A Bit More on Urgency and Coaching

Building on my previous post, I would like to add some thoughts after completing the book, A Sense of Urgency, by John Kotter. As someone who works in a lot of schools, I believe that Kotter's book is very relevant to the work of administrators and teacher leaders. In particular, I believe that instructional coaches can begin to light this fire of urgency in a school. In partnership with the principal, this force of urgency could be relentless and unstoppable. Kotter talks about four tactics in the book which lead to a true sense of urgency in the organization. In this case, of course, I am talking about secondary schools. What I like about this is that it seems very doable - it is simple. One of the paradoxes of change that Jim Knight often talks about is that the strategies must be easy AND powerful. Kotter also refers to the idea that these four tactics are behaviors that can go on every day. They are "ways of acting and thinking" that both coaches and principals can adopt to begin to spread through a school.

The four tactics that John Cotter refers to are...

• Bringing the Outside In - Instead of remaining in a cacoon, it is important for schools to look at what is going on in the outside world. Whether it is data from comparable schools or new ideas; whether it is retrieved on the internet or brought back from a meeting; whether it is about instruction or assessment - nothing is off limits.
• Act with Urgency Every Day - There are no "days off" when it comes to urgency. It is a mindset. I believe that true urgency is comparable to Stephen Covey's "urgent & important" quadrant of behaviors. Probably some of the behaviors from "not urgent & important" would fit here, too. The opposite is a false sense of urgency which I believe is comparable to Covey's quadrant "urgent & not important." When we get into a sense of frenetic, fast-paced activitiy with little or no thinking being done, we are in a non-productive place!
• Find Opportunities in Crisis - Sometimes a crisis can be a call to action. Crisis gets peoples' attention. Instead of fearing crisis, look for what can be made of them. Use them to your advantage to move urgency forward.
• Deal with the NoNos - This is the only tactic that looks much different in education than business and other organizations. NoNos are those staff members (teachers, principals, other school staff) who reject new ideas and want everyone else to reject them. Kotter reports these individuals as being detrimental when trying to move people towards realizing this feeling of urgency. He calls them "urgency killers." These are not the skeptics - people who want to know more before making a decision. These are people who actively sabotage change and crave the status quo. Kotter talks about 5 ways that NoNos are usually dealt with. Two of the five rarely work according to Kotter. Those two are the two I've used or tried to use most of the time! This was really eye-opening. Co-opting the Nono (having them be part of the leadership group) or ignoring the NoNo can be very dangerous when trying to develop urgency. He says these two methods usually do not work. He does describe three tactics which are more successful. In a nutshell, they are distraction, elimination (firing which isn't practical in education), or exposing the NoNo are the strategies that have more likelihood of success.

I thought that overall the book was very insightful and full of lots of practical ideas. Coaches can be the healthy virus that spreads this sense of urgency through conversations and interactions with teachers and others in the school. According to Kotter, developing this sense of urgency and need to change is the first step when thinking about motivating people to do something different.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about the book or the ideas I talk about above.

The Sense and FEELING of Urgency

When in an airport last week, I saw a book entitled A Sense of Urgency. It is John Kotter's newest publication. I knew of Kotter's change process, which he wrote about in the 1990's targeted more for the business world. Educational leaders have been reading and talking about much that is written about leadership and change from the business sector and trying to apply it to the educational realm. Since urgency is such an issue in the public schools that I deal with day in and day out, I wanted to know more about it. I certainly know what it feels like. I believe (especially after reading the book) that I feel this sense of urgency. It feels focused and relentless - always seeking to focus on what needs to be changed given the school I am in. What I really liked about the book is that it describes three states of being related to this idea of change and describes what each one feels like.

The three states of urgency (as defined by Kotter) are:

• COMPLACENCY - a feeling of satisfaction; things are "good enough"


• FALSE STATE OF URGENCY - a feeling of anxiety, anger, & frustration; frenetic activity; knowing that things aren't good, but not having a plan of attack on how to get better


• REAL SENSE OF URGENCY - a good feeling of knowing the target and working each day to move closer to it; purposeful action; "making every minute count"

Thinking about these categories gives me another lens when I go into a school. I would say that I work in schools at all levels of urgency. Certainly there is gray space between the categories - there are ranges between each. My hypothesis would be that leadership has a lot to do with how the school as a whole "feels" when it comes to this factor. In schools that are complacent, I've generally found a complacent principal. As a matter of fact, I was in a school recently where the principal said, "Everything here is just fine." This is a school that has seen its algebra scores decline for three years in a row. Granted, when looking at other schools, their algebra proficiency is higher than most. However, there seems to be a choice to look the other way in complacent schools. In some ways, they are in denial, and denial can certainly be destructive. This is another parallel with Good to Great by Jim Collins. In the great companies identified by Collins and his colleagues, the executives looked at the cold, hard facts. It seems that a characteristic of a complacent school is that they are not willing to look at the cold, hard facts.

Kotter talks about how important it is to turn a false state of urgency into a real sense of urgency. As I reflect and ponder about this, the question that comes to mind is - which is worse? which is harder to change? COMPLACENCY or FALSE SENSE OF URGENCY.

Kotter says that complacency is often a by-product of long standing success. As I think about schools, this seems to be a true statement. Very few failing schools are complacent that I've worked with. They seem to have urgency - either real or false. Kotter goes on to say, however, that since change is now the norm in our world, that the complacent will have a hard time surviving. Even in schools that are "good," the bar is being raised. Students are being required to attain higher and higher levels of achievement. I don't know of any public school that has 100% proficient students across the board. Jim Collins, in the book Good to Great, says "good is the enemy of great." Is this one of the reasons? Do "good" schools become complacent in their "goodness," and therefore don't strive to be great? Is 90% proficiency good enough? Can a school ever be legitimately complacent? I have my view on this...what is yours?