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Session 2. Mapping Actors and Finding Leverage
Objective. Map the actors in a school or district problem, read stocks, flows and delays, dig below events to structures and beliefs, and rank possible actions by leverage, cost and risk.
Before choosing a solution, it helps to know who is part of the problem, what is piling up and what moves slowly. Leaders often reach for the lever that is easiest to approve rather than the one that matters most. This lesson shows how to read stocks and flows, how to go below an event to its structure and belief, and how to compare two possible actions honestly before you commit teacher time or money.
Key ideas
Who is in the system
- Start with people, not with boxes: pupils, parents, teachers, the head, the methodist, the district office, the ministry, publishers, employers and the mahalla. For each, write what they want, what power they have and what they are measured on. The same rule feels different from each seat.
- Draw the boundary where you can act or influence. Too narrow and you miss the cause; too wide and the map becomes a poster nobody can use. A school head can usually influence the school and speak to the district; the ministry belongs on the map as a context, not as a lever.
- People who resist a change are usually acting sensibly given what they see and what they are rewarded for. Ask what the change costs them before you call it resistance.
Stocks, flows and buffers
- A stock is something that accumulates: qualified maths teachers in a district, pupils who are behind, textbooks in the storeroom. Flows fill or drain it: hiring and graduates come in, retirement and moves to town go out. You can change a flow quickly, but a stock changes slowly.
- This is why leaders are disappointed. Two new graduates arriving each year cannot refill a gap of six posts in one year when three leave. Always ask how big the stock is, how fast the flows move and how long the delay is before you promise a date.
- A buffer is a reserve that absorbs shocks: a pool of substitute teachers, spare textbooks, a free hour in the timetable. Systems with no buffer break at the first illness or harvest week.
Leverage points
- Donella Meadows, a systems thinker, wrote that a leverage point is a place in a system where a small change can make a large difference, and that people often push it in the wrong direction. Her list runs from low leverage, such as numbers like a subsidy or a standard, up through buffers, delays, feedback loops, information flows and rules, to goals and the beliefs that create the system.
- In school terms: a parameter is the number of homework pages; an information flow is whether teachers see each pupil's progress within a week; a rule is how teachers are appraised; a goal is what the school is for; a belief is 'a good pupil is a quiet pupil'. Higher points work harder but are harder to move. Meadows called her list tentative, so use it as a prompt, not a formula.
- Most plans push the lowest lever because it is easy to approve: more pages, more hours, more money. Ask what higher lever sits behind the same problem, and compare cost, speed and risk of both.
Digging below the event
- Use the iceberg: the event is what you see (twelve pupils absent this week); the pattern is what repeats (every harvest September); the structure is what produces the pattern (the timetable, the rules on absence, who pays for transport); the belief is what people hold (harvest income matters more than three weeks of school).
- Reacting to events (call the parents, record the absence) is needed but never ends. Acting on patterns (move a test away from the harvest weeks) helps more. Changing structures and beliefs takes longest and lasts longest.
- Test your map with the people on it. A short conversation with a parent or a pupil often moves a belief from your guess to a fact, or shows that your guess was wrong.
Where to push, from stronger to weaker (after Meadows)
Read the stock before you promise a date
Picture a bathtub: the water is the stock, the tap is the inflow and the drain is the outflow. Suppose, as an illustration, that a district has six posts without a qualified maths teacher, two qualified teachers join each year and three leave. The gap grows by one a year, and no amount of waiting closes it. Opening the tap wider helps less than finding out why teachers leave.
Before you promise a date, write four numbers on paper: the size of the stock, the inflow, the outflow and the delay between a decision and its first visible effect. The exercise takes five minutes and often changes the promise you make to your head or your district office.
Choose between two actions honestly
Compare a low-lever and a higher-lever action on the same five lines: cost in money and teacher minutes, speed, risk, who must agree, and what it does to the cause. A low-lever action, such as a reminder call or a bonus, is quick and cheap but often leaves the cause untouched. A higher-lever action, such as changing a rule or who sees which information, is slower and needs agreement, but it lasts.
The honest answer is often both. A quick low-lever step buys time while the higher-lever change is prepared. Write the date on which you will check whether the higher change is working, and the sign you will look for.
Examples from the classroom
The bathtub of maths teachers
Scene. Jasur, in a district education office near Bukhara, is asked to fill six maths posts by September. He draws the stock: out-of-subject teachers cover six posts, two graduates arrive each year and about two leave for town. He tells the office that hiring alone will not close the gap, and he asks five of the teachers who left what would have kept them.
Insight. Look at the drain before you widen the tap.
Who really sets the homework
Scene. Malika, a methodist in Tashkent, tables the people in the homework problem. She learns that teachers set more because the notebook check rewards the number of exercises. She proposes to the district that checks also note whether a notebook shows a pupil's own explanation, and that a nightly cap be agreed with the parents' committee.
Insight. The rule behind a behaviour is a higher lever than a cap on the behaviour alone.
The parent's view
Scene. Aziz in Fergana believes that parents do not care about harvest-week absence. He talks for ten minutes with one parent, who explains that the family depends on the harvest income and that nobody told them how to help the child catch up. Aziz drops his guess and prepares a one-page catch-up pack to give out before the harvest begins.
Insight. Test a belief with the person who holds it before you act on it.
Common pitfalls
- Drawing the boundary so wide that the map cannot be used, or so narrow that the cause is missing.
- Calling an actor resistant when the change simply costs them something.
- Choosing the lowest lever because it is easy to approve, then declaring the problem solved.
- Skipping the conversation with the people on the map and relying on your own guess.
Find the Leverage in a Stuck Problem
- Whole group (10 min): open the kit. The facilitator walks through the leverage ladder and the iceberg using one example, the harvest-week absence from session 1. Where does 'call the parents' sit, and where does 'change the test dates'?
- Trios (20 min): choose scenario A, B or C. Fill the stakeholder table (who, what they want, their power, how they are measured) for at least six actors, and draw the iceberg with one event, one pattern, one structure and one belief.
- Trios (15 min): list six possible actions and place each on the leverage ladder. Choose one low-lever and one higher-lever action and compare them on cost in money and teacher minutes, speed, risk and who must agree.
- Part B, pairs (15 min): for the higher-lever action, name who gains, who loses and who could block it. Write one small test you could run within one week that would show whether the belief or rule you assumed is real.
- Whole group (15 min): each trio gives a one-minute summary: the belief, the two actions and the choice. The facilitator reads the key for one scenario. Which of your first ideas sat lowest on the ladder?
- Alone (10 min): write your leadership task from the kit and name the two people you will ask.
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- Which actor on your table had power but was measured on something unrelated to the problem?
- Why do plans so often choose the lowest lever, and what would make a higher one easier to approve?
- Which belief on your iceberg could you test this week, and how?
Reflect
- Whose measure in your school pulls them away from the goal you share?
- What belief in your community would have to change for your biggest problem to ease, and who holds it for good reasons?
- Which stock in your school is changing more slowly than your plan assumes?
Try it tomorrow
- Pick one problem and write four numbers for its main stock: size, inflow, outflow and delay.
- Fill a short stakeholder table for six actors, and add what each is measured on.
- Write one low-lever and one higher-lever action for the same problem and compare them on cost, speed, risk and who must agree.
Further reading and links
Map who is in the system and what each is measured on, read stocks and delays before you promise dates, and dig from events to structures and beliefs. Compare a low and a higher lever on cost, speed and risk before you choose.