Martin's Musings
January 14, 2016
Sustaining
In 2013, Dr. Andreas Freund started an online discussion with the following question, ,"Why do continuous improvement initiatives almost always fail?" He received over 400 responses to his discussion post. He then grouped the responses into several categories based on similarities in the responses. His analysis sorted the responses into 18 areas. In his May 2013 blog post, he examines the top four responses.
1. Lack of will, support, commitment, and leadership from senior leadership. When I think of the IGNiTE program, I feel we most definitely have these things from our senior leadership. From Dr. Jungmann, to Dr. Hackenwerth, to Dr. Lemmon, the district leadership is committed to supporting the IGNiTE program. I think one more illustration of this commitment is the recent funding of the Imagine Grants.
2. Using incorrect metrics to monitor culture change and continuous improvement. I had to reread this particular paragraph from the article a couple of times. Simply put, initiatives fail because the measures of growth/success of that initiative are not properly selected or applied. I think this is an area we need better defined for the IGNiTE initiative. How does a building, classroom, and/or teacher know if the IGNiTE is meeting its goals and student need? This will be a topic of discussion at next Wednesday's site project team meeting. Please offer your thoughts on success measures of the IGNiTE program on a Canvas discussion.
3. Lack of human capital development. Are the people involved in the initiative receiving the type, amount, and timeliness of training required to be successful at both the implementation stage and continuous stage? It is a challenge to find the time for development of new initiatives and skills. Let's make sure we are making full use of Debbie's Wednesday's visits.
4. Not enough resources allocated or available. I feel this area can be divided into two areas: $$ and time. Dollars have not been an impediment at this juncture, but finding the time to learn, collaborate, plan, and implement has been, and will continue, to be a challenge. #ImagineGrants
In reading over this list, I can see glows and grows for the IGNiTE initiative at Sunshine. I look forward to your input on how we can strengthen these four areas of initiative killers.