Deliverology 101

A Field Guide For Educational Leaders

Michael Barber, Andy Moffit, Paul Kihn

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781452236537
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Leadership in Education

A step-by-step approach to delivering results

Michael Barber, former chief advisor on delivery to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and his colleagues thoroughly describe his proven reform delivery processes in this practical field guide. Citing education reform case studies from more than 20 countries, he asserts that most previous reforms were unsuccessful due to failed implementation. The central challenge is getting it done. This book focuses on how to accomplish meaningful results, including:

• Significant and ongoing education reform
• Excellence and equity across public education
• Students who are prepared to lead America’s future

1

Develop a
Foundation
for Delivery

Every strong delivery effort has a few prerequisites that must be put in place before you begin: a clear idea of what the system should deliver, an understanding of where and how delivery must improve, a talented team that will run the delivery effort on your behalf, and sufficient alignment at the top to get things done.

Not all delivery efforts are created equal. The efficacy of your effort will depend on what has already been done, your system's specific strengths and weaknesses, and the resources that are available to you. In order to launch your delivery effort, you must build an accurate understanding of the system you will be working with. You must understand the context of your system's history, mission, and ambition. You must understand the nuances of the challenge at hand. And you must build the necessary support system to help you confront this challenge.

This chapter will help you develop the foundation for your delivery effort. It consists of four modules:

A. Define your aspiration

B. Review the current state of delivery

C. Build the Delivery Unit

D. Establish a guiding coalition

With this foundation in place, your delivery effort will be well positioned to achieve real results for your system.

1A. DEFINE YOUR ASPIRATION

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”

—Robert F. Kennedy

Note to delivery leaders: Aspiration-setting is primarily the responsibility of the system leader. This module is a guide for how a system leader should set the system's aspirations. Your role as delivery leader is highlighted where appropriate.

“What do you want?” is a basic but often unasked question. System leaders must understand what their system wants, or what kind of change it needs. Many attempts at delivery have been derailed because those in charge assumed that a system's leaders all shared the same aspirations, when in fact they did not. Other efforts have failed because leaders agreed on the wrong things, were insufficiently ambitious, or simply had ill-defined goals. Aspirations set the direction of a system's change and motivate people toward that direction.

This module will explore what an aspiration is and define some criteria and approaches for clarifying and/or setting a system's aspirations. An aspiration is your system's answer to three questions:

DIRECTION AND MOTIVATION

“Where direction was clarified—as in Education under Blunkett or the Treasury under Gordon Brown—the civil servants were highly motivated. Where [it] was lacking—as in Social Security—motivation was, of course, less evident.” (Instruction to Deliver, 45)

• What do we care about?
• What are we going to do about it?
• How will we measure success?

To have an impact, a system's aspirations must be clear, sharp, and understandable to everyone. Common aspirations form the basis for all efforts at delivery because they signify a shared understanding of what success would look like. Shared aspirations become a powerful tool that your Delivery Unit can invoke during its work with the front line. How much more difficult would it have been for NASA leaders to motivate their agency to put a man on the moon if they were without President Kennedy's famously expressed aspiration to back them up? An aspiration acts as a system's backbone, the goal to be insisted upon when others are thinking of giving up, or giving in to the mistaken belief that outcomes are not in our power to control or influence.

As defined here, an aspiration is not necessarily a specific and time-bound target (for more on target setting, see Chapter 3, Plan for Delivery). However, as the three defining questions above suggest, an aspiration should lend itself to measurement by one or more target metrics: metrics that the system uses to represent the actual outcomes desired by a system.

An aspiration is, at a minimum, a verbal expression of the specific outcome (or outcomes) that a system strives to influence or attain, and the direction of that desired influence or attainment. It is often derived from a system's overall mission but is more specific. The American Cancer Society's mission, for example, is to “eliminate cancer as a major health problem” (ACS, n.d.). That mission may embrace many aspirations: providing universal access to cancer screening, increasing awareness about cancer risk factors, ensuring the provision of life-saving treatment, and so on. Likewise, in his first speech to Congress in 2009, President Barack Obama set an aspiration that the United States would have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by the year 2020. Though this was a measurable aspiration, much remained to be done to clarify exactly what measures to use. Exhibit 1A.1 indicates examples of aspiration setting in public policy, education, and the nonprofit sector.

Aspirations set the foundation for delivery because they set the bar for what the system will be asked to achieve. The relationship between aspiration and delivery can be summarized in Exhibit 1A.2. The nature of your aspiration determines how bold the reform will be, while the quality of your delivery effort determines how well executed the reform will be.

The ideal is to have both a bold aspiration and excellent execution, but this will be challenging for obvious reasons. However, watering down the aspiration too much results in a defense of the status quo, which, in an era of rising public expectations, is a recipe for managed decline. The equation changes when the horizontal axis becomes the focus. A not very radical but plausible idea, implemented well, will make a difference and deliver improved outcomes. This can buy you the right to increase the boldness of your aspirations and deliver transformation.

This map will be a useful guide as you identify, evaluate, and help create your system's aspirations. By plotting your aspirations onto this map, you will have an idea of the balance of your ambitions, with clear implications for you. If most of your current aspirations are on the left-hand side, you will need to shift them to the right. Incidentally, a controversy without impact might be worthwhile as a step on the way to transformation, but it should be avoided as an end state. If the whole portfolio is destined to end up in the “Transformation” box, then the program is probably too risky. If it is all headed for the “Improved outcomes” box, then it probably lacks ambition. The more ambitious your aspiration is, the more rigorous you must be with delivery to ensure that it can lead to transformation.

Exhibit 1A.1

Aspirations in education, public policy, and the nonprofit sector—examples

Exhibit 1A.2

A map of delivery: Aspirations push the boldness of reform while delivery pushes the quality of execution

ROLES OF SYSTEM LEADER AND DELIVERY LEADER

Setting a system's aspirations is primarily the responsibility of the system leader. If it already exists, your Delivery Unit (the person or group responsible for driving the achievement of system aspirations—see Module 1C for more information) may be called upon to assist the system leader in doing this. Over time, your role as delivery leader will be to ensure that this aspiration remains sufficiently focused, clear, and shared by system leaders—and to push for clarification or redefinition where necessary. Systems lacking ambitious aspirations are sometimes set right by their Delivery Units, which can point out this need and bring the right people together to meet it.

PROCESS STEPS

Step 1: Identify existing aspirations

Step 2: Clarify existing aspirations

Step 3: Refine or define new aspirations if necessary

Step 1: Identify existing aspirations

The aspirations for most systems will not be set from a blank slate. For many, aspirations usually exist in some form, and usually systems are not completely free to define their own aspirations: mission statements, laws and regulations governing the system, and existing commitments made by other leaders all have an influence.

As a first step, system leaders must identify their system's existing aspirations and any external influences on those aspirations. Some examples of external influences are included in Exhibit 1A.3, and key questions for doing this are given in Exhibit 1A.4.

As prime minister, Tony Blair wanted to target several areas of concern for which well-defined aspirations were lacking. The Prime Minister's Delivery Unit (PMDU) leader worked with the prime minister, ministers, and half a dozen members of Blair's policy team to establish priority areas for which aspirations were set. The key was to focus aspirations on a narrow set of themes in order to have a clear message of delivery and increase chances of success.

Step 2: Clarify existing aspirations

Once existing aspirations have been identified by the system leader, she must examine them to determine whether they are fit for anchoring delivery efforts. Questions to consider when shaping existing aspirations are presented in the following paragraphs:

Exhibit 1A.3

External influence on system aspirations—examples

Exhibit 1A.4

Identifying a system's existing aspirations—questions for consideration

• What moral purpose do the aspirations serve? Should they be achieved, why will that matter? Without an aspiration connected to the college- and career-readiness agenda, a K–12 state education agency (SEA) may be neglecting one of the most important elements of its organizational mission. Lik...