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Session 1. Why Change Fails and the Case for Change
Objective. Name the usual reasons a school change fails, size a planned change, read a Kotter-type step map in plain terms and write a one-page case for change that colleagues can understand and test.
Most school leaders can write a plan; fewer can predict why it will meet trouble in the staff room. This session gives you a way to read your own school before you announce anything: how much history the staff carry, how ready the school is, and how big the change really is. Use it to decide whether to start, to pilot first, or to wait a month and prepare. A few honest hours now save a term of repair later.
Key ideas
Why school changes disappoint
- Change in schools often fails for ordinary reasons, not bad intentions: there was no clear problem, too many changes started together, the leader announced and moved on, people were never asked, nobody learned the new skill, nothing visible improved early, or attention moved and old habits returned.
- Course 14.4 (School Improvement) taught how to choose a few priorities and plan them. This course starts where a plan meets people: the best plan still fails if colleagues do not understand it, doubt it or cannot do it yet.
- Technical change and adaptive change need different leadership (a distinction from Ronald Heifetz). A new form or timetable grid is mostly technical: people learn a procedure. Writing feedback instead of marks, or sharing lessons openly, is adaptive: beliefs and habits must shift, and that takes time and conversation.
A map of the journey: Kotter-type steps
- John Kotter's eight steps are a widely used map: create urgency, build a guiding coalition, form a vision and initiatives, enlist a volunteer army, remove barriers, generate short-term wins, sustain acceleration, institute the change. Read it as four phases: prepare (1-3), launch (4-5), show progress (6-7), embed (8).
- It is a map, not a recipe. Steps overlap and you will go back. In schools the commonest error is to start at step 4 (training and rollout) without steps 1 to 3: no shared sense of why, no team beyond the head, no picture of how the school will look.
- Other models in this course look at different levels. Kotter looks at the organisation; ADKAR and the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (session 3) look at each person; Bridges and the implementation dip (session 4) look at feelings during the middle. Use the model that answers your question today.
Size the change before you plan it
- Ask four questions: How many people are affected? How deep is the change in daily habits (a new form is shallow, a new way of teaching is deep)? How much new learning is needed? How easily can it be reversed? Many people plus deep habits plus new learning means a large change that needs a pilot and more time.
- Match the pace to the size. A shallow change for all staff can start in a week with a clear note. A deep change should start with a pilot team or one grade, and spread after you have learned what goes wrong. Course 15.6 (Scaling Innovation Across a School Network) goes further on spreading.
- Count the change load honestly. If the same teachers already carry three initiatives (course 14.4, session 4), a new one needs something to stop. A leader who adds without stopping is asking for tired compliance, not change.
The case for change on one page
- A case for change answers the questions colleagues silently ask: What exactly is changing? Why, and what is the evidence from OUR school? Why now? What stays the same? What does it ask of me, and what help will I get? How will we know it worked? What do you not know yet?
- Urgency is not panic. Show the real gap with numbers from your own school (course 12.2) and the cost of waiting, then show a believable way forward. Do not rely on 'the ministry requires it' alone: that explains compliance, not purpose. If a rule is fixed, say so, and then open the real choices about how.
- Test the case before you use it: read it to three colleagues and ask 'What did you hear?' If they cannot repeat the what, the why and what stays, rewrite. Be honest about costs, including extra hours; people trust a leader who names the hard part.
Four phases of the Kotter-type map
The weight of the last change
People meet every new change with the memory of the previous one. If the last initiative faded after a term, or was announced with great energy and then forgotten, colleagues have learned a reasonable lesson: wait and it will pass. You cannot argue them out of this, because it was learned from experience. You can only act differently.
Start by naming the past honestly in a staff meeting: 'Last year we began the reading hour and let it fade. Here is what I think we did wrong, and here is what will be different this time.' Then keep the first promise you make, however small. Trust returns through kept small promises, not through large speeches.
Checking readiness before you start
Four quick questions show whether the ground is ready. Trust: do staff believe the leadership keeps its word? Capacity: is there time and energy, or are people already carrying three initiatives? Skill: do the people who must change have the skills, or is learning needed first? Stability: will the key people, especially you, still be here in a year? Rate each low, medium or high.
