Six Secrets of Change
Michael Fullan’s recent book The Six Secrets of Change builds on his life time of work on change including Leading in a Culture of Change. Before covering his six secrets of change, Fullan explains the importance of developing a theory that “travels well”. He points out there are no absolutes in this complex world, so the ability to be thoughtful and open to surprises or new data will direct further actions to be taken. Hence his six secrets are “his theory” of how lead to change in your school district.
1. Love your employees
If you build your school district focusing on the student/parents without making the same careful commitment to your teachers/staff, you won’t succeed for long. The opposite is also true. The key is in enabling employees to learn continuously and to find meaning in their work.
2. Connect peers with a purpose
To combat the too tight-too loose dilemma, leaders who embed strategies that continuous and purposeful peer interaction will succeed. The social glue of simultaneously tight-loose systems will stick, not because the employees love their bosses but rather because they fall in love with their peers.
3. Capacity build prevails
Capacity building entails leaders investing in the development of individual and collaborative practices of a whole group or system to accomplish significant improvements. Capacity consists of new competencies, new resources (time, ideas, expertise) and new motivation. The challenge arises when the evaluation of effectiveness is performed as it needs transparency and peer interaction.
4. Learning is the work
The ability to integrate the precision needed for consistent performance (using what we are already know) with the new learning required for continuous improvement is the key behind “learning is the work.”
5. Transparency rules
Transparency is defined as continuous display of results, and clear and continuous access to practice (what is being done to get the results). When transparency consistently evident, it creates an aura of “positive pressure” – pressure that is experienced as fair and reasonable, pressure that is actionable.
6. Systems learn
Systems can learn on a continuous basis. The synergistic results of the five previous secrets in action builds a system that learns from itself. Two dominant change forces are unleashed: knowledge and commitment. As people learn their sense of meaning and motivation deepens. Learning means being humble in the face of complexity.
As Fullan concludes his book he provides six guidelines for keeping the secrets.
- Seize the synergy
- Define your own traveling theory
- Share a secret, keep a secret
- The world is the only oyster you have
- Stay on the far side of complexity
- Happiness is not what some of us think
I will cover them in a future post.
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