: Strong systems: the unsung heroes of effective implementation. Strong systems: the unsung heroes of effective implementation

Blog


Strong systems: the unsung heroes of effective implementation.

Strong systems: the unsung heroes of effective implementation

by Tudor Grange Research School
on the

John bw

John Holmes

John is Head Teacher at John Masefield High School

Read more aboutJohn Holmes

“It is all too easy to ‘dream big’ when thinking about implementing a new programme or practice and overlook the structural conditions that make it possible. While implementation is fundamentally a social process, it relies on a range of systems and structures that create the conditions for those interactions to occur.”

“We always hope for the easy fix: the one simple change that will erase a problem in a stroke. But few things in life work this way. Instead, success requires making a hundred small steps go right – one after the other, no slipups, no goofs, everyone pitching in”

I can vividly remember a conversation I had with a Trust CEO, visiting a school where I was a senior leader. She asked me how many teachers would be using a recently introduced strategy. All of them’ I blithely assured her. After some kind prompting, I revised my estimate to most of them’. Needless to say, after a day spent in lessons, it became clear that the actual answer was less than half’.


I think about this conversation a lot because I’ve been on the other side of it many times now that I have the privilege of visiting schools. My hosts tell me that all, or nearly all, of their team will be demonstrating some recently implemented strategy, and we go on to find that the reality is far from the case. Oftentimes, it’s not that teachers don’t support the strategy, it’s not that they don’t understand it, and it’s not that they don’t think it’s important: they just seem to forget, or to never quite get round to it.


In this respect, they are like doctors and nurses who, Gawande notes, typically, wash their hands about one-third to one-half as often as they should (p.15). Nobody thinks doctors and nurses don’t recognise that washing hands between patient contacts is crucial in reducing the spread of infection it’s just that they are very busy people.


It doesn’t matter how talented, well-meaning, or conscientious somebody is, if they are managing multiple complex tasks with overlapping deadlines ‑and every single teacher and medical professional is doing just that – then they will let some things slip. We tend to focus on the most immediately pressing task at hand, often at the expense of something more important.


This is why ATMs won’t give you your cash until you take your card, and beep loudly at you until you do so. The risk is that, without this, you will focus on the most immediately pressing thing – the cash – and neglect the thing that is more important – the bank card. The ATM has a system that guides you to attend to the important thing.

ATM

This is the sort of system and structure described in the EEF guidance report as allowing people to enact the behaviours that drive effective implementation.” What is the system that will enable successful implementation in your school? What is the equivalent of the beeping ATM that prompts dozens of busy people to attend to the right thing at the right time – the thing they want to attend to, but often neglect.


The beeping is important. Some of our systems are bit like an ATM that spits out your card and cash at the same time, or a hand sanitising unit next to every door in a hospital. It seems like it should work; it seems like there is no reason why it wouldn’t work, but our experience tells us that it will fail far more than we expect.

Table

At heart, these beeps’ involve checking in on people, and this can seem unglamorous, laborious, or perhaps even patronising. Our instinct is that we can trust our colleagues. We can trust them to remember what to do and when to do it, and we can trust them to tell us how it is going. But there’s a difference between trusting in our colleagues’ good will and expertise, and trusting that they will, in the midst of juggling multiple complex tasks, infallibly remember everything they need to do. An implementation process that relies on dozens of very busy people doing just that, is likely to fail.


In fact, checking in on people, finding out how things are going, is a kindness. It is kind because people have united around implementation and want it to succeed. Checking in, and the reminders that you will do so, help people achieve this goal: it is kind in the same way that the ATM forcing me to take my card is kind. It is also kind because these check-ins are important opportunities to reflect together, and therefore to engage our teams. It may be that the pro forma took longer to complete than anticipated, the reflection meeting raised some questions, or the checklist was not comprehensive. These sorts of lessons and discussions are invaluable for any process of implementation.


In Better, Gawande goes on to tell the story of a hospital that eventually was able to raise its hand-washing rates (pp.25 – 27). It is a story of a hospital that meticulously listened to the experience of its nurses and doctors, that checked-in on them. Our systems of checking in, of nudging and reminding people towards implementation, and of listening to their experiences, will help make sure that the hundred small steps that need to go right, can do so.

More from the Tudor Grange Research School

Show all news

This website collects a number of cookies from its users for improving your overall experience of the site.Read more