thousands of people who by necessity cannot be all included in the deliberations. If you set up abstract goals and principles, but do not communicate specifics, people will all imagine the worst case scenarios for their particular circumstances, where the new way of doing things works against them. As a consequence, you end up with resistance before you even have done anything. The imaginary stories take root in people’s heads, and soon become reality of its own.

However, if you start with telling people a story, paint a picture for them (but also show a form, a sample, a time estimate), that becomes a part of their imagination. People who are affected but excluded will always feel vulnerable, so they need to be able to ask their questions right from the start. If you tell them – oh, wait, we did not get there yet in our process, we will figure out how to do this later, - this does nothing to reassure them. It is just a poor communication practice. It is especially worrisome when very significant, fundamental (but unexpected) questions are put on “we will get to that later” list. Every time you do that, the anxiety level goes up, not down. It decreases confidence in your team’s ability to complete the change.

You can be both ambitious and start from the end. Just tell the person affected how this new thing is going to work for her or him. Is this going to be fair? Burdensome? How is it going to benefit each of us in the end? Educators have been the unwilling participants of perpetual reforming for many decades. Hosts of national, local, and district-wide initiatives were either not completed, or degenerated into a joke. Many have become suspicious of reforms – not because they are against change or don’t see the need for it, but because education reforms have never been implemented especially well. Most, I would argue, were not good ideas to begin with. That fact alone should merit a different approach to communication. You cannot simply make your journey from the abstract to the concrete public. In fact, you will be better off to keep your preliminary deliberations completely secret, until you have some clarity on specifics. By the time you go public, you need to start from the end.

Do I always follow my own advice? I wish that was true.