Note: Here’s part five in our 2019-2020 Learning to Improve series which is the primary focus of the School Performance Institute (SPI) blog this year. In it, we spotlight issues related to building the capacity to do improvement science in schools while working on an important problem of practice.

The methods of improvement science are often counterintuitive at first glance (which is probably why I love the approach!).

Take the title of this blog post for instance - Slow Down to Speed Up. When we launch an improvement project with a school, very early on in the project I display this quote from Albert Einstein on a slide, and ask participants what they think it means.

To me, what Einstein is getting at is that it is well worth the time investment to deeply understand a problem before diving headlong into solutions.

Move with Cautious Urgency

As an improvement advisor, I’ve found that one of my most important jobs is to caution organizational leaders not to move forward with solutions before a problem is well-understood. As David Epstein notes in his bestselling book Range, “successful problem solvers are more able to determine the deep structure of a problem before they proceed to match a strategy to it (p. 115).” 

Well-meaning teams and their leaders are eager to move urgently in service of important outcomes for their students. Often times the pressure to improve outcomes pushes us to make decisions counter to those that would lead to long-term improvement. Believe me, I feel this urgency daily as we work to face down daunting achievement gaps at United Schools Network. But, I also recognize the foolishness of racing ahead with solutions that are misaligned to the root causes of the problem under study. School improvement efforts are littered with big ideas that were rolled out fast and wide only to be abandoned a few years later. Most typically, they were abandoned because there was misalignment between the solution and the problem it was supposed to solve. Left in the never-ending wake of good intentions are teachers with initiative fatigue. 

Causal System Analysis

Before we rush ahead with the latest fad solution in the education sector, it is absolutely critical to slow down to perform a causal system analysis. This analysis starts with a simple question - “Why are we getting the outcomes that we currently do?” The only way to understand this question is to step back and see the system, that is, the people, policies, attitudes, and the physical environment in which the problem resides. Improvement science is not as didactic as traditional research designs, so there is not a prescribed criteria that must be applied to every problem. However, the methodology does have a number of tools for its users to employ as they seek to better understand a problem and the system in which it lives. These tools can be used to perform a root cause analysis for systematically and logically exploring and categorizing the causes of a problem under study. Three such tools that can be used for this purpose include a Cause and Effect Diagram (aka Fishbone Diagram), the Five Whys questioning technique, and Process and Systems Mapping (in my next post, I’ll do a deeper dive into how we use the Fishbone Diagram for causal system analysis).

These tools can be used in this process to deeply understand an important problem faced by your organization. As education pioneer John Dewey astutely noted, “A problem well put is half-solved.” 

The tools of improvement science can help do just that.

More on How We’re Learning to Improve

School Performance Institute serves as both the improvement advisor and project manager for School-Based Improvement Teams working to improve student outcomes. Through an intensive study of improvement science as well as through leading improvement science projects at the four schools that make up United Schools Network, we’ve gained significant experience with its tools and techniques. 

We’re also opening our doors to share our improvement practices through our unique Study the Network workshops that take place throughout the school year. Our next workshop will take place at Columbus Collegiate Academy in Columbus, Ohio on March 17th.

John A. Dues is the Managing Director of School Performance Institute and the Chief Learning Officer for United Schools Network. The School Performance Institute is the learning and improvement arm of United Schools Network, an education nonprofit in Columbus, Ohio. Send feedback to jdues@unitedschoolsnetwork.org.