In January and February, I outlined six common management myths. The point of those two posts was to help education systems leaders see what not to do. I’m now turning to a set of principles that can be used by these same leaders to guide their transformation work. Last month, I introduced the 14 Principles for Educational Systems Transformation. In this post I’ll describe the second principle, Adopt the New Philosophy.

Principle 2: Adopt the new philosophy. System leaders must awaken to the fact that education reform movements lack a sound philosophical foundation, must learn their new responsibilities, and take on leadership for improvement.

The Deming philosophy stated as a new philosophy for education could be framed as follows: Studying and applying the System of Profound Knowledge in order to (1) view teaching and learning as dynamic processes that occur within a system and (2) understand the nature of variation of teaching and learning processes so that appropriate action can be taken to accomplish improvement on a continual basis.[1]   The 14 Principles serve as a practical guide by which systems leaders can lead. Some of the principles tell us what to do such as “create constancy of purpose” while others instruct us on barriers to remove in service of creating an environment which is conducive to the new philosophy such as “abolish management by objective.” The backbone of the philosophy is transformation from a culture of competition where “I win, you lose” or “I lose, you win” is the dominant paradigm to a Win-Win paradigm based on a culture of cooperation. The Win-Win philosophy includes new thinking on leadership of people where a primary concern is developing joy in work and learning among students and staff as a prerequisite to achieving the core purpose of the organization.

This transition will not happen overnight, or as Deming put it, there is no “instant pudding.”[2]  Instead, a more realistic goal is constant, consistent movement towards the new philosophy where there is total involvement in continually improving the quality of all systems, processes, and activities within the school system.

Blog Series: 14 Principles for Educational Systems Transformation

The four components of the System of Profound Knowledge work in concert to provide us with profound insights about how our organizations operate so that leaders can in turn work to optimize the whole of our systems. However, there is a step beyond simply avoiding the management myths. The next step is to be able to think and make decisions using the lens provided by the System of Profound Knowledge. This is where the core set of 14 Principles come into play. In this series, I’m describing the principles that will enable you to move from theory to practice with the Deming philosophy. 

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John A. Dues is the Chief Learning Officer for United Schools Network, a nonprofit charter management organization that supports four public charter schools in Columbus, Ohio. He is also the author of the newly released book Win-Win: W. Edwards Deming, the System of Profound Knowledge, and the Science of Improving Schools. Send feedback to jdues@unitedschoolsnetwork.org. 

Notes

1. James F. Leonard, The New Philosophy for K-12 Education: A Deming Framework for Transforming America’s Schools (Milwaukee, Wisconsin: ASQ Quality Press, 1996).
2. W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis (Cambridge, MA: MIT, Center for Advanced Engineering Study, 1986), 126.