Two or more lows do not mean 'never'; they mean 'prepare first'. Low trust calls for listening and small kept promises. Low capacity calls for stopping something. Low skill calls for training before launch. Low stability calls for a second owner. A launch date is a decision about readiness, not about the calendar.
Examples from the classroom
Naming the last failure in Samarkand
Scene. Dilnoza, a head in Samarkand, plans a homework policy for Grades 5 to 9. Before she says a word about it, she opens the meeting with: 'Last year's reading hour stopped in November, and I did not follow up. This time there will be a named owner, a check every two weeks and a stop date for the weekly report.' A senior teacher, Jasur, says nothing, but writes the dates in his diary. Three weeks later the first check happens on the promised day.
Insight. Trust is rebuilt by honest naming and then by the first kept promise.
A readiness check in Fergana
Scene. Aziz, a deputy head near Fergana, wants to launch a new group-work rubric in September. His four-question check shows trust medium, capacity low (staff already run the reading marathon, an olympiad programme and a new register), skill medium and stability high. Instead of launching, he stops the reading marathon for one term, trains six volunteers in two short sessions and sets the launch for November with only Grade 7.
Insight. A low capacity score is answered by stopping something, not by pushing harder.
The read-back test in Namangan
Scene. Malika, a methodist in Namangan, reads her one-page case for a new assessment policy to three teachers and asks, 'What did you hear?' The first says, 'That we must do it from October.' The second says, 'That marks will change.' The third says, 'I do not know.' Nobody mentions the school evidence or the stopped weekly report. Malika rewrites the first three lines and tests the page again with three different colleagues the next day.
Insight. If listeners cannot repeat the point, the problem is the page, not the listeners.
Common pitfalls
- Treating a large adaptive change as if it were a technical one and launching it to everyone in a week.
- Writing the case after the decision, as a justification, instead of before it, as a test of the idea.
- Using the ministry requirement as the only reason, which explains compliance but not purpose.
- Starting a new change without stopping an old one, so the load grows each term.
Diagnose, Size and Write the Case for Change
- Trios (5 min): open the Activity Kit. All schools, numbers and quotations are SAMPLES for practice. Read Table A, six short stories of change that went wrong.
- Trios (10 min): for each story name the MAIN reason it failed (use the list under the table) and the step of the map that was skipped. Agree one thing the leader could have done in the first week.
- Pairs (15 min): Table B. Size the six changes: technical or adaptive, number of people, depth 1-3, small, medium or large. Then choose which two need a pilot first and which one can go to all staff now.
- Trios (15 min): read the sample announcement in Table C. Mark in the margin which of the nine parts of the case form (Table D) are missing. Rewrite the first three sentences so they say what is changing, what stays and one piece of school evidence.
- Part B, alone (25 min): choose a real change planned in your own school or cluster. Fill Table D in full: one sentence of what is changing, what stays, the problem with numbers, why now, benefit to pupils, what it asks of staff in hours and skills, support, two measures plus one balancing measure, and what you do not yet know.
- Trios (10 min): read-back test. Read your case aloud once. The others, without notes, say back the what, the why and what stays. Note where they could not, and fix one line.
- Alone (5 min): write your leadership task from the Kit.
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- Which failure reason have you seen in your own school, and which step of the map was skipped?
- What did the read-back test show about the clarity of your case for change?
- What is the hardest honest sentence in your case, and what stops you from saying it?
Reflect
- Think of the last change that faded in your school. Which of the failure reasons applies?
- Is the change you plan technical or adaptive, and have you led it as the right kind?
- Who in your school would tell you honestly that your case does not make sense?
Try it tomorrow
- Write the 'last change' sentence you would say aloud to your staff, and test it with one trusted colleague.
- Rate your school low, medium or high on trust, capacity, skill and stability for your next change, and write one action for each low.
- Run a read-back test on any one-page notice you plan to send this month.
Further reading and links
Size the change, start before step 4, and write a one-page case that colleagues can say back to you